School Uniforms - Yay or Nay?

Parent Cafe
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Thought this topic maybe deserved it’s own thread (from The Grandparents Thread)

Thoughts on that thread:

  • they are terribly expensive! Especially when they are required from a certain vendor and especially things like skirts, jumpers, pants.
  • some pieces, made like steel? Those skirts/jumpers NEVER wore out.
  • Used uniform sales saved a lot of people’s budgets.
  • some like having to get all uniform items at one particular school selected store, some hated that.
  • whoever decided that a white polo would be the color of choice for a school wasn’t in charge of the laundry at their home!

Any good uniform stories to share? Likes or dislikes? Could you take a lengthy trip around the world in the $$ you spent on uniforms?

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My 3 went to Catholic private school Pre-K - 8th grade. One went on to Catholic private high school. 18 years of uniforms! Enough polos for a LIFETIME, lol!

My 2 that went to public high school - for a few years the public schools tried to adopt uniforms. A little more relaxed but basically had to be solid dark pant/skirt, solid polos. My kids HATED polos. A teen age girl wearing polos? Shoot her now. :stuck_out_tongue:.

I don’t think you could pay any of my kids to wear a polo now.

I tried to get away with 2 jumpers or skirts for the girls and a few tops. Same for my son - 2 or 3 pairs of pants and those darn white polos. Schools must have got a cut from Spray and Wash I tell ya. Didn’t want to buy too much stuff because they would often outgrow things. Except I feel like we made those jumpers last for years….start off wearing them 3 inches below your knees, end up with them 3 inches above your knees!

What really made me mad tho was when they started to allow them to wear athletic shoes but they had to be SOLID black or SOLID white. Not a speck of color on them. It became a ridiculous feat each year to find those shoes.

Pros and cons for sure.

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I have no issue with school uniforms in general, however:

The uniforms should be easily purchased from stores like Kohls, JC Penney, etc and now from a certain vendor.

I really have an issue where the dress codes do not allow for the girls to wear clothes other than jumpers/skirts. I live a few blocks from a school like that and this is in a city known for bitterly cold winters!

Parents should have some input. Some of the choices are difficult to find (as per @abasket 's post above) or very impractical - wool, dry clean only blazers for elementary school students.

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My D wore a very basic “uniform” for her first year of school before we moved back to the States. It was either a T-shirt for warmer weather or a sweatshirt for cooler weather. Personally, I liked it, as it made weekdays so much easier. She didn’t need that much clothing. It definitely lent a more egalitarian air to the whole school. But where we lived then, school uniforms were the rule in general. I’m sure older students didn’t love school uniforms.

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My kids went to a public elementary school that had uniforms. I thought it was great. Navy or khaki bottoms (pants, shorts, skirts, or jumpers) and a solid color polo shirt.

I really liked it, but the kids got tired of it by 5th grade. The school moved away from uniforms when my youngest was in 2nd grade. I was disappointed.

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Seems like a school uniform policy would get fewer complaints if:

  • The uniforms were not expensive.
  • The uniforms were not difficult or expensive to clean, and did not wear out quickly.
  • The uniforms allowed variants to cover the expected range of weather and activity.
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I would have hated wearing the school
Uniforms my kids had to wear. Clothes made of steel are not comfortable, polo shirt collars would have made me (I’m clothing sensory challenged) uncomfortable.

The trip each summer to the “regulation” uniform store was one of the most depressing shopping trips of the year for all of us !

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To me the advantage of uniforms is egalitarianism, which helps remove a distraction from learning.

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When the kids were small they attended school where the uniform was a logo’ed polo and khakis. They many years later volunteered at a homeless shelter and some of the kids were wearing the (Jewish day school) donated logo’ed shirts!

When they were older they attended a school with more challenging uniforms (included v neck sweaters, ties, slacks with belts, coats, gym shorts and shirts, etc.) First we’d shop in the campus consignment store (where we also placed outgrown things) before going to the uniform store elsewhere in town. The guys would often forget something when they went to school (usually a belt or tie). They’d “shop” for the day in the lost and found and return the item at the end of the day!

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They were fantastic. Got them from the Lands End shop, they lasted forever and families passed them down to others as they graduated. It eliminated so much drama and competition, and was much cheaper than the fancy name brand clothing kids in our public schools wore.

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I hear this and understand the point but doesn’t that come out in one way or another outside of the clothes? The car you are dropped off in, the house you live in, your parents job (or not), your brand of shoes….and on and on??

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I wrote most of mine on the other thread. My kids went to a catholic private for K-8/K-7. White polo shirts/black shorts/pants. The sweatshirts did have to be bought from the school, but they weren’t terribly expensive. Maybe $10 each? But mine just lived with stains. I didn’t worry about it. Any time I ate lunch with them, one poor kid always had a big fresh ketchup stain on his. and then it was out to recess where they rolled around in the dirt.

Shoes: our handbook had the same - only white/black/navy with a simple logo. No gray? It was a challenge at first, but then I noticed it didn’t seem to be enforced, so I stopped worrying about it.

Younger S went to the public school for 8th. They had recently instituted a simple dress code to help keep kids in their proper areas. Each grade had a different color, so if someone was where they weren’t suppose to be, it was obvious. So S’ code was just to wear a non-athletic fabric solid blue shirt. Any shade of blue. Any style. No logo bigger than a quarter. Can’t remember what the pants were. Nothing major.

But in general I liked the dress code. Super simple to get ready in the morning.

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My D wore a “uniform” in HS - khakis with no rivets (easily found at Old Navy or Penny’s), a school polo or school sweatshirt depending on weather, and any flat shoe without laces.

The school branded polos could be bought second hand at the school “store”, but even new they were $15. If it was a game day, D could wear her school volleyball swag which was all free and typically a couple of times/month they had free days where they could wear sweatpants and jeans. It was really loose.

D liked having a uniform and not having to make any decisions about what to wear in the morning. I think we actually saved money on clothing.

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There’s recently been a big national debate in France about them.

Originally, it happened because the president or the Prime Minister announced there’d be a big experiment with 100 public schools implementing a uniform. These quickly became 87 because some government-supporting mayors had forgotten to check with school boards.

There’s never been a public school uniform in France. Originally, girls wore pinafores or a blue smock or a black smock sometimes with a white collar and a belt. Boys had a black smock. The intent was to protect clothes, which were expensive and often got splattered from ink pots. However there’s nostalgia for school 100 years ago when all children were obedient (etc) and a fascination for British-style uniforms.

The intent was to please older voters (Emmanuel Macron’s base) and get more conservative voters onboard, especially because it means Muslim students won’t be allowed to wear anything reminding others that they’re Muslim. (The same principle applied Fall 2024 to abayas and qamis - I’m not saying the policy is wrong in the cultural context but that’s the subtext.)

Little ick factor, the media kept promoting the measure with pictures of 14 year old girls in plaid miniskirts, to the point official communication only showed pants for girls. (Immediate questions about whether girls would be allowed to choose skirts or whether boys&girls would have the same pants.)

In order to decrease opposition, it was announced the cost would be born half by the town half by the government, so zero cost for parents.

Then parents and school boards had to vote and almost all voted against the measure. Turns out most 65+ were all in favor but not 30-40 year olds.

Reasons given:

  • uniforms don’t erase social differences - shoes, backpacks, phones, parkas all clearly indicate who’s got a brand name item and who doesn’t.
    (Anyone who’s lived in GB will tell you that’s painfully true - the £8.99 regulation shoes look nothing like the £89 regulation shoes.)
  • the money the town will use for clothes would be better used providing books&supplies, paying for after school activities, or re-hiring the PE and art instructors laid off.
  • only 2 pairs of wool pants, 1 sweater, and a couple polos were provided free of charge. No provision for kids who rip their pants at the knees or who grow during the year. Parents who wanted to mix-n-match with clothes they own or hand me downs were, err, told they didn’t get it.
  • ideological opposition to uniformity in childhood (and especially among 7th-9th graders) with a lot of questions from both parents and kids along the lines of “What happens if we don’t wear it” (which showed the policy was unenforceable unless people were hired to enforce it)
  • questions about non average sizes (this had not been thought of ahead of time - ie., short, tall, chunky, and skinny kids would all have uniforms that don’t fit)
  • at the middle and high school levels students had to be allowed to vote and they did, overwhelmingly voting against the measure.
  • in one town, the measure would only have applied to “priority” schools (Title I) and it turns out parents may have liked free clothes, they liked their kids not to be publicly shamed for being poor even more.

In the end, the policy was prominently applied in 2 towns.
In one, where parents are really poor and all primary schools got uniforms; the uniforms didn’t quite fit but most parents were happy (others -mostly thr PTA- wanted the PE and Art teachers+free books/school supplies instead).
In another town, the parents had voted in favor provided the clothes were ethically made in Europe and… they turned out to have been made in a South-east Asia country that uses child labor. (The town pleaded for a mistake and promised to do better).
Other towns have not officially jumped off the “public school uniform” wagon but are not following through.

(As an aside, it turns out that on top of it all, when you only have ONE company providing uniforms because by and by even private schools don’t have them… it’s really difficult for them to supply many new schools, especially when the uniforms need to be inexpensive. So the company wasn’t even that pleased, whereas child clothing retailers asked whether the government wanted to bankrupt them, which then they muted when the whole thing fell apart.)

So, it turned out that a very popular idea among grandparents became an epic failure when applied to the real world of public schools.

Btw why do you/your kids hate polos? I love them - so much more comfortable than a button down!

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Well, in that country. Seems to work out just fine in Australia or the many other countries with them. While uniforms obviously don’t eliminate all class differences, they at least do not highlight them the way regular clothes do. Our school had occasional non-uniform days, and teachers always complained the kids were less focused on school then.

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Yes, but it shows the British tradition can’t apply everywhere - and even there upper level HS students don’t have a uniform.

The idea uniforms promote equality is entirely wrong though. There’s nothing in the UK (or Australian, Indian, or South African) experience that shows students who pay attention don’t have mechanisms for distinction. In addition, there was a big discussion due to the cost of living crisis last September - not enough 2nd hand/uniform closet uniforms at some schools. The matter isn’t discussed in the UK because it’s been a long tradition.
The attempt at introducing that tradition into a new culture is interesting- especially since it’s both superficially appealing and in practicality difficult.

A lot of the points made apply everywhere - fit, for instance, or number of free replacements per year.

A pro would be that it promotes pride in your school - the issue is that some kids would rather not advertise they attend school X or Y to the rest of the world.

Guessing it was because they were wearing sth out of the ordinary - kinda like costume day or pajama day in US public schools.

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Not really. Not everyone sees your house or car, but they all see what you wear every day. And if you don’t have enough clothes to wear something different or ‘in’ every day, that is a huge stress. Uniforms were so easy!

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Not a fan, but it you are, that’s fine. I didn’t wear them and my kids didn’t. We all wore discount clothes to school and no one seemed to care. My grandkids will also be going to a non-uniform town. Sometimes they have “brand name” clothes because most of their clothes are hand-me-downs. I’m not expecting any issues.

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I didnt know there were US public schools where girls, at least, weren’t clothes competitive starting in elementary school ( they were at mine), but I would be curious where those schools are.

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Very interesting- thanks for sharing.

Re: polos, I mean I don’t own a single one and haven’t for decades. A tshirt is comfortable- polos, no. Also it’s a reminder to them of what they were TOLD to wear.

If you love ‘em that’s fine!

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