Uniforms more important than school meals?

Posted on 16th June, 2010 by

This morning, I heard an interview with the woman who had stood to be mayor of Newham, the east London borough, in the most recent local elections (the same day as the general election). Her name is Maria Allen, she stood for the Conservative party and won 16.11% of the vote (doubled from last time, but still not that great). The winner was Labour man Robin Wales, who got 68.02%, and promised to continue the council’s policy of providing free school meals to all kids where they’re wanted, and they intend to do this despite the coming enforced budget cuts in which councils will have to reduce their spending by up to a third.

Maria Allen didn’t think much of the Labour council’s idea. She’s interested in eradicating “child poverty”, and thinks that we should help the poor kids who are being bullied in the playground for not having the correct uniform and all that, by giving uniform vouchers to parents who can’t afford it. She wanted the meals means tested, and had nothing much to say when Vanessa Feltz argued that school meals for everyone took the stigma out of being poor or that the universality — everyone tucking into the same lunch — was what many people liked about it. Also, she alleged that some parents objected to the spiciness of some of the food (it can’t be curry all week round, surely!) while Feltz claimed that parents had been brought into the schools to sample it and thought it was lovely.

Now, I was at a secondary school many years ago where a lot of kids were on free school meals (not including me), and I can’t remember there being any stigma attached to it whatsoever, and in Newham, a third of children would be entitled to them in the absence of the current scheme. Maybe it’s different for the less well-off kids in more affluent areas. I am, however, puzzled that the first thing she seems to think of when it comes to child poverty is the fact that the children’s parents can’t afford the uniforms, and that the way to deal with that is for the schools (i.e. the taxpayer) to pay the parents to buy the uniform.

Instead of, like, getting rid of the uniform.

I am not saying there shouldn’t be some idea of appropriate dress in a school, but emphasising school uniforms over making sure kids are fed during the school day sounds like a Tory riding an old Tory hobby horse. School uniforms are an old British custom, likely inherited from the old public schools (you don’t get them in most schools in the USA and Canada and much of Europe, and they do perfectly well), and you can even see this in third world countries which used to be British colonies: the schools all have uniforms, kids don’t go to school if their parents can’t afford them (even though there is, theoretically, free education) and this is seen as some great inescapable poverty trap when school uniforms are a foreign import and the solution to the problem is glaringly obvious.

You can see why the Tories didn’t make much of a mark in Newham. (Interview here, an hour in, after the news; UK only, until next Monday.)

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  • http://www.bayyinat.org.uk/terror.htm Yakoub
    a lot of kids were on free school meals … and I can’t remember there being any stigma attached to it whatsoever

    I was on them, and acutely aware of the media coverage surrounding them at the time (late 1970s). There were complaints of schools having seperate tables for free school mealers, or different kinds of “dinner ticket” - in other words, some schools actively stigmatized children.

    My school had us go quietly to the Head’s secretary, and be issued dinner tickets. My old Head Mr Harry might have banned our school from taking the Times School Magazine of the Year Award because it made jokes about teachers being paedos, but he was enlightened in other ways!

  • M Risbrook

    If I were Mayor of Newham I would shut down every single state school in the borough and slash council tax in return. That way nobody would need to get uptight over school uniforms or meals. Some people object to paying council tax for services they neither use nor want.

  • Mitsurugi

    If the issue is about stigma, don’t you think getting rid of school uniforms could possibly be a lot worse than keeping them? Ditching the uniform would mean that kids would have to come in their own clothes, some poor kids only have maybe a couple of pairs of trousers, and a few shirts. They would be mercilessly teased. Also, there would be added pressure to wear designer labels and the like. I remember kids who came to school in uniform on mufti day, simply because they didn’t have enough money or didn’t want to come wearing their own clothes. I remember a lot of kids would wear the same uniforms year after year even though they had outgrown them.

  • M Risbrook

    I was very unimpressed with the meals at my primary school. Few of them were particularly appetising and most were probably nutritionally depleted. If you were on free meals and wanted halal or vegetarian food then forget it. As a result of this I have always been dubious at initiatives to provide food in schools. My primary school had no uniform but there was one at my secondary school.

  • H

    @Mitsurugi

    Surely this happens anyway, even though school uniforms exist. Outside of school, kids are wearing normal clothes. Do they get mercilessly teased outside of school? If so or not so, it won’t make any difference if they go to school wearing poor looking clothes. I have always found school uniforms to be unneccesary. We were always being told that we represented our school, outside of school, by wearing it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really didn’t care about representing my school. But to put looks before nutrition is ridiculous. And yes, there was no stigma with free school meals at my school, nor with wearing a poor looking uniform. Most kids would envy someone with free meals, to the point that some of my friends would print their own dinner tickets to get free meals from negligent dinner staff.

  • Greengrass3

    Salaam Matthew/Yusuf

    For GCSE Speaking and Listening coursework, many English teachers would trot out the perennial assignment, ‘School uniform, arguments for and against.’

    I loved observing how impassioned the children got with this topic and no matter how many times I taught it, the exprience for students being asked to express their views on the subject for the first time was always quite emotive, even for the more shy child.

    It could also bring out a more eloquent contribution from the more lively, dynamic personality of some students and just make you wonder what they might be in the future, when they realise their potential as grown ups. This was often where my thoughts would wander with students who were not very academic so struggled with our exam system but had thinking minds and were strong with speaking and listening, a pattern normally more true of boys than girls.

    Non uniform days often saw a dip in attendance figures for children who didn’t have the right designer labels to come to school in, so chose not to attend. Not wearing the’right’ trainers on this day looked a grim experience to behold.

    I always liked seeing the children in uniform and felt it was part of the pride in being part of the school family ethos that appealed to me. That we cared about them and that included wanting them to take pride in their appearance. Ofcourse not everyone felt that way…

    Infact more than once it occurred to me that staff wearing uniform would certainly cut out the faff of working out what to wear to work the next day.Not that I imagine most staff would share this view.

    Jzk

  • M Risbrook

    Some primary schools have had no uniform but forced children to wear short trousers all year round well into the 80s. It all stemmed from WWII when allowing children to wear long trousers would be unfair on those who couldn’t afford them.

  • Flora Poste

    School uniforms could make life easier and cheaper for parents and students by being simple and practical — warm jumpers and creaseproof trousers, for example — but their design often seems to be influenced by snobbery and ignorance. Ours were expensive (blazers, wool skirts) and the summer dresses were designed by someone who failed to understand that teenage girls can look a bit odd in dresses cut for younger children. My mother had to wear a tunic for her school uniform, and says it was even worse: “…made you look enormous if you had a bit of a bust”. At my high school one of the influential teachers thought trousers were “unladylike”, so it was skirts all winter long.

  • http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/ Indigo Jo

    M Risbrook:

    Well, shorts used to symbolise boyhood until quite recently; long trousers were for men. I remember reading on an evangelical Christian website someone saying that, when he was a boy, he had asked his dad for proper trousers but the father refused until his 13th birthday on those grounds. Also, in South Africa under Apartheid, the black prisoners had to wear shorts, because part of the ideology of Apartheid was that blacks were to be treated as children.

  • M Risbrook

    until quite recently

    How recently? I used to wear long trousers well before the age of 10 and knew other kids who did.

    I also want to know what the Islamic view of school uniform is.

  • africana

    @flora poste, shalwar kameez used to be considerd scandalous when it was first worn by early feminist women in the uk as an alternative to the restrictive fashions of the day. now, that very same clothing (the shalwar kameez) is seen as a very modest style of dress.

    .