Appropriate Action ? Or Not

[Bazile]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2871332/School-used-minibus-dozens-pupils-shoe-shop-wearing-wrong-footwear-sent-parents-bill.html

I suppose if there is a dress code then that should be adhered to .

I noticed the school has/had a problem with bad behaviour from pupils - so in respose to the ofsted report , the dress code is an appropraite place to start from in rectifying things

What do you think ?

[ludwig]

Having a dress code and insisting pupils adhere to it is a good thing.

Buying shoes for the kids and sending parents the bill isn't. They should just have sent them home. If I was a parent I'd refuse to pay it.

[anotheoldgit]

Totally in appropriate action, no school should be allowed to spend parent's money without consent.

Why did they just not suspend those who did not wear the correct uniform until such time as they confirmed to the dress code?

[mikey4444]

I agree with AOG ( ! )

Ludicrous way for the School to behave.

[anotheoldgit]

Conformed.

[youngmafbog]

Send kids home - to an empty house, onto the streets?

Suspend them, oh so you mean parents are 'fined' as they cant go to work.

Why are either of those two any better? Times have moved on Gentlemen, the wife no longer stays at home washing your socks.

[Old_Geezer]

Surely they just have to send in a thank you note for buying their kids a pair of shoes as an Xmas present.

If the school is adamant they want the shoes back I'm sure that can be arranged.

If schools make over-controlling rules then they are going to have issues. No one wants a free-for-all but it reads as if they were enforcing overly-fussy demands. If the shoes/attire were neat/tidy, that should suffice. Schools are about learning not fashion.

[andy-hughes]

I am all in favour of dress codes for schools - it prevents those children whose parents can't afford fashions from feeling left out.

But this is not the way to enforce a dress code.

Any school relies on the co-operation of parents in order to offer a united approach to behaviour, dress code, school work, and so on - and this is absolutely not the way to go about it.

At school ages, my wife and I dressed our children, and if the school had ever had an issue, they could have discussed it with us - this sort of high-handed action puts children in the way of bullying by singling them out.

I would raise a strong protest with the governors, and their bill would be returned unpaid.

[baza]

I am a bit worried that the school has a staffcar.

[Mamyalynne]

Enforce the Uniform standards by all means , but do not remove my child from school premises to be driven around by a teacher.

[venator]

Kids will always challenge the rules.
We haven't got the whole story here.
Commonsense or silliness? - story of the human race

[jourdain2]

I would think that (like all the schools I worked in) the pupils' parents were given a set of rules (including dress code) which they agreed that their children would follow, this would have been on paper and signed. This was renewed at the beginning of every school year. So, no parent has any excuse for not sending their child to school in unsuitable clothing of any kind.

School shoes can be an indicator of other problems. My school simply stated 'black shoes, no heels, and no trainers to be worn outside games lessons'. This is surely not difficult or expensive to comply with? Yet we had huge problems trying to enforce it. Pupils were wearing trainers every day - this has been proved to be unhealthy for growing feet.

[jourdain2]

^^^ It proved to be an administrative nightmare, with yet another morning task for form tutors to check footwear and send notes home reminding parents of the rules. It is, however, a specific detail on which the school can try to enforce an ethos.

I suspect that the school's action was a last resort, having gone through all the available options. In that case, I support it - or else all school rules become optional and even more disruption results and education becomes less important. Ethnic origin has nothing to do with this, by the way (before someone starts!) it happens in many schools in many areas.

[ummmm]

I wouldn't pay the bill.

[ummmm]

jourdain2....it's easy to say it's not expensive but it is if you have nothing.

[sherrardk]

School shoes are expensive - you can buy cheap ones but they fall apart so you end up paying the same anyway. This summer it cost me £200 just for shoes and thing 2 has already kicked the front out of his (he's new to playing football on a hard surface, he'll get better). I haven't replaced them yet as I am not going to take him shoe shopping in December, it can wait and he can get some wear out of his trainers (the school are fine about it).

[jourdain2]

You have to buy some shoes ummmm, you can't send your children out unshod, so they may as well be black and conform - they don't have to be expensive. I had one pair of shoes, black, clumpy - I used to envy my classmates who had a pair of party shoes.

[ummmm]

Most kids have other shoes besides school shoes. Like Sher said, they aren't cheap, especially when your child has size 9 feet. My son is on his second pair this year and his shoes are £30 a pair.

[ummmm]

If I had no money to replace them I'd send him in his trainers.

[sherrardk]

I would replace my eldest son's shoes straightaway as he is in secondary school because their uniform rules are stricter but I will get thing 2 some new shoes in the holidays (he's too tired to go after school and I am too intolerant and bad tempered to go anywhere near any shop on a Saturday in December).

[jourdain2]

£200 is fierce for shoes, sherrardk, I agree - my mind boggles at spending that much. I do know that when my kids each grew 2 sizes in the same 4 mth. period I felt like jumping off a cliff in despair and quite a few other things went by the board so I could buy proper shoes. It will have been the same sort of sum proportionately. I currently help out my kids with costs for clothing my grandchildren and it is still a sacrifice and burden for all of us.

Yet I come back to the issue of it being a problem in many schools as indicative of the attitude towards education and using dress code as an 'in' to establishing ethos and attitude. Some smaller schools in decent areas may be able to overlook occasional violations where parents are involved with the school and their children, but in a 2,000-pupil inner-city comprehensive ....? Believe me, the unlaced, grubby trainered, shirt-adrift pupils of uncaring parents are not helping. Is upping standards and expectations for the whole school (and eventually these pupils) more important? Everyone has a point of view.

Often we are not talking about supportive, but 'strapped for cash' parents. I know of one boy whose support assistant bought him a new pair of shoes (assistants earn very little) because his toes were poking through holes in his filthy trainers - next day the boy was back in the trainers, his dad had taken the shoes to the pub and flogged them!

You have to start somewhere!