Foreign Perspectives

With James leaving primary school, his school uniform has changed from a relatively simple affair to something considerably more complex and expensive.

In its place there’s:

• a Blazer (badged)
• Black trousers (OK, no big change there)
• White Shirt
• House tie (new addition)
• Black socks
• Black shoes (by which they mean “proper” shoes)
• An overcoat or raincoat of formal style (gone is the anorak)

The PE kit has gone from a really simple t-shirt, shorts and gutties to the somewhat more involved:

• Canterbury games shirt (badged)*
• Canterbury games shorts (badged)*
• Canterbury games socks (badged)*
• Canterbury tracksuit (badged)*
• Canterbury PE t-shirt (badged)*
• Canterbury PE shorts (badged)*
• Plain white socks
• Trainers (non marking)
• Rugby boots

And the price has gone from something like £50 or so to £273 which doesn’t even include the shoes, trainers, rugby boots or overcoat. That said, supposedly many of the items will last him a few years so it’s not an annual expensive, though neither was the £50. We suspect that at least part of that price rise is down to the significant reduction in the number of outlets offering the uniform as compared to the primary school but there is a whole lot more stuff that he needs too.

We’ve decided to leave purchase of the trousers until August as he generally grows out of those every year so we’ll likely end up getting a size larger than we would if we’d bought it now.