Families are paying a high price for school uniforms | Letters

Letters: Readers on the often unmanageable cost of kitting out students for school

Your report on parents skipping meals to cover uniform costs struck a familiar chord (Parents in England skipping meals to afford school uniforms, survey finds, 19 August). In my 20 years of working in the third sector, I helped run school uniform reuse schemes that made a real difference to struggling families.

But too often these efforts were undermined by schools themselves. Minor tweaks to logos, ties or blazers – introduced every year or two – meant perfectly good clothing could no longer be reused. It is a practice that benefits suppliers, not children, and it leaves parents paying the price.

If uniforms are meant to level the playing field, schools must stop treating them as branding exercises. Consistency, not constant change, is what families need.
Antony David Davies
Shrewsbury, Shropshire

• The sentiment expressed by Lucy Pasha-Robinson is one that is rarely heard in these conformist days, but one I agree with (School uniforms were meant to be the great leveller – how does a £400 bill do that?, 21 August). School uniform was not universal when I was a child nor when my children went to school. As a new teacher in Sheffield in the early 1980s, the children did not wear uniforms. Now that it is so expensive it seems very unfair.

Another problem with uniforms is difficulty identifying the owners. There was always confusion over which piece of uniform belonged to which child – names sometimes never having been put on or being washed out. Imagine having to find the right piece of uniform for the right child after a PE lesson with three- and four-year-olds.

I am pleased to hear that my granddaughter is to start at a school with no uniform.
Cath Whittingham
Brigg, Lincolnshire

• Perhaps the answer to spiralling uniform costs, until such time that it is regulated, is for parents to protest by buying an alternative uniform for their children – much like the “dresses for boys” protests that pop up perennially in hot weather.

If every parent were to participate in this, the school could hardly exclude all the children! Plus it would teach children a valuable lesson in the power of collective, peaceful protest.
William Bartram
Hampton, London

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.