Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill (First sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 16th September 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

Diolch, Ms Nokes. It is an honour to serve under your chairship. It is also an honour to be on this Bill Committee, and I pay tribute to the fantastic work that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale has done on an issue that he has advocated for passionately for a long time.

The cost of school uniforms is a huge issue for many families across the UK, and it is vital that the UK Government are committed to producing statutory guidance for families in England, which will allow them greater choice about where they can buy their children’s uniform.

Members may wonder why I, as a Welsh MP, would want to be involved in a Bill Committee on a topic that is so clearly devolved to our fantastic Welsh Labour Government. As you will know, Ms Nokes, I am nothing if not persistent in my ambition to shamelessly support the work of the Welsh Labour Government at any opportunity. Members may have heard the tried and tested phrase, “Where Wales leads, England follows.” The Welsh Government published statutory guidance to make school uniforms more affordable, accessible and gender-neutral more than a year ago, which is a prime example of that very accurate phrase in action.

Governing bodies of schools in Wales are now expected to consider ways of keeping down the cost of uniforms. The Welsh Government’s pupil deprivation grant, plus additional school uniform guidance, are designed to help reduce the burden on families so that children can focus on fulfilling their potential at school. The guidelines include stipulating the basic items and colours, but not styles, which allows parents to buy items of uniform from more than one outlet. The Department for Education must afford parents in England the same flexibility, and affordability must be a top priority when setting uniform policy.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale on securing the Bill and on his long advocacy on this issue.

The Bill will make affordability the priority consideration in statutory guidance, which will go a long way towards levelling up our treatment of uniforms, which has been slipping in many ways. My eldest child went to school in 2001, a long time ago; my youngest is in school for four more years—four more years of buying uniform. That has been a lot of uniform along the way. In that time, I have seen the creeping number and cost of additional items that need to be bought for uniform, inconsistency between schools and the incremental use of “My uniform costs more than yours” as a proxy for better school standards, in order to attract students to academies.

When my youngest child went into year 7, his uniform bill was an eye-watering £468.50. It could only be bought from one school uniform shop. I had to top it up recently—he has unfortunately grown a lot—and that cost another £200. Those figures are unsustainable for many families. I support school uniform guidance that ensures that there is less branded, expensive uniform, which drives many families into debt; that provides for not so many exclusive suppliers, who do not put affordability at the top of the list; and that ensures that good-quality, own-brand supermarket choices can be made and that clothes swaps are easy.

The Bill is for that mum who, when I was looking round the local comprehensive for my children, sat down in front of me, picked up the uniform bill, looked at her son, shook her head and walked away from the school. He was not able to go to that school because of the cost. There are many families who face those choices.

The Bill is for those families who I took on trips last summer when I was running a youth group. I sat down and talked with the mums. They said that they had not been able to afford any other trips with their children because they were saving the money and that they were eating less during the summer because they knew the uniform bill was coming—that dreaded moment in September was coming, when they would have to go to the uniform shop.

The Bill is for governors and parents. It will put them back in the driving seat, able to challenge the school uniform bill. It is for our comprehensive education system; it will strengthen uniform policy so that all children feel equal—so that there is less difference between children, for which they can be bullied and because of which they often miss school.

I seek assurance from the Minister that he will work with the Children’s Society, which has talked with many parents and strongly represents them, on the guidance. I seek assurances that the guidance will include details on how parents and governors can use it to challenge the system in their school—it must give them that ability—and will clearly state how they can do so. I seek assurance that it will provide more choice for parents, so that they are able to put affordability at the top of the list, and that there will transparency for single-supplier tenders, focused on best value, through either regular reporting to governors or looking at the system overall. One primary school in my constituency insists that uniform can be bought only from a department store in Sloane Square, for example.

Minimising branded items is an absolutely fundamental part of the guidance, as is the need to promote school uniform banks and grants, so that even before a parent comes to a school, they can see in the guidance where help is available if they know that this will be a difficult issue for them. Finally, I hope that the guidance will come out soon, in good time for schools to readjust their policies for the next school year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I agree. To achieve best value the contracts need to be subject to effective competitive and transparent tendering. Indeed, that is why the current non-statutory guidance already recommends that schools avoid exclusive single-supplier contracts unless a regular competitive tendering process is run to secure best value for parents. There is an argument for considering whether more could be done to make it clearer for schools what effective competitive tendering means in practice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North raised the issue of enforcement, and I want to address that. Where parents have concerns about a school’s uniform policy they should raise them with the school in the first instance, via its complaints procedures, which must be published on its website. If their concerns have not been addressed effectively through that process the parents can then raise them with the Department. We would seek to take a proportionate approach to any intervention, depending, of course, on the circumstances of the case.

[Fleur Anderson]

Would it be possible for the tendering process to have to be reported to the school governors? Many parents do not feel that they can make an internal complaint, because they feel it would come back on their children for some reason. Would the Minister consider a process enabling the parents to be kept out of it, but where it was necessary to report to the governors? That would enable the governors to look at the tendering process whenever it took place.

[Nick Gibb]

My understanding of schools’ complaints procedures is that they involve the chair of the governing body. I think that is the right approach in addressing cases where any school falls short of proper regard to the guidance.

Many schools offer a second-hand uniform shop to support parents, and a number of commendable local schemes were mentioned on Second Reading. Such schemes are excellent, both for affordability and in reducing clothes waste. I would like every school to find a way to make second-hand uniforms available. Of course, all such arrangements would need to be covid-secure. My parents certainly used a second-hand shop to buy my school rugby shirt, particularly as they knew it was unlikely to get much use.

The hon. Member for Wirral West, who spoke for the Opposition, raised the issue of engagement and consultation on the guidance. I want to make it clear that we will commit to engaging with representatives of schools and with parents and other interested parties when drafting the statutory guidance. That includes the request by the hon. Member for Putney, who raised the question of the Children’s Society. We will of course commit to talk to the Children’s Society.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale called for the guidance to be implemented by September 2021. I can give him the assurance that the intention is to issue it as soon as practically possible after the Bill comes into force, notwithstanding the need to engage with the sector. We all want to see savings for families as soon as possible, but we need to make sure that we implement it in a way that does not have unintended consequences. No one wants hundreds of school uniform policies to change overnight with parents suddenly and unexpectedly required to buy whole new sets of uniform and uniform suppliers struggling to keep up. I do not therefore believe it would be helpful to include a fixed date by which the guidance will come into force, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will seek to consult on the statutory guidance informally with interested parties and publish it as soon as possible.

Uniform makes an important contribution to school life and should continue to do so. Providing schools with a balanced, pragmatic and flexible framework on cost considerations through the statutory guidance is the best way to achieve the changes we all want to see while protecting schools’ local decision-making. I welcome all hon. Members’ views expressed today, and I am confident from our discussions that we have the right foundations on which to progress the Bill. I commend the Bill to the Committee.