Uniform wars: It’s the parents who need a dressing down
Day Four and the siege of Hartsdown academy continues. On one side, new headmaster Matthew Tate who wants to raise standards by insisting that all pupils come to school correctly attired in their uniforms.
No deviations, please. No trendy shoes, short skirts, trainers, overt jewellery, novelty knots in ties and general scruffiness.
On the other side, belligerent parents who object to what they see as a heavyhanded approach and are refusing to cooperate with the strict policy.
Mr Tate’s noisiest critics have likened his methods to the Gestapo — how insulting — and his new tenure was referred to as ‘The Tate Regime’ by one bolshy parent. Never mind, Mr Tate was adamant. On Day One, 50 pupils at his Kent school were sent home for being incorrectly dressed. On Day Two, amid increasing uproar, another 20 were told to go home and get dressed properly.
Many parents were livid. Tempers flared and voices were raised at the gates as teachers were accused of ‘ruining’ the little darlings’ first day at school.
Pupils wept as mums and dads opted to stand and argue instead of accepting the new rules — or, perhaps, going to the school outfitters to make amends.
I have to say, if anyone was setting a bad example, it was the mums and dads.
and I don’t care if the new rules were complicated or open to interpretation. It’s their responsibility to get their kids to school, on time, in the right gear.
and railing against authority when they fail to do so helps no one, least of all themselves.
One father has decided to remove his daughter from the school and try to enrol her in another. He insists that her black lace-up shoes pass muster and he is not going to buy a new pair.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, a father reported a teacher to the police for assault after his six-year-old daughter’s ear studs were confiscated. and in North Wales, up to 70 pupils were put in ‘isolation’ on the first day of term for not wearing the correct uniform — with parents outraged at this infringement of their ‘human rights’.
all this is sadly reminiscent of the fiasco ten years ago, when Jamie Oliver tried to introduce healthy eating menus into a Rotherham school.
angry parents pushed burgers and junk food through the railings to their offspring who didn’t fancy the healthy alternatives on offer. No poncey chef was going to tell them what to do!
MeaNWHIle, the school uniform dispute continues in Kent, with teachers inspecting pupils’ dress at the school gates each morning as furious parents look on. If there is a squabble that better sums the creeping aggression in our society and the block-headed stupidity of some anti-authoritarian zealots who simply cannot be told what to do, then I have yet to see it.
In an era when parents will lie, cheat, crawl over broken promises and pretend to adopt religions they scarcely believe in to get their kids into a half-way decent school, this reaction is hard to believe.
One would have thought parents would welcome this new head — who achieved great results in his previous two posts — and thoroughly approve of the sharp smack of discipline he is using to improve his school. Most do, because they realise all he wants to do is give their kids a better chance. after all, at Hartsdown academy standards have been slipping.
The pupils had a reputation for being scruffy, which is always an outward manifestation of poor discipline and a lack of self-respect, by both the individual and the institution itself.
School uniforms are a good idea for a number of reasons, not least of all to maintain a certain standard and to teach children life lessons for the future. Including the acknowledgement that you are not particularly special nor deserving of preferential treatment — and you had better work hard if you want to distinguish yourself.
The new rules laid down a marker, a tacit promise that things were going to get better.
Parents should have been thrilled by his energy and disciplinary zeal — but sadly, in our me-first world, not all of them were.
The rows must indeed have been upsetting for the children, but whose fault is that and what lesson does their reactions teach children?
That you do what the hell you want and that rules apply to other people and not to you? If so, this is an appalling example to set.