You can’t ‘skort’ around it, school uniform is too expensive

Schools should focus on providing a first rate education, rather than leveraging the brand to maximum profits from skorts, writes Justin Thomas

School uniforms have become too expensive and don't serve their real propose anymore. (Delores Johnson/The National)

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The new school year is a time fraught with anxiety. Tiny children are faced with the stress of starting “big school”. Others have to grapple with the daunting prospect of moving up a year. All that getting to know new teachers, classmates and routines can be pretty trying for some youngsters. Undoubtedly, school is a complex social world that needs to be successfully navigated. The classroom and the playground both have a profound role in shaping who our children ultimately become.

This socialisation process begins even before our children make it into the classroom. In the recent back-to-school buildup, I got involved in shopping for school uniforms. This experience made me aware of just how over-commercialised some aspects of our education system have become.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer number of items that were considered part of the uniform. The abbreviated list reads something like: sweater, regular shirt, polo shirt, fleece jacket, Bermuda shorts, PE shorts, swimwear, normal tie, bow tie, blazer, hat, pinafore, and the list goes on. I even encountered an item of clothing I didn’t know existed – the skort. This is a hybrid item of apparel that blends a skirt with shorts, the sartorial equivalent of the hyper-utilitarian spoon-fork combo known as a spork.

It was not just clothing that some schools were pushing as part of the uniform, some even insisted on standard issue swim bags, duffel bags and book bags too. All of these items were branded with the school logo. From fairly discreet embroidery on shirt pockets, to huge zoomorphic logos emblazoned across hats and bags.

Despite all this, I totally support the idea of the school uniform. To some extent the uniform emphasises a common cause – we are all in this together. To a degree it also minimises social class distinctions, that would become immediately apparent if children were permitted to turn up to school in haute couture outfits fresh from the leading fashion houses of London, Paris, Milan and New York.

However, the current situation where parents are directed to purchase the schools’ own heavily branded uniforms, seems closer to racketeering than healthy social engineering. What happened to the days when the school uniform was only gently prescriptive: white shirt, black or navy trousers and a school tie?

What is the added educational value in having the school logo on your shirt, hat, sweater and shorts? Also ,consider the sticky situation where the branded version of the uniform is optional. Who wants to be the only kid in the class without the “official” logo on his or her chest?

One lesson I suspect children learn from these overly branded school uniforms is to become brand conscious at an early age.

For me, this goes against the essence of a school uniform. The uniform should liberate the child from concerns about logos, freeing the mind to focus on more important things.

I fear that in the not too distant future the most commercialised schools will enter into sponsorship deals with companies and the “official” school shirt will also include the sponsor’s logo, be they purveyor of fast-food or brewer of soft drinks. In fact, some schools already do feature sponsor’s logos on their sports kit.

I also suspect that, if left unchecked, the situation will follow in the footsteps of commercialised sporting teams, and we will see some schools releasing a newly designed official uniform every academic year, thereby rendering the old one obsolete, or at best inferior. Who wants to be the kid in last year’s uniform?

The school uniform is a force for good. It’s a great leveller, and can help young people survive the complex social experience that is school.

However, the overly prescriptive and heavily branded incarnation of the uniform potentially eats away at these benefits. Schools should focus on the business of providing children with a first rate education, rather than leveraging the brand to maximum profits from skorts.

Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well- Being in the Gulf States

On Twitter: @jaytee156