School Uniforms - A Rip Off?

Trinity

hope this in the right place.

This may sound petty but it has been bothering me for a while.

My son attends school in city centre. He MUST wear the school tracksuit, fair enough. The problem i have is the tracksuit costs 42 euro. Hes 6 years of age.

The school crest is "ironed on' for want of a better description as opposed to embroidered crests so it cannot be duplicated.

these tracksuits are worth no more than 8 euro to make they are ordinary sweatpants and jumper basically.

They are ONLY available to buy in Arnotts. Therefore no competition - we cannot shop around we MUST buy this tracksuit in Arnotts.

His school jumper (of the actual uniform) is ONLY available in a shop in Manor street - that is 32 euro - again i could buy a jumper for 8 euro and stick a crest on it if we were allowed.

i already have his in at this stage but listening to the other poor mothers today it made me mad. Some of them are really struggling and may have more than one child to kit out. The cost of books as it is are scandalous and we also have to give the school 70 euro first day back for art and supplies?

ok so what i am asking is

A - who do i contact about the tracksuits - the school or arnotts? How do these things get decided and who is profitting big time on these tracksuits? If the school are making money i wouldnt begrudge them really its a pretty poor area but are they profitting like about 30 euro per tracksuit??

B - are school crests copyrighted? i know someone who does embroidering who could easily copy the crest onto an ordinary jumper not just for me but for all the parents - it would cost less than half of the cost of the one we are forced to buy. (same as tracksuit if we could use the crest instead of the cheap iron on version)

dudara

I've often wondered about this one. Do the schools get some kick-back from the shops?

I think personally that it's the heights of absurdity. Every item in a school uniform should be avaible in Dunnes, M&S, etc with crests available from the school for ironing on.

Can all parents be organised to protest against this, send their kids into the school en-masse in plain uniforms. The school can't suspend or expel every pupil after all*.

* /pie in the sky dream of solidarity against extortion vanishes

jaggeh

tax write offs?

DublinWriter

I think the parents of Ireland need to form a pressure group, not only about this, but recent sharp practice of school books where kids have to write out answers in them, thus making them impossible to sell second-hand.

There are enough parents in this country being fleeced for millions of Euro to start a pressure group mailing TDs and Schools' Boards of Management.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

there is currently a movement in the UK by the Office of Fair Trade (run by John Fingleton, former head of the Irish Competition Authority) to ban this type of unfair trading in school uniforms.

http://www.oft.gov.uk/News/Press+releases/2006/110-06.htm

You could submit a complaint into the Irish Competition Authority - they will investigate it.

Trinity

I have made some enquiries and 'allegedly' the schools make no money from this,

which makes me MAD! and more determined than ever to do something about it. At least if the children were benefitting from extra funds the school makes on it.

will keep you posted - aint gonna let this go.

thanks for all help

subway

i dont mean to ask a dumb question,
but what benefit is there to the school from this?
surely they should have a good reason to be costing parents more money?

to the poster complaining of writing answers in school books,
i remember this from when i was in primary school 15 - 20 years ago.
we had copy books then, and would write the answers into that.
im not sure if teachers dont allow that anymore?
tbh, id be lucky if i didnt get a bollicking for writing ANYTHING in a school book back then.

mel123

i know they are dear, but an alternative is for the kids to come in in what they want. then u would have a real problem on ur hands!!

ircoha

mel123 wrote:

i know they are dear, but an alternative is for the kids to come in in what they want. then u would have a real problem on ur hands!!

Lets keep on Trinity1's post here.

The issue is the cost of the kit, not that it is a uniform.

Ths schools get SFA from this, same as the school diaries.

It is a scam/rip off what ever u want to call it, but as I have said elsewhere most people are 2 well off to bother their a.., just whinge into the 2nd G+T and do nothing.
Parents are getting it up the a.. in relation to books, uniforms, mainly in my view because we have "free education" so these leeches can make super profits by charging outrageous prices for stuff made in sweatshops in Asia:mad: .

Trinity

Hi

yes they are dear thats the whole point - they are not worth it tbh.

they are not of good enough quality to cost 42 euro.

my niece attends a different school - her tracksuit is lovely, wears well, great material and it costs 28 euro.

the school buys them in, with their own crest - cutting out the middle man.

all i am suggesting is there has to be a cheaper way (obviously there is 42 compared to 28) where the children can still look smart in uniform.

the problem is you will most likely have to buy 2 tracksuits per year also - i have not seen one child come out of school at the end of term without the knees gone out of their tracksuit

having made some phone calls today i believe it is the parents council on the shcool that i should contact with new suggestions - failing that the board of management.

its an internal school decision - they obviously just didnt shop around or do their homework for some competitive prices.

DublinWriter

Trinity1 wrote:

its an internal school decision - they obviously just didnt shop around or do their homework for some competitive prices.

I believe the only effective way to do anything about this is at national level.

As I said, the parents of Ireland need to form a national pressure group about this. Tackling this problem at local level will not achieve much.

GreeBo

Is it a fee paying school?
If not then I would "make" my own and see what they say, they wont send your kid home and at 6 the other kids are less likely to make fun of him.

If you get with some other parents it will only make it easier on both you and your kid.
That said, it would have been better to do all this before the term started....theres always next year though.

GL and keep us updated.

Xterminator

It really is a ridiculous situation.

My sont can buy his uniform in only 1 of 2 shops, Arnotts, or a local shop.

The cost of buying him 2 uniforms this year was approx €200. (Jumpers €50 etc).

My point is surely any grey jumper and grey slacks should be acceptable (Tesco , Pennys etc.), with the school selling an iron on crest for a small fee?

After all, your lucky if you get 1 year from these purchases!

X

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

pressure group can do reasonably little about it (there are so many pressure groups). a complaint to the Competition Authority on the grounds of insufficient / no competition would be the way forward imo.

marlena

Just bought my little girls school tracksuit with the school logo on it.(Compulsory)

E35.00 Aged 3-4

What will it be next?

Socks with school logos?

Trinity

marlena wrote:

Just bought my little girls school tracksuit with the school logo on it.(Compulsory)

E35.00 Aged 3-4

What will it be next?

Socks with school logos?

Wait til she is 8, the prices will just keep going up and up.

I did put a call into the national parents council yesterday and they were outraged but said it was a common problem.

Her advice was to get onto the parents council in the school as ultimately the decision rests with them as to colours, styles and then who gets the contract for their work.

iguana

My parents just point blank refused to buy me any of this stuff. They said it was over-priced and they weren't paying for it. They dressed me in the school colours, navy jumper, tie and skirt with a red shirt, basic generic stuff, or knit by one of my grandmothers. But they wouldn't buy the branded stuff, as it was too expensive and bad quality, which they could not afford.

I was always a bolshie kid, so I was happy enough to say this to teachers when they asked. And my parents would send a note or come in if it became an issue. Not that I remember it being much of an issue.

In secondary school, the uniform was a horrible brown and rust thing that could not be bought generically, except the shirts. My parents bought the jumper and skirt, while my gran's bought the tie, socks and a spare jumper. They lasted me the five years as I never grew much, apart from the socks obvy;). But they refused to buy the blazer, jacket or pe gear. Every so often the school would kick-up, they even had a uniform committee which threatened detentions, but the school can't do anything without the parents consent.

The thing I found was that lots of parents go along with school uniforms until one disagrees. Then all of a sudden others start speaking up. The problem is that everyone is pretty materialistic and while people might complain about the ridiculous costs, few people are willing to say "I can not AFFORD this." And even fewer people will encourage their children to say it.

DublinWriter

Roundtower2 wrote:

pressure group can do reasonably little about it (there are so many pressure groups).

Oh really? The VFI would seem to be a pretty good pressure group in influencing governmental policy.

But a pressure group containing every *voting* parent in the country?

Think about it for a second. All public primary/secondard schools receive public money to keep them going.

Change on this issue won't happen at local board of management level. It will only happen on national level when fronted by a national parents pressure group targetting local TD's.

Personally I think uniforms should be banned, as I heard one commentator on RTE Radio recently put it, they are a hang-over from pre-British colonial militaristic culture.

The counter arguement to that arguement is that kids put pressure on their parents to buy them the latest and greatest fashions...

But shock-horror...they do that anyway!!!!

I think it's time for the parents of this country to wake up. They are already on the sharp-end of the wedge as citizens of the Rip-off-Republic.

ircoha

Since this thread started, I have made some enquiries about whether or not there are any benefits to the schools from the uniforms.

On the face of it there is not.

However what is becoming very clear is that there are a least 3 sets of books in relation to running schools.

The first set is the set run by the board of management [BOM[ and they are ONLY concerned with tracking the public funds received.

One school I know has 5 different bank accounts to cater for the different grants. No problem there and the BOM does the accounts and they are audited.

However the teachers themselves and the Parents Councils both run all sorts of fund raising events and there is NO auditing of these events or the associated bank accounts.

The suggestion has been made that there are kick backs from the uniforms but that nobody sees them due to the complete lack of transparency outlined above.

I have a friend who was on a BOM and when she asked about these other accounts she was told that they were outside the remit of the BOM.

Do I see another tribunal........

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

DublinWriter wrote:

Oh really? The VFI would seem to be a pretty good pressure group in influencing governmental policy.

The VFI is very very well financed, with a large number of pubs outside of Dublin paying subscriptions to them. Also the VFI is not a pressure group - it is a representative body.

In this situation the representative body for consumers who are not allowed to purchase goods in a competitive market and thus end up paying over-the-odds for their goods is the reasonably well financed Competition Authority. The CA is to consumers what VFI is to pubs, in theory.

I'm not saying a pressure group wouldn't help, but just that there is no point ignoring an organisation that definitely can help, and has the legal power to enforce its decisions.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

ircoha wrote:

three sets of books, fundraising

This makes a lot of sense. Our secondary school in Ennis forced us to get our uniforms from one particular shop, but that shop then was always very generous in 'donating' sporting equipment to the school. Maybe it works like this in some schools.

jimmycrackcorm

I would hope that for the price of the uniform that they would last a lot longer than cheap clothing.

parsi

ircoha wrote:

Since this thread started, I have made some enquiries about whether or not there are any benefits to the schools from the uniforms.

On the face of it there is not.

However what is becoming very clear is that there are a least 3 sets of books in relation to running schools.

The first set is the set run by the board of management [BOM[ and they are ONLY concerned with tracking the public funds received.

One school I know has 5 different bank accounts to cater for the different grants. No problem there and the BOM does the accounts and they are audited.

However the teachers themselves and the Parents Councils both run all sorts of fund raising events and there is NO auditing of these events or the associated bank accounts.

The suggestion has been made that there are kick backs from the uniforms but that nobody sees them due to the complete lack of transparency outlined above.

I have a friend who was on a BOM and when she asked about these other accounts she was told that they were outside the remit of the BOM

ircoha wrote:

Do I see another tribunal........

No. But I see a slur type comment.

I'm on our Parents Council and the money raised goes to buy the things that the dpartment don't pay for - eg stocking the remedial classroom, sports day items - medals/food, flipcharts, books for the library. We don't get "kickbacks" from shops. The money is raised the hard way.

As an example of spending: the school got a new prefab classroom for learning resources. The department paid for the prefab and its fixtures - as someone said "anything that wouldn't fall out if it was held upside down". The rest of the kit came from the parents council.

You might have issues with the cost of uniforms but that's no excuse to spread innuendo.

Now that the new school year is on us why not go to your parents council agm and indeed join it ?

ircoha

parsi wrote:

No. But I see a slur type comment.

I'm on our Parents Council and the money raised goes to buy the things that the dpartment don't pay for - eg stocking the remedial classroom, sports day items - medals/food, flipcharts, books for the library. We don't get "kickbacks" from shops. OK, so the PC in your school gets no money from the shops, what about the other non-transparent accountsThe money is raised the hard way.

As an example of spending: the school got a new prefab classroom for learning resources. The department paid for the prefab and its fixtures - as someone said "anything that wouldn't fall out if it was held upside down". The rest of the kit came from the parents council.

You might have issues with the cost of uniforms but that's no excuse to spread innuendo. There is no innuendo here, neither is there any transparency

Now that the new school year is on us why not go to your parents council agm and indeed join it ?

Delighted to see a rep from a PC here:
perhaps you can throw some light on the following:
who audits the fund raising done by the PC?
Who signs the cheques?
Do ALL parents get a copy of how much money is raised and how it is spent?

While u are at it can you explain why the differential pricing exists as outlined above?

parsi

ircoha wrote:

Delighted to see a rep from a PC here:
perhaps you can throw some light on the following:
who audits the fund raising done by the PC?
Who signs the cheques?
Do ALL parents get a copy of how much money is raised and how it is spent?

While u are at it can you explain why the differential pricing exists as outlined above?

Hmm...bee in bonnet ?

Fund raising isn't audited - then again the sums involved are modest,

Cheques are signed by treasurer or chairperson,

All parents who attend the well advertised agm (or indeed request) get a copy of the accounts.

Strangely enough not a whole lot of parents come along to the agm (and even fewer volunteer to join) despite the publicity for it (notes home, members handing out leaflets after school etc) but maybe they prefer to not know how things go on and just make snide comments instead ?

No idea what you mean about "differential pricing" - is it some sort of economic term ?

Maybe you should focus on the known good things that parents committees do rather than the imagined evil-doing that your questions imply.

ircoha

I rest my case:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5341762.stm

and even more so
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=school++uniforms&scope=all&tab=all&recipe=all&x=26&y=15

parsi

Strange how you're anti-English when it comes to the Ryder Cup being shown only on Sky but yet you are happy to accept the word of UK institutions...

Anyway you've forgotten to tell us if you're going to join your local parents committee or would you prefer to be the hurler on the ditch dishing out the innuendo...?

killbillvol2

ircoha wrote:

Since this thread started, I have made some enquiries about whether or not there are any benefits to the schools from the uniforms.

On the face of it there is not.

However what is becoming very clear is that there are a least 3 sets of books in relation to running schools.

The first set is the set run by the board of management [BOM[ and they are ONLY concerned with tracking the public funds received.

One school I know has 5 different bank accounts to cater for the different grants. No problem there and the BOM does the accounts and they are audited.

However the teachers themselves and the Parents Councils both run all sorts of fund raising events and there is NO auditing of these events or the associated bank accounts.

The suggestion has been made that there are kick backs from the uniforms but that nobody sees them due to the complete lack of transparency outlined above.

I have a friend who was on a BOM and when she asked about these other accounts she was told that they were outside the remit of the BOM.
Do I see another tribunal........

And who exactly is making money out of this? Maybe the teachers are raising money for drinking sessions? Or maybe the parents' council are taking secret holidays with the vast sums raised from running raffles, knocking on doors etc.

Do the kickbacks from the uniforms arrive in brown envelopes? And to whom?

This sort of ill-informed drivel isn't helpful to the discussion. If you think there was no innuendo in your original post then you clearly don't understand the meaning of the word.

Your friend on the BOM was correctly informed. The Parents' Council bank account would obviously be outside the remit of the BOM. They're a different body. If you want them audited, go to a meeting and propose it. I'm sure the BOM, staff and pupils are glad of the funds raised to make up some of the shortfall in funding from the DES though. By the way, neither the teachers nor the parents involved in fundraising are paid for it, unless there's a huge slush fund as you seem to think.

To get back to the OP's original point, there are basically 4 ways for a school to deal with the uniform issue:

1. No uniform

2. A basic colour of trousers/skirt and top that can be purchased anywhere (no crest)

3. A school tracksuit/uniform with crest sourced by the school and sold by the school.

4. The scenario outlined by the OP where the school basically franchises the supply and sale of uniforms.

Most parents want some kind of uniform and most parents' councils seem to favour having a school crest. Option 3 is a logistical nightmare for schools and has fallen in popularity due to the administrative burden at the beginning of the school year. So, basically, if you're going to have a crest, option 4 is the least hassle. In most cases the parents' council chose the uniform so that's where you raise the issue I'd say. You might find that a lot of people agree with you but everyone's gone along with the status quo.