School uniform is a fine British ritual bordering on sadism

Nothing says “back to school” more eloquently than a trip to Clarks for some playground-proof shoes. It’s the one part of school uniform purchase that has remained unchanged down the decades. Even the kindly women who negotiate a truce between the parent’s request for sensible footwear and their offspring’s yearning for street style seem to have teleported in from the Eighties. I misted up a little while buying black lace-ups for my 11-year-old, but part of that was the agony of parting with £40 on top of other clobber for his first day at our local academy. I knew I’d have to fork out for sports kit, but I’d forgotten about the calculator, pens and peer-approved Superfine rucksack. I naively thought my boy would wear his big brother’s cast-offs, but that was without factoring in different physiques and my younger son’s view of himself as a style maven. My husband and I felt faint at the extra expenditure this week, so heaven help those on lower incomes.

Charities who help cash-strapped families with donated or second-hand uniforms say they have seen demand rocket in the past year. Part of the problem is the trend for schools to opt for branded uniform requiring specialised retailers, meaning parents can’t nip to Tesco for basics. Many state schools seek to channel the pride and identity they feel strict dress codes bestow upon children – which means blazers with badges, ties and polished shoes. I have mixed feelings about this as someone who fled from uniform to the joys of sixth-form mufti, like a moth from an endless cocoon. I saw my sons flourish at a primary school where the only stipulation was “wear blue and white, but only if you feel like it”. Even so, part of me admits I may have benefited from the weird rite of passage that is

wearing school garb so unflattering the enforcement borders on sadism. It’s no exaggeration to say the ingenuity required to subvert clothing “regs” were as essential to my creative flourishing as writing short stories.

My alma mater’s uniform was by general consent the most hideous in all of Kent: deep mud-brown with a vomit-yellow trim. I wore that colour combo for five whole years. No wonder girls at the local secondary modern, clad in racing green, used to spit at us. I had cackled at my big brother when he first set off for nearby Sevenoaks School in his straw boater – still a requirement in the late Seventies – but stopped laughing once I donned the poo-brown Gym Culottes of Despair. We even had huge brown regulation pants that reached to just below our chests (my sons refuse to believe school authority once stretched to your knicker drawer). My school years were spent dreaming up innovative ways to slim my A-line skirt into a hobbling pencil version, and saving money for chestnut character shoes. Pretty much every classmate devoted hours to the art of the badly-knotted tie – pulled tight like a noose, loosened like a cravat, or tugged down to half-mast. Fifteen or so years ago the school wisely changed the colour scheme. Girls now wear charcoal grey and black with a pleated skirt. Less offensive perhaps, but also far less fun than our St Trinian’s-style anarchy.

Let’s pity all those poor souls preparing to submit to the scratchy, torturous British tradition of school uniform, as September once again creeps in.

Jane Shilling is away follow Rowan Pelling on Twitter @Rowanpelling; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion