At long last, the day has come. After nearly two months of summer holidays, institutions beckon their children back for another school year. The television will resume its status as a post-school treat rather than an indispensable tool to fill the dead hours between events. The kitchen will no longer resemble an all-day canteen, and the house will take on the solemn quiet of the middle of the day. But this kind of peace is only won after a great deal of preparation.
First up, school shoes. Unfortunately, children grow at a disproportionate rate to your bank balance. This means that the start of the new school year heralds the annual cash haemorrhage in Charles Clinkard shoe shop or similar. For those unfamiliar with the annual ritual of waiting over forty minutes to be seen, only to be told that the shoes your child has chosen are not in stock, let me spare you the trouble. Ascertain your child’s size and then buy online, thereby sidestepping the inevitable argument over the style of shoe. Like most institutional accessories, rules are there for a reason – black leather to hide scuffs, Velcro strap for ease, etc. – but most children will try to push the boundaries to the furthest possible limit until you crack.
Why spend £110 on a new school blazer at Stevensons when you could get a perfectly good one second-hand?
Limits – or the lack of them – bring me to the matter of uniform. Children outgrow uniform incredibly quickly (see above), but they also trash it. For this reason, I am a huge believer in the second-hand school uniform shop. Why spend £110 on a new school blazer at Stevensons when you could get a perfectly good one second-hand? Sure, the former occupant’s nametape space might still be in there like a picture taken off a wall, and it may bear marks of ‘heavy’ use, but this is the shabby charm of a country prep education. When I spied my daughter actually rolling around in the mud in her school blazer, I vowed never to buy anything new ever again. Of course, if you do choose to buy new, be aware that these items may be lost, as a vast number of items always are in school cloakrooms. Also, be aware that your child is never to ‘blame’ for any loss.
Modern parents may not gather in school cloakrooms or indeed any indoor part of the school anymore – a blessed side-effect of Covid – but they do gather online. The class WhatsApp group, under new management since the class reps change at the beginning of every academic year, is where parents congregate. After the summer hiatus, this group revs up to full capacity in the days before term starts. Veteran parents (usually mothers) with several children at the same school reply promptly with thumbs-up emojis to rookie requests for information. At the risk of derailing this piece altogether, class WhatsApp groups are also now vehicles for political activism, with parents sharing online petitions to object to the Labour VAT raid on school fees due to come into effect from January. ‘Education not taxation’ is the strapline, and parents once cautious about posting their political stripes now share with confidence, to a resounding wave of thumbs-up or strong-arm emojis.
Emojis aside, strong-arm toughness is what you will need most of all in your preparation arsenal as you ready your child to become re-institutionalised for another academic year. After the long days of summer and only a skeleton routine, children must now pull their socks up, sharpen their pencils, and open a clean page of the workbook. Many and varied will be the objections to this change. After months of walking around barefoot, my daughter has objected to the tightness of her new school shoes that must be worn in before term starts. I respond with a strict injunction to wear the shoes no matter what, and a reminder of their vast expense.
Perhaps the best preparation for a new school year is boredom, or the strength to refuse to ‘over-schedule’ your child during the holidays. The shoes may pinch, but come Wednesday, she’ll be so desperate for something – anything – to happen that she’ll skip off without a backwards glance. Once home from the school run, I shall reply to the cascade of celebratory WhatsApp messages and GIFs with a strong-arm emoji and wonder at the silence of the house.
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