11 Plus Exams Forum

Ok I need to vent a bit about uniforms.

Today I was charged £268 for 1 blazer, 1 skirt, 2 shirts, 1 jumper,1 overall, 2 polo shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 skort and 1 tracksuit. This was supposedly after a 10% discount and I still have to buy other things.

This is an outrageous price which I could well do without as I have just lost my job. What if I were on benefits? I thought the days when grammar school places were out of reach because of the cost of uniform were the stuff of history, but now I'm not so sure.

And a lot of the expense comes because simple items with no school badge, such as the shorts and skort (why, incidentally, do they need both?) have to be embroidered, which the uniform suppliers do (at a price). So all my plans to buy those items more cheaply elsewhere were sabotaged, as I have no doubt that hand-embroidered initials would mark my DD out for nasty comments.

And on the subject of uniforms, I find it amazing that my DD is going to go though her entire school career with no option to wear trousers. In this day and age women wear trousers in the City, at court and in the armed forces. Yet at many schools, state and independent, they dress as if it were 1953! What a strange message to send girls. At my secondary school in the late 70s/early 80s, which was in other ways very traditional, we were allowed trousers or skirts. And incidentally, the only uniform items were blouses and skirts, a blazer and games skirt, top and sweatshirt. Anything else such as jumpers and trousers just had to be within the guidelines.

Ok, feeling slightly better after getting that off my chest (but still a lot poorer)

Which school is this? Name and shame it!

There is absolutely no need for GS uniform to be this expensive and my DC's certainly wasn't.

Samlet, I feel for you.

A friend of my daughter's claimed she spent £500 on uniform; mine cost £170 excluding PE trousers and shoes, football boots.

£100 cheaper than yours, although pretty much the same clothes. And also after 10% off.

To add insult to injury, my older dd has grown and also needed a complete set. Expensive day.

You could write to the school governors I suppose?

I am very tempted to name and shame.

It is interesting because we are in one of the most deprived areas of the South East, yet the school seems to me to be arranging the uniform list to ensure that we have to buy everything from the suppliers, not the High Street (an example - blue blouses at £18 for two because they have the school's initials embroidered on the collar, whereas John Lewis do them unembroidered for £12 for two - why do they need the initials - they all know what school they go to ).

I thought there were supposed to be measures in place to keep state school uniforms at a reasonable price.

In sunny North Yorks, the uniform shop makes it quite clear that you do not have to have the logo'd embroidered version of things - just the basic design / colour. The Girls GS has a ludicrously huge tracksuit with badges / logo on it but it is far too big for several year 7s (and even some year 8s and 9s). the suppliers just found a plain navy tracksuit (at a fraction of the cost) and the school had no problem with this. The Boys school have fancy blazer but they will also sell you a cheap one and a badge to sew on....

DS's grammar has a very expensive blazer, (trousers and shirts can come from anywhere) but the pta has a brilliant second hand uniform shop from which all the uniform and a good range of sports kit can be purchased. We are able to sell old uniform through them too.

With regards to PE kits, the list provided by the school is vast with many marked as required. But is everything necessary? Could I get away with buying the basics and then add whatever else is necessary?

Samlet wrote:
And on the subject of uniforms, I find it amazing that my DD is going to go though her entire school career with no option to wear trousers. In this day and age women wear trousers in the City, at court and in the armed forces. Yet at many schools, state and independent, they dress as if it were 1953! What a strange message to send girls. At my secondary school in the late 70s/early 80s, which was in other ways very traditional, we were allowed trousers or skirts.

This is outrageous! I'd write to the school threatening legal action. See what the response would be to that!

Recent news had a story about a middle school banning skirts and girls had to wear trousers.

My DD will be going to a GS in Sept. we have to get the school jumper from school, the PE shirt and skort (with school logo on) from their supplier, but everything else can be got anywhere. She has the choice of trousers or skirt.

And no blazer, expensive or otherwise.

Samlet, I would consider writing to the governors too. That's expensive and judging by the crammed lost property cupboard (which I have visited often) at my son's school possibly wasteful.

We had an unusual colour blazer but the school have an excellent secondhand shop, you might want to suggest this to the school?

Label and contact the school when things go missing. Or maybe it's just us...