Regarding your report (Police called after school turns away pupils for wrong uniform, 7 September), I recently volunteered to equip my 11-year-old grandson for his first term at his local secondary school. We set off to his local shops armed with the list from the school of all that was required. It was a very reasonable list and we spent a happy couple of days gathering the stuff together. However, it cost me over £300 –, which is a lot of money for a family to find. There may be cheaper shops than the ones we went to but better-quality clothes last longer and can be handed down so are almost always better value. I am sure there are grants and schools often run secondhand shops. Nevertheless, ever since our shopping trip I have wondered just how families manage to meet school requirements. Doing well in education should not depend on the financial status of the child’s family.
Jill Greer
Chadlington, Oxfordshire
• There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about any style or colour of clothing. To allow the enforcement of one person’s clothing choice on others to be equated with “raising standards” seems bizarre. Uniforms can be practical – they allow people in specialist roles, for instance police, nurses and soldiers, to be easily identified by the public. In other circumstances they tend to be a marker of repression or forced conformity, for instance in gangs or repressive regimes. For this reason they should have no place in schools, and indeed don’t in almost all of the rest of Europe.
Sue McGorrigan
Leeds
• Plus ça change in the eternal battle between authoritarian school dress regulations and student preferences. Long ago I turned up wearing gold chains on my otherwise impeccably uniform black shoes, only to be told by the head that they didn’t conform with uniform policy. My argument that there was nothing in the rules that said I couldn’t wear such shoes was met with a flat statement that there was nothing which said I could! Hence my first encounter with the difference between permissive and restrictive law and the realities of power. The chains came off the next day.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield
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