School photo day. Perhaps you remember it from your own childhood, in an era when hair was brushed to within an inch of its life, rogue strands pressed down with a mother’s wetted finger. Maybe you dread it as a parent, desperately hoping your child smiles in a way that doesn’t make them look as if they are constipatedly straining.
I have row upon row of my children’s pictures, each poorly framed in cardboard surrounds that haven’t changed in style since the 1980s. For the most part, the wan eyes looking back at me display emotions that lie somewhere between anxious and nauseous. In each, ties are either uncomfortably tight or distinctly skewed. School jumpers hang poorly off shoulders; dark blazers drain the life from a teenage face.
Aside from anything else, the school portraits that adorn our shelves are an advert against school uniform policy. Children constrained and made uptight by their uncomfortable clothing, posing for a harried photographer in an outfit not of their choosing. These images, which you hope will be a charming record of your child’s passage through the school years, end up a memento of their incarceration.
I understand all the arguments in favour of school uniforms: that they promote discipline; that they easily connect children to a particular institution; that they help to level the playing field between haves and have-nots (within a school, at least). There is something in all of these contentions.
But ties and blazers? Please. These are relics of a bygone age. We now live in a society in which just 7 per cent of adults wear “business attire” for work, according to a YouGov survey in 2023. A fifth wear a work uniform, but six in ten wear either casual or smart-casual clothes of their own choice. When we put our children in tight grey trousers or pleated skirts what exactly are we preparing them for? They increasingly look like a period theatre piece.
What’s more, evidence in favour of ditching traditional school uniforms could change the health of the nation. In 2024, a Cambridge University study looked at data from across 135 countries and found that where formal school uniforms are widely required, a lower proportion of children met the World Health Organisation’s recommended one hour of daily physical activity.
A report in The Times this week quoted a range of primary school headteachers extolling the benefits of what is termed “always active” uniform – weather-appropriate sportswear than can be worn all day long. As one head put it: “We encourage pupils to be active throughout the day, and [changing] the uniform was the final piece of that jigsaw.”
In the UK, childhood obesity remains a major problem. By the end of primary school, around a fifth of kids are classified as obese. Drugs like Mounjaro may be changing the conversation around weight among adults, but they are not tackling the root causes of obesity in a way that childhood exercise and diet can. Getting children moving could improve the country’s health for good.
After all, it should hardly be rocket science to think that children might be more inclined to be active in their break times if they aren’t trying to move in trousers that don’t stretch, or in tightly buttoned shirts that rub hard against their necks. And that’s not even to mention the hours lost to changing for PE lessons, or the embarrassment many children face when they have to put on their sports kit in front of their peers.
Traditionalists may worry about a loss of smartness. But judging by the muddy shoes, untucked shirts and dreary blazers I see on the school run, there is no automatic correlation between formal uniform and looking neat. On the other hand, you only have to think of an Olympic podium to know that tracksuits can look elegant, even chic.
If we want to encourage active future generations, modelling our children’s school appearance on an Olympic champion feels much more suitable than dressing them as members of a stuffy corporate board. Training tops, get set. Ties? Get knotted.
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