Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I certainly support this Bill, encouraging as it does a reduction in costs—but it would be better to get rid of school uniforms. They are an outmoded idea and, ultimately, a repressive aspect of the education system itself, designed to keep children in line. They are, in effect, part of the wider educational policy working against a child-centred approach to education.

No school has to have a school uniform; nevertheless, the Government do not take a neutral stance on this, strongly recommending that schools have one. Moreover, in its guidance, the department states that the school uniform policy

“flows from the duties placed upon all governing bodies by statute to ensure that school policies promote good behaviour and discipline amongst the pupil body.”

I am fortunate in being able to send my daughter, who is now 16, to a school without a uniform. This is fortunate in the UK because it is the norm in all countries in Europe, barring ourselves, Ireland and Malta. My daughter has given me a quotation for this debate: “Thank God I don’t have to wear a school uniform; I wouldn’t be able to express myself every day.” Her words have a particular resonance at the moment, when school is the only time that children are seeing each other in person.

School is where you spend most of your time as a young person, with your friends and peers. It is the right place for teenagers in particular to test out what to wear and find their own style—that is, in itself, an important part of education. Parents will in any case have to buy the clothes that their children wear outside school; we do not live in the 1950s anymore. Children cannot wait to be out and about post-Covid, including going to parties. Young people wishing to wear the latest designer clothes is something that, to an extent, happens anyway, so why try to sweep that under the carpet and pretend it does not exist for most of the time children spend in school?

Perhaps, with the increased competition between schools encouraged by government, it is school uniforms that have increasingly become the luxury designer clothing item: the additional, in my view unnecessary, cost, which has little to do with education but everything to do with status. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, last year’s survey by the Children’s Society points out that

“nearly a quarter ... of parents said that the cost of school uniform had meant their child had worn ill-fitting, unclean or incorrect uniform.”

It has always been the case that you can tell who the poorest children are, and it is particularly easy to do so with school uniforms. They are not a means of levelling up—otherwise, we would not have this Bill.

Whereas over 90% of schools in England insist on school uniforms, a much lower percentage of parents—around 67%—are in favour of them. There is increasing school uniform scepticism, and the Government and schools should listen to those voices.