Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the statutory guidance entitled Cost of school uniforms, published on 19 November 2021, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending that guidance to reduce the number of branded items required.

The government has committed to legislate through the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to limit the number of items of branded uniform and PE kit that schools can require. This proposed legislation will go further than the current statutory guidance, which only requires schools to keep branded uniform items to a minimum.

The existing statutory guidance will be updated once the new legislation has received Royal Assent. This will ensure that both work together to ensure that schools will need to justify every piece of branded uniform they include in their uniform policy. This will put an end to schools still requiring large numbers of branded items.