Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps he is taking to reduce the cost to parents of school uniforms.
Answered by Nick Gibb
No school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply to the school of their choice. The Government is pleased to support the Private Member’s Bill to ‘make provision for guidance to schools about the cost aspects of school uniform policies’, which was recently introduced to Parliament on 5 February 2020. This demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that school uniform costs are reasonable.
It is for the governing body of a school (or in the case of academies, the academy trust) to decide whether there should be a school uniform, what it will be and how it should be sourced. To support them to do this the department issues non-statutory best practice guidance which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-uniform.
Our guidance clearly states that uniform items should be easily available for parents to purchase and schools should keep compulsory branded items to a minimum. It also states that schools should avoid single-supplier contracts, but where schools do choose to enter into such contracts, they should be subject to a regular competitive tendering process. This makes clear that we expect schools to ensure uniform costs are reasonable.