Jayne Dowle: Do parents and pupils deserve a dressing down over school uniforms?

At primary school in the 1970s, we wore what we liked. And if that turned out to be purple shorts and a brown poncho, that was the way it was.

At secondary school, we started off in regulation navy blue skirt and pale blue blouse. You might as well have had a sign –“bully me” – on your head to go with it.

By the beginning of the second year, most of us had eschewed navy blue skirts for black trousers, and swapped the blouses for baggy jumpers; the teachers, in general, were too interested in smoking in the staff room and reading copies of the Socialist Worker to care.

Perhaps it was better that way.

It was one less thing for parents to worry about for a start. These days, we’re prevailed upon to purchase the polo shirts and monogrammed jumpers as soon as our offspring are out of nappies.

As the mother of a teenager and a 10-year-old, I’m a veteran of the modern school uniform wars. I’ve stood there ranting at the school gate debates and raised my eyebrows at the letters home.

Jack is at an academy where the rules are so strict the girls have to wear baggy trousers in case the boys are “distracted” from their studies. The boys, meanwhile, seem to get away with trendy label hoodies under their blazers, on the way to school at least.

Knowing some of those boys, girls in tight leggings will be nowhere near the top of the distraction table. Their eyes will be so glued to their phones that
they probably wouldn’t notice if
Mila Kunis streaked across the playing field.

Lizzie’s primary has a pretty laissez-faire attitude to be honest, but there was a massive hoo-ha a few years ago when the new headteacher changed the logo on the cardigans from a book to an owl. The children whose parents could afford to go out and replenish a week’s worth of cardies stood on one side of the divide; those whose parents couldn’t tried to pretend it was okay, but the sad looks on their little faces said it all.

That caused enough fuss. What if we’d been instructed to stop sending our children to school looking scruffy? That’s what parents at St Michael’s Academy in Yeovil have been told by the head, Judith Barrett.

In a hair-raising telling-off which covers everything from the importance of black school shoes to taking regular showers, she accuses parents of allowing their children to start the school day “dirty, unkempt and not in appropriate school uniform”.

It was less a letter home, more a cry for help. She has definitely got a point, if some of the things I witness at my daughter’s school are anything to go by. If children don’t turn up fully awake, washed and ready to learn, what hope have the classroom teachers?

However, this brings out the schizophrenic mother/rebel in me. I wouldn’t want any teacher telling me when and when not my children should have showers. I also feel my heckles rising at Ms Barrett’s insistence on “black school shoes”, having spent many an hour arguing with my mother in shoe shops.

I tend to feel that shoes, like hair, should be an expression of personal taste, rebellion even. I don’t see what difference sneakers or a blue streak make to learning, and I never will. It’s the conformity thing that some teachers seem to have honed to a tortuous point; the memory of being dragged into the toilets at my comprehensive to have blue eyeliner scrubbed off with soap still hurts.

Yet, I can totally see how attention to uniform can improve the self-image and confidence of a school. However challenged it might be, there is something very proud about a school which adheres to a smart uniform policy.

It makes children feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. It does, I think, raise aspirations. A uniform is paradoxical, really; it marks out a particular school and holds it up to scrutiny, but in doing so it creates a collective identity. A sensible parent – even though they might rail at some of the demands – recognises this and keeps their own feelings on the matter in the cupboard where they keep their memories of blue eyeliner.

Parents should accept that a £10 school uniform is a practical and non-confrontational alternative to purple shorts and a brown poncho.

What should give us all much more cause for concern is the point Ms Barrett raises about parents not getting out of bed to make sure their children get up and off to school safely.

What are these parents doing? Unless they’re on the night shift, it certainly isn’t work or anything which is giving structure and order to their families. Let those who wish to improve the life chances of young people focus on tackling such major issues, and leave arguments over school shoes and brushed hair out of it.