I want to have a little rant today about school uniform rules!
I should start by saying that I’m all for school uniform and completely understand the need for guidelines and rules. What seriously annoys me is the decision that what was suitable to be worn as part of the school uniform in July is no longer suitable for the following September. Replacing perfectly good clothes is not only a waste of money but it’s just wasteful in general.
During the Summer term, our school announced some uniform changes that would take effect from this September.
The new changes meant that the two skirts I’d bought from Marks and Spencers for Miss Frugal in May were now going to be classed as too short under the new skirt rules as they say that skirts have to be black, pleated and over the knee length.
This annoyed me massively at the time because I have two perfectly good skirts that would have lasted for most, if not all of this school year that the school were happy with last school term but have now deemed to be too short.
Funnily enough, the only place to buy these new regulation extra long skirts was the school and from what I’ve heard, they’re quite poorly fitted with no way to adjust the waist as you can with the skirts I buy from M&S – something which is really essential for Miss Frugal as she’s so slim that she needs a smaller size. So we’d either have to get her an age 12/13 skirt to get a fit around the waist but that would mean a shorter length which would mean it wouldn’t be as long as it needed to be or we’d get her an age 15/16 and it would be the right length if we could get it to stay up.
Who wants all that hassle?
So for the first time in her school life, she decided to wear trousers for school – something she’s never chosen to do before, even in the Winter. The search for a pair of trousers was far from easy though and in one epic shopping trip she tried on more pairs of trousers than you could imagine. The rules say that the trousers have to be plain black and not a skinny fit and again we had the problem that trousers of age 15/16 which would have been the right fit for many were so loose around the waist that they’d need a belt to pull them in and the excess fabric would have been super uncomfortable.
We ended up back in the good old faithful M&S uniform department in a pair of aged 12/13 slim fit trousers. The slim fit style was genuinely the only pair that fit without being baggy around the bottom and loose around the waist and I thought we’d be OK with them as they weren’t the skinny fit style that we knew was now banned.
We bought them and although they didn’t cost a fortune, they weren’t the cheapest pair we’d seen so you can imagine my annoyance when the school rang on the first day of school to say they were a bit too tight and that she needed a new pair.
I tried to explain the problems we’ve had trying to get her a pair of suitable trousers and I definitely expressed my annoyance but ultimately, I was given the week to replace the trousers.
She’s not the only one though.
Many of her school friends are wearing the same trousers that they were allowed to wear last year but suddenly they’re too tight, too short, too long or even too wide!
Does the fit of a child’s trousers affect their learning in any way?
I’m deliberately not sharing a photo of the fit of the trousers in question as I don’t want this to be a debate about that particular pair because it’s a much bigger issue.
So many parents have been forced to buy new uniform when they needn’t have done so – just because the school have decided on tighter guidelines. What do you think?
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