Labour has quietly signed the death sentence of the compulsory monopoly that uniform shops have on school clothes, and the upcharge attached logo’d (though not patterned) items.
I’m now 31 but I‘m still nursing a grudge against my highschool for openly banning branded reusable shopping bags from places like Supre due to receiving kickbacks from Postie Plus. No exaggerating, Peggy Burrows and her deputies at Rangiora High School (she is now principle of Haeata college) used to hold “uniform assemblies” at Rangiora High where we would be told at length that ONLY postie plus shopping bags were allowed because Postie Plus provided kickbacks to the school. Also banned were black puffer jackets (the school sold an $80 logo’d windbreaker and god-knows-how-much optional blazer), and the policy that year 13s could wear mufti was abolished just before I reached that in favour of instituting a second brand new uniform for year 12s and 13s. Instead of getting to our “optional year” and getting to not wear the most uncomfortable clothing I’ve ever been forced into, we had to shell out literally hundreds of dollars for new skirts, shirts, etc because the school now required parents to buy TWO seperate uniforms. Now that’s a money making scheme if ever I saw one.
Never mind the determination schools and parents have to crush any demonstration of individuality children might try to cultivate via their appearance, which I think is bad for our youth in a totally different way to placing unnecessary financial pressure on parents and giving kids yet another reason to not show back up for year 12 and 13, when many kids already don’t have to or want to be there. Which is especially effective if your parents are poor.
Why is it the death knell? Because ACT are also promising the same thing. Which means that IF both parties stick to their promises and National doesn’t go hard in negotiations on its “Parents making their own parenting decisions is bad” stance, regardless of the flavour of government that follows this election, requiring branded items at huge costs to parents will be banned.
Side note: this is why you should join your school board, and think about the parents who don’t have the same means to send their kids to school that you do when making decisions on that board. School boards are grossly middle class and also lack student representation of any sort (which especially at highschool should be the case — these kids are 16, 17, 18 even, and schools supply leadership opportunities and create entire leadership teams without actually giving kids the opportunity to meaningfully interact with the policy being made that primarily affects them). The rollout of compulsory uniforms in order to better fundraise for the school via muftidays and retailer kickbacks is hugely hostile to the sorts of parents who usually don’t sit on school boards. And of course, they are longstanding school community members and not parents who’ve needed to move around a lot (and therefore shell out for more uniforms).
I wont pretend I don’t ideologically hate uniforms on principle and in my ideal version of New Zealand they’d be banned fullstop, but it is with absolute glee that I read Labour’s promise to make uniforms equitable and accessible for all families. The comment about families getting through a costly Christmas just to be hit with back to school expenses including potentially thousands of dollars worth of branded uniform items (if you have enough children, especially at the secondary level where uniform item prices reach ridiculous heights) felt especially in-touch. I wouldn’t expect Luxon or any of his well-salaried MPs can possibly understand how much of a stretch that is for normal families.
For the first couple of years of my primary, uniforms were optional. Over the course of thirteen years of schooling, I watched uniforms go from entirely a parental preference to one secondary school requiring the purchase of two seperate uniforms across just five years of schooling.
RIP the uniform monopoly, you won’t be missed. Get fucked.
