The case against school uniform

On a normal morning in Winchester, the streets are crowded with sullen teenagers mooching in sleepy phalanxes to school, scruffy in their school uniforms, a hormonal march of the penguins. My three teenagers are usually among them. Today, however, the city was treated to a different spectacle: hoards of adolescents in hoodies.

That’s right, it’s a non-school uniform day, on account of charity. They were supposed to wear bright colours, but – have you noticed? – no teenager dares wear bright colours these days. So uncool. They were supposed to bring 50p for Red Nose Day, but this is 2023 and nobody carries cash. So off they went to join their generation on the move, two in black hoodies, one in grey. 

But they had a spring in their step. For one day only, they had been released from the tyranny of the blazer. I was reminded of my long-held view that school uniforms should be summarily and compulsorily abolished. I hereby begin a campaign.

Let me start with the case against. Policing the untucked shirts, rogue socks and non-standard-issue trousers that defines adolescence sucks up needless hours of teaching time. My son was handed a detention recently for having his shirt untucked outside school, several minutes down the road in fact. Seriously? Teach them, don’t bully them. They may be young but they are people deserving of respect. The reservoir of resentment that uniform enforcement creates is carried into adulthood, I think, tinging British society with a needless authority complex and weird taste in fashion.

I feel much sympathy with the TikTok pupils over the last few weeks, who took direct action against the repressive policies in schools, gathering in mass rallies in the playground and throwing bins. My children now have to endure a humiliating lavatory policy, by which the loos are locked during lessons and have a one-in-one-out principle, overseen by a teacher with a clipboard, during break. I’m not sure if girls on their periods are forced to show teachers a red card to gain extra access – my children mentioned it, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of whether it was true of their school. Either way, the system is draconian. 

Uniform policy has contributed towards this discontent, with girls in particular objecting to having teachers measuring their skirts with rulers. With good reason! How dare they? The entire edifice seems like a way for power-hungry adults to humiliate young people and deprive them of their agency. (On a related note, when it snowed last week, my fiancée was told off by a po-faced teacher for throwing a snowball gently at her daughter outside the school gates. It was ‘dangerous’. I told her she should have thrown snowballs hard at the teacher and triggered a pile-on.) The whole culture drives me crazy. If I was their age, I’d be going full Che Guevara.

It’s deeply ironic how this petty authoritarianism contrasts with the identity politics brainwashing in Britain’s schools. Not a day goes by without a lesson or assembly on the themes of gender fluidity, or structural racism, or body positivity (my kids were recently taught to admire Sam Smith, who had, they were told, ‘achieved his natural body weight’ and was now ‘happy’), or microaggressions against women. Honestly, it’s unbearable. The attitude towards lavatories and uniforms provides repressed staff with an outlet, I suppose, which is fair enough for them. Being a teacher sucks. But don’t take it out on our kids.

(Speaking of which, school strikes. As my daughter put it: ‘I get it you want to be paid more, but why take it out on us?’)

It wouldn’t be so bad if the uniforms were actually of decent quality. But they are always awful: the worst type of polyester blazer that gets so abused that it ends up threadbare, ripped and covered with ink stains (at my kids’ school, the fashion is to tear off the red trim); a ridiculous ‘tie’, often clip-on, bearing an often inane logo, in which no reasonable person would be seen dead; and either half-mast trousers of poor material with rips in the knees or skirts that represent a battleground of teenage sexuality and adult repression. (The kids roll the tops to make them shorter. The teachers ban the practice. Round and round it goes.) The lack of respect children feel for their uniforms are evident in the speed at which damage is done to them the very first day they are worn. The very first day. If you have kids, you know what I’m talking about.

Uniforms are a nightmare for parents. Remember the end of the holidays? Only too well. With the first day of term looming, school uniform shops – why is there only ever one? – are mobbed by the beleaguered middle-aged, as if there had been an announcement of an impromptu, unplugged midday performance by Brian May. Then there are the nametapes (or Sharpies), the regulation socks (hasten to Primark!), the inevitable discovery that last term’s too-small blazer or skirt or trousers make your growing kid look like the hulk, and – at my kids’ school at least – the teeth-gnashing requirement for subtly different ties for different houses. I’ll stop now. My palms are sweating.

Now to the case in favour. The argument you always hear in Britain is that uniforms are a social leveller, preventing the poor children from being embarrassed by their inferior quality clothes. They are also said to foster a sense of discipline and unity. But you never hear these ideas on the Continent or in the States, where almost all children wear their normal clothes to school. Their adults turn out all right, don’t they? Relatively? And don’t tell me that uniforms prevent rebellious dressing. Have you seen the creativity already?

Moreover (as my children are apparently taught to commence every other paragraph in English, which seems more bent on ‘essay-writing by numbers’ than fostering freedom of thought), kids these days all dress the same anyway. For some reason I cannot fathom, when not in school uniform, the inmates of modern Britain’s state system are required by some mysterious social code to wear nothing but sportswear in either black, grey or white, accompanied by a very particular type of trainer. Private school pupils have a slightly wider range, it seems, with costumes that evoke the charity shop but cost the earth. Either way, the variety of fashion I remember from my adolescence – grunge, goth, nerd, whatever – is a thing of the past.

The conclusion is inescapable. At their core, school uniforms are an expression of the very worst of Britain: uptightness, bovine adherence to mindless rules, repression, petty authoritarian bullying, undeserved hierarchy, formality for its own sake. It’s time to burn them. Viva la revolución!