The popularity of school uniforms amongst schools and parents is undeniable. Smartly-dressed children give a much better impression of the school, and in an age where schools are under increased pressure to perform well in the eyes of Ofsted, a school’s image is paramount to maintaining pupil numbers and therefore the continuing funding of the school.

In its recent Five Year Plan for education, the government stated that all secondary schools are now expected to have a uniform, since they help give pride in their school, and make them ambassadors for their school in the country. A DfES survey - conducted in 2003 - showed that 83% of parents think that children should wear uniforms, and 70% thought uniforms could help raise school standards.

While this is great news for specialist clothing suppliers, there is a catch. In the same survey, 41% were concerned that uniform was too expensive.

For schools and uniform suppliers, this poses a conundrum. Children are notorious for putting their clothes through the toughest of tests, and parents want their child’s uniform to last as long as possible. Consequently, the quality of children’s clothes needs to be high, yet affordable, to parents with all manner of incomes. When schools source suppliers, the combination of optimum quality versus price is the key concern.

Patrick Corcoran is Assistant Head teacher at Chesterfield Junior School in Enfield, north London. ‘We do find that parents and teachers prefer children to wear uniforms.’ The school has its own sweatshirts, polo shirts, fleeces, baseball hats and summer dresses which parents can buy through the school.

He admits however, that it’s not always easy to find good suppliers. ‘We did have to change suppliers recently, due to issues with quality.’

Speaking to parents of children at the school confirmed the importance of quality. At a drop in morning at the school, I spoke to several parents about what they thought of the school’s uniform. Unequivocally, they all supported it. They also liked the compulsory sweat and polo shirt, which is branded with the school’s logo.

The biggest hit, however, was the fleece. ‘It’s fantastic, you can wash it and leave it overnight and it’s dry’, enthused Mrs T Kavanagh, a mother of two - a ten and eleven year old. ‘You save on the electricity bills because you don’t have to tumble dry it.’

But while quality is a high priority for parents and schools, cost is a key issue. At primary age, children’s clothes need replacing pretty much every year because they are growing so quickly. The parents I spoke to usually bought two to three of each item.

When asked how much they spent per child per year, the figure that was agreed upon was £120-150 per year for the children in junior school. That figure was higher for children at secondary school.

Rosemary Fox has a daughter at a local secondary school. ‘I spent £300 on her uniform last year,’ she said, although admitted that this initial outlay would last much longer than a year - up to three at a stretch.

These figures reflect the national spend. A survey conducted by the Citizens Advice Bureau in 2004 showed that the average secondary school uniform, including PE kit, cost an average £286.97 a year. However, the Citizens Advice Bureau also points out that the average clothing grant available when a child starts secondary school is only £51.27, and almost half (42%) of all local education authorities no longer offer grants.

Consequently, it is putting pressure on the government to do something about the costs of school uniforms so that children from lesser income families are not put at a disadvantage.

The Department for Education and Skills expects school governing bodies to consider the cost when deciding the format of the uniform, should they decide to have one, and states in its guidelines: ‘no school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling socially excluded.’

Interestingly, no actual cost guidelines are given. However, the DfES guidelines does go on to encourage schools against highly bespoke school uniforms, stating: ‘it is better practice, and just as effective, to have a policy that incorporates items that are readily available off the peg from a number of retail outlets.’

If all schools take on this policy it spells bad news for the small-scale garment decorators, who are unable to compete with the supermarket prices. However, it seems that many schools are reluctant to go completely off-the-peg in their uniforms, as a lack of bespoke or branded schoolwear can have a detrimental effect on the benefits that a uniform brings to a school’s image.

Chesterfield and many other schools forge a middle ground by having a limited number of items branded with the school’s logo, therefore allowing parents to shop around for the more generic items such as trousers, skirts and shorts.

While the parents I spoke to at Chesterfield admitted that the school’s own items are more expensive than those in the shops - £10 for a sweat top and £7 for a polo shirt, compared with George at Asda who sell polo shirts for as little as £2.50 for a pack of two - they still supported the uniform as a school policy in principle.

The pressure is on schools to ensure they manage to make their own clothes affordable to parents who are being offered ever-cheaper clothes by the high street and less financial help with the costs of a school uniform.

‘It’s the usual trade off between quality and price which happens in any industry,’ says Frazer Hynes at Ralawise, suppliers of blank schoolwear to garment decorators. ‘There are established brands that do offer quality, durability and colour consistency and there will always be new brands which will compete on price but might not deliver the mentioned qualities which schools demand. Everyone wants prices to be as low as possible but at the same time, garment decorators also need make their profit margin.’

So while it’s important to be aware of the pressure that schools are under from both parents and the government to give parents the option of cheaper schoolwear, equally as important is the confidence which schools need in the clothes they are offering to parents.

With schoolwear an ever more competitive marketplace, it’s up to garment decorators to offer the right balance between quality and price to ensure that they are the number one choice when a school sources a supplier.

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