Recently I dropped off my daughter at school. Dressed up in a tie and blazer, she squirmed with discomfort in the late summer heat. After she disappeared through the gate, I headed to my office in the City of London. Walking from the tube station to my building, I was surrounded by bankers wearing open-necked shirts and no blazers. Some wore trainers and jeans. This stark contrast reminded me that uniform policies – and much of the excessive discipline in schools – are moulding our children to fit into a world of work which no longer really exists.
My daughter later told me that she was given special dispensation to take off the blazer – but only during the 30C heat of the first week of term. She was one of the lucky ones. Other schools are far less lenient when it comes to enforcing uniform rules. Children from a school in Cornwall were given detention for taking off their blazers in the sweltering heat. A 12-year-old schoolgirl from Hull was placed into isolation this year for wearing a skirt from Asda. Kids at one school were excluded from class for wearing the wrong kind of sock.
The list of absurd rules around how children should look in British schools is almost endless. The Mumsnet website is full of stories of complicated rules being enforced by schools that seem to be increasingly intent on micromanaging the most minor aspect of children’s appearances. When schools are asked to explain their strict policies, the most widely used justification for uniforms is that they help to prepare children for the “real world” of work.
But while schools have become increasingly strict about what children wear, the world of work has, by contrast, become much less exacting and increasingly informal. Only about 5% of workplaces actually have uniforms, and over half of British workplaces require either business casual or casual dress. Thirty percent of people working from home admit to having worked in their pyjamas.
Sales of formal work attire like suits and ties have declined by 40% in the last five years. A YouGov survey found that 92% of people now say it is acceptable not to wear a tie to work, and 66% think it is OK to wear shorts. Even chief executives are dressing in increasingly informal ways. The work attire of the most well-known business leaders of our time, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, consists of jeans and trainers.
What actually underlies uniform policies is the belief among educators that making children wear uniforms means they will be better behaved and perform better at school. Sadly, this is only partly true. The largest survey of studies on the impact of school uniforms found that they do tend to improve classroom management and make teaching more efficient (because students settle down more quickly). However, there is no consistent evidence that uniforms improve student performance.
The survey also found that uniforms have a negative impact on student health. This was often because they restricted students’ movement, which restricted the physical activity they engaged in during the day – an impact particularly pronounced for girls. In addition, many uniforms are made from uncomfortable material, which some children find irritating and distracting.
Uniforms are supposed to level the playing field for children and make everyone feel included. But it is clear this fixation that our children conform to one style of dress penalises many who do not fit an outdated mould, including girls (who are often forced to wear skirts), non-binary students or those with sensory sensitivities. One survey of British parents by the Department for Education also found that the high upfront cost of school uniforms was a barrier to education for many poorer families.
Perhaps one of the real reasons why we cling to the belief that school uniforms are a good idea is tradition. However, the historian Kate Stephenson found that the practice of wearing school uniforms is not as old as we might think. The first school uniform was introduced by the Christ’s Hospital school in the 16th century. But it was only in the late 19th century that public schools such as Eton adopted uniforms (their first were for sports), and uniforms only spread throughout state schools in the early 20th century.
During the late 20th century, uniform policies were increasingly relaxed. It was only in 1987 that this began to change. The catalyst was the outlawing of corporal punishment in schools, which created a moral panic about discipline. Educators looked for a quick fix, and thought they had found it in school uniforms. Increasing formalisation then accelerated, particularly with the spread of academies, which often seek to emulate a corporate look by requiring students to wear suits and ties.
Perhaps it is time for us to challenge the invented tradition of the school uniform. If our schools were actually preparing children for the world of work, they might let them do what most employees do today – dress themselves within a broad set of guidelines that allow for personal expression and choice, rather than following an outdated one-size-fits all rulebook.
André Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Bayes Business School at City, University of London. He is the author of the book Business Bullshit
