In Zoe Wood’s article (Back to school: do uniforms really need to cost a fortune?, 19 August), Matthew Easter, chair of the Schoolwear Association, vastly underestimates the impact of requiring multiple school-branded uniform items on family budgets.
Most secondary school students spend a maximum of two hours a week doing PE. That’s 78 hours a year. On this basis, it’s hard to justify the school-branded PE shorts, T-shirts, tracksuit bottoms, hoodies and socks still required by many secondary schools. Given that children are unlikely to wear school-branded items outside school, this is not only a huge waste of money, it’s also bad for the environment.
Requiring school-branded items of clothing removes families’ ability to set a budget that matches their means. Most parents I’ve spoken to begrudge paying up to £18 for a jumper that will be half hidden by a blazer and only worn for school on the coldest days of the year. In relation to Easter’s concern that allowing parents to buy generic school jumpers would result in some students wearing Ralph Lauren jumpers, uniform policies that specify plain jumpers could avoid this problem.
We need to keep school uniform costs to a minimum, allowing people to control the cost of what they buy, particularly in the current cost of living crisis when some families are struggling to pay for basic necessities such as food.
Gill Long
Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire
• My 14-year-old son’s state comprehensive secondary school has a PE kit that requires shorts and socks in school colours, plus a polo shirt and rugby shirt with the school logo – all at roughly three times what plain socks, shorts and a T-shirt would cost. I also have to buy him football boots. My son hates football. There are plenty of physical activities they could do that don’t require extra kit that will get no other use. Why am I forced to spend money I don’t have on kit for an activity that my son doesn’t want to do?
Daniel Owen
Torrington, Devon
• What happened to sew-on school badges or logos? Why can’t schools make this option available?
Gill Comley
Thame, Oxfordshire
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