ebikeerwidnes
Guru
- Location
- Z’ha’dum
It’s anecdotal and inconclusive, our own experience is that both our kids went to a local comprehensive which had a pretty liberal uniform policy but a very strong and capable head, both achieved very good GCSE and A level results (9’s at GCSE’s and plenty of A*’s at A level) wearing polo shirts, sweatshirts and trainers!, School uniform seems to be a very British phenomenon in Western Europe, most other countries seem to manage without it. I’m not convinced, it’s expensive and poorer families struggle to afford it, especially when there is a very closely controlled cartel of suppliers.
I taught at 2 secondary school
First one was in Denbigh and the only shop that sold teh school uniform was in Manchester
and it cost a fortune
and was rubbish quality
for example the summer dress was so thin you could see what the girl was wearing underneath so they all felt they had to weart-shirt and short under it
and the seams kept coming loose so the textile teacher was often busy at lunchtimes sewing up dresses for kids
and this was a girl's school with an even higher percentage of female staff than even normals schools!!!
second school was in a "less well off" area
school put a lot of effort into making sure the uniform was as cheap as possible, as functional as possible and was good enough quality to last
they even had a shop where you could buy used uniform and families that were know to have serious financial problems that were not their fault often ended up accidentally not being charged for stuff from it
Massive difference in the 2 schools
in the first one the cost of the uniform was effectively used - in my opinion - as an unofficial way of discouraging poorer familes from sending their children there