London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 07, 2025

Britain's obsession with school uniform reinforces social divisions

Britain's obsession with school uniform reinforces social divisions

Other countries don’t feel the need to strip children of their individuality
It’s September, and with it comes that back-to-school feeling that even as an adult you can never quite shake. I associate it with the delicious plasticky smell that emanates from the insides of pencil cases; cool, crisper mornings that hit you as you rush from the house trailing toast crumbs, and of course, new uniform – if your parents can afford it.

In the midst of a pandemic that has gutted the economy, this year parents are finding it all the more challenging to pay for their children’s school uniforms, the Children’s Society is warning. In March of this year, it found that the average cost of buying uniform for a child over the course of a year is now £340.

No wonder some parents take out loans, getting into debt so that their child can conform to the school’s wishes, which often include having a sole supplier agreement with a costly uniform company, leaving them with no other option.

I have always found the justification that uniforms demolish class distinctions between pupils to be disingenuous. More than 70 years ago, my grandmother got into grammar school but didn’t go because her foster “family” (I use inverted commas because their interpretation of that role was far from familial) wouldn’t pay for the uniform.

When I’ve written about poverty and education, I have received many letters from older readers who cite costly uniform as one of the educational barriers they faced.

Even now, the prohibitive cost of uniforms at certain schools has forced parents to consider other options for their children. But uniforms prevent bullying, we are told – though for every study claiming this, there is another that concludes that school uniforms have no direct negative effect on behaviour, and some have argued they can even provoke bullying.

I went to a school that was fanatical about compliance with school uniform rules, to a point that felt almost militaristic (we are talking girls being lined up against the wall and having the height of their heels measured with a ruler).

The poorest children had school sweatshirts that had been washed so many times that they were badly discoloured.

My own cuffs had holes in them; some of the other kids had cuffs that had fallen apart completely. Some parents tried to get away with a polo shirt without an embroidered school logo; they were always slightly the wrong shade.

These children were disciplined. I remember feeling the injustice of this, a child held up in front of other pupils, humiliated for the shabby state of their uniform. As for uniforms somehow being a facilitator of better teaching: so much time was devoted to non-compliance checks that it ate into time that could have been spent learning.

I have disliked uniforms ever since. Other European countries seem to manage perfectly well without them, but in the UK there’s a kneejerk response when you tout their abolition.

Ultimately, uniforms are a form of social control and conformity in an education system that already doesn’t focus enough on the individual. Children should be encouraged to express themselves, and if they are exposed to different ways of dressing from an early age they are less likely to tease other children for not being “fashionable”.

At 14, I started buying Vogue and knocking up copies of the clothes, with help from my mum, on the sewing machine. We had very little cash but I used to love non-uniform days, the way all the cliques and subcultures were suddenly made visible, how the child you always thought of as square stalked the corridor in rainbow-coloured socks; the goths with their hoodies, usually banned, professing loyalty to Satan.

There was a bit of benign teasing, yes – I remember one boy saying my outfit looked as though it came from Oxfam, as a lot of my outfits did – but that happened anyway: your rucksack, your shoes, your hair, or your way of speaking were at risk of being picked out. There was always something, uniform or not.

The friends I have who went to the rare British secondary schools that did not have uniforms say that there was very little clothing-motivated bullying. Teachers have said the same.

One supply teacher told me that one of the worst schools at which she had taught, behaviour-wise, had some of the smartest uniforms; one of the best schools had a child in attendance whose trainers were taped together.

Uniform policies reinforce gender and racial divisions as well as class ones, as racist hairstyle policies, sexist skirt rules, the sexual fetishisation of girls’ uniforms (a third of girls say they have been sexually harassed while wearing their uniforms), and the discrimination faced by trans pupils all illustrate.

The argument that they prepare pupils for the workplace is increasingly redundant. With the decline of workplace dressing having been accelerated by the need to work from home during this pandemic, I have no doubt that a suit will look as outdated in a decade as hats and briefcases do now.

But I have little faith in a proper conversation about uniforms taking place, so staunchly are they defended.

Why is it that, as a nation, we are so faithful to the concept where other countries are not? Why are so few alarmed by the need of educators to strip a child of his or her individuality at so young an age? And why do proponents continue to hide behind the falsehood that they help poorer pupils?

A bill to make guidance on the cost of uniforms is making its way through parliament. In Wales, guidance on cost and a need for gender neutrality has already been issued. Nonetheless, many of the nation’s schools still appear to be living in the past.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×