Charities and community groups aiming to lower the cost of buying school uniforms for low-income families say they cannot keep pace with rocketing demand, as parents struggle to afford essential items for their children in the run-up to the start of the new school year.
The popularity of groups offering free donations and secondhand school uniforms for swap has risen sharply this year and organisers say they have been inundated with thousands of requests for items over the past six weeks, with one parent volunteer receiving 93 requests in a single day last week.
The charity School-Home Support, which provides grants to families unable to buy essential items for their school-age children, has seen applications for help with the cost of uniforms and shoes rise by 90% over the past year. “Last year, we were spending the most on beds, bedding, furniture and other essential household items. Now we get the most requests for school uniforms and shoes,” said its CEO, Jaine Stannard.
Part of the problem, say charities and volunteers, is increasing use by schools of branded clothes, which are more expensive than standard uniforms. Kirsty Powell, a mother of four who recently set up a Facebook school uniform donation group in Stratford-upon-Avon, said academies were increasingly trying to copy the uniforms of private schools with expensive blazers and heavily branded PE kits. “If you send your child to a private school, you might expect to pay those costs. But these are state schools,” she said.
Powell’s group, which she runs with two other volunteers, collects uniform donations for 31 local schools and has received more than 200 requests since mid-July alone.
Jane Malcolm, CEO of Level Trust, a charity in Luton for local children living in poverty, said she had seen similar problems with a shift to branded uniform – “which means you can only get it from certain expensive suppliers”. Malcolm started collecting school uniform donations two years ago, and said requests from parents had doubled over the past year. She had even started a “naughty list” of state schools that had changed their affordable school uniform to one that could easily cost £250 per child, not including shoes or coats, she said.
Campaigners are critical of the government’s failure to act on a 2015 promise to make it a legal requirement for schools to make value for money the main consideration when setting uniform policies. Mark Russell, chief executive of the Children’s Society, said it was “shameful”.
“This simple change would prevent thousands of parents having to cut back on essentials or get into debt just to buy their children’s school uniforms,” he added.
In Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, families can apply for statutory support with the cost of school uniforms but in England it is up to individual councils and schools to decide whether to make help available. An annual survey of school governors and trustees, to be published next week by the National Governance Association, is expected to show a drop in the number of schools offering families assistance with the purchase of uniforms.
“Given that two-thirds of governors say that their school does not have enough funding to support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, we believe that the reduction in support for purchasing uniforms is largely a result of the severe funding constraints that schools are currently facing,” said Emma Knights, the NGA’s chief executive.
Joyce Tetteh, one of the parents being helped by School-Home Support this year, said she had had sleepless nights after calculating she would need to spend £465 on school uniforms by September. Tetteh, who lives in east London on benefits of £245 a week, has four school-age children. “I took medication to cope,” she said, adding that she had been about to cut back on food before the charity’s “life-saving” intervention. “I was really worried,” she said. “I thought I had no options.”
Freema Chambers, a mother of three who set up the Facebook group Community School Clothing Scheme two years ago after running out of money to buy her son school trousers, said she had seen requests from parents “at least double, maybe triple” over the past 12 months. The scheme had handed out more than 4,000 items of school uniform, worth about £40,000 to local families, in Sunderland and the north-east since schools closed in July, she said.
“Parents come to us distressed,” she said. “Schools are insisting that, for example, you buy trousers with the school logo on, which are nearly double the price of normal school trousers.” Vulnerable families are faced with terrible choices as a result: “It’s awful knowing that, if I can’t help a parent get hold of a particular item of school uniform, they are going to have to go without fuel or food in order to buy it.”
Kate France, founder of the Uniform Exchange charity in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, said she had also seen requests double over the past year. More than 800 families have received uniform donations through the scheme this year.
Another charity, Bromley Brighter Beginnings in south London, works with medical professionals, teachers and social workers to provide families with items they need. Its founder, Emma Martin, said she had received so many referrals requesting school uniforms for children this year that the charity had launched a campaign to attract more donations. “More people are struggling financially now, because of austerity. But when a child moves schools – which a lot of deprived families do regularly because it’s not up to them where they get housed – they’re expected to have a particular branded uniform.”
Martin said uniforms in her area could cost as much as £400. “It’s expensive and unnecessary. I don’t think there’s any need for schools to put that much pressure on families.”
Last November, Kristina Murphy, a mother of two, started collecting donations of school uniform for local families in Birmingham via her Facebook group Rubery Schools Community Swop Shop. After sitting on exclusion panels as a school governor she had noticed that, often, a pupil’s spiralling bad behaviour was triggered by reprimands for not wearing the right uniform or having their PE kit.
“It made me reflect: what if you don’t have those items and you’re coming to school anxious you’re going to get into trouble? That could make a vulnerable child quite aggressive and emotive.” These children may then act as if they don’t care about the uniform as a defence mechanism, so that no one will find out their parents cannot afford it, she said. “They’re embarrassed.”
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said: “The prime minister has been clear that we will increase minimum levels of per pupil funding in primary and secondary schools to level up education funding across the country. No school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply to or attend a school of their choice.
“Our guidance is clear: schools should prioritise cost when setting uniform policies, including making sure uniforms are available at different outlets, and keeping compulsory branded items to a minimum.”
