Little children were seen on doorsteps around Scotland last week, posing shyly as their parents took pictures of them in their new school uniforms on their first day. The five-year-olds did look cute and smart – on their first morning anyway – but isn’t it time we rang the bell on school uniforms?

The argument for uniforms is that they improve behaviour and academic performance as children focus on their studies not their clothes. Proponents of uniforms also insist they foster school spirit and iron out any social inequalities of some children wearing designer gear. They also argue that wearing a uniform prepares you for dress codes at work. Where? I think they mean if you want to be a lawyer or go into one of the other professions, but a uniform is also required to flip burgers. Perhaps not what they have in mind…

I think school uniforms are unnecessary, ugly, uncomfortable and a waste of time, and here’s why.

There’s no evidence that uniforms improve achievement in schools, particularly in the UK, according to Independent Education Today, who also say that an American study found little evidence that uniforms have lasting impacts on achievements or grade retention.

There are concerns, too, that the school uniform, especially one from a high fee-paying school, can mark children out and make them vulnerable to criminals. The cost, too, can be significant with winter and summer uniforms and sportswear kit also needed. Estimates from The Children’s Society in 2018 put the total cost of uniform at £256 per primary school child and £338 per secondary school pupil – times however many children you have.

There’s no doubt that a school uniform looks smart if strictly enforced, which they generally are in private schools where youngsters look like junior executives about to step into a boardroom meeting. But the chances of your school-age child looking ‘uniform’ in the state sector are slim, particularly at secondary where hard-pressed teachers have enough to do without turning into the fashion police.

School uniform isn’t even that uniform. At my boy’s primary, there was a choice of blazer or sweatshirt, white shirt with tie or polo shirt. I opted for the more comfortable version but when he went to secondary school, I was daft enough to buy him a blazer and shirt. The combo was ditched after two days. Too chilly in winter, too hot in summer and doesn’t keep off the rain in either season – whoever thought blazers were suited to the Scottish weather?

My 15-year-old seems to have abandoned his school tie, which kept falling apart and which he kept losing. Last year I decided there were far more pressing priorities than forcing him to wear grey flannels, tucked-in shirt and a tie, as if he were a 1950s junior clerk. Now, like the rest of his classmates, he trudges off to school, hands in the pocket of his own hoodie, tie-less, and in trainers. The only nod to uniform is a white shirt, worn outside black skinny jeans.

Rather than this half-hearted, scruffy version of a uniform, he would prefer to wear his own clothes, particularly at the age when youngsters are figuring out their identity, which includes their fashion sense as much as their taste in music. At the weekend, dressed as he pleases, he looks stylish and confident. Clothes are important to teens as much as an expression of identity as camouflage as they negotiate the tricky business of fitting in or standing out from the crowd.

I don’t see the point of forcing children to wear a uniform and they don’t in Holland and Scandinavia, while only 10 per cent of American high schools insist on them, although there’s an increasing trend in the US for public school pupils to wear uniforms.

Would the sky fall in, and our children riot if they didn’t have to wear school uniforms? I don’t think so. I went to eight schools, some of them abroad, and had the dubious pleasure of sampling different uniform restrictions. The only one we all loved was at a private school in Madrid. There was a well-cut woollen – not polyester – blazer, a polo shirt that had to be Lacoste or Fred Perry, woollen navy-blue V-neck sweater, and grey kilt or well-tailored trousers, which girls could wear too. It was comfortable and stylish, but my mum complained about the eye-watering expense.

At my English comp, the pupils wore our ties variously around our heads (the daft boys) or in an exaggerated knot with a short tail, like something out of Gregory’s Girl. The uniform I hated most was at an all-girls Scottish private school where our shapeless cardigans and baggy tweed skirts made us look like our frumpy teachers. It was perhaps cleverly designed to put off any passing weirdo with an interest in girls in school uniform.

There was no dress code at an American international school in South America I attended, where some of the teachers were still dreaming about the Summer of Love. Teenagers fell into those social tribes you see in many a high school TV drama and dressed accordingly. It didn’t do us any harm, there wasn’t any competition about who wore the most expensive threads, and it was easier to spot and avoid the potheads, jocks and cheerleaders. Most of the rest of us dressed alike in T-shirt and jeans, devising a uniform that most teenagers adopt of their own free will.

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