Reports show that NI parents go without to pay for branded school uniforms. Schools need to act now
The Labour government in England has introduced a new bill, the Children’s Wellbeing and School Bill. The Department for Education claims the bill will stop schools demanding branded clothes. which remains to be seen. The terms of the bill won't come into effect until September 2026.
It’s good to see that the education secretary in Northern Ireland has introduced a similar bill and is calling on schools to act now to change school uniform requirements as costs force many parents into debt. The Department of Education is currently acting to change the law limiting the number of branded items schools can insist on. As with England, according to some reports it is likely to be September 2026 before parents in NI can expect to the law come into force.
In its 2024 Parent Survey for Northern Ireland, children’s charity Parentkind found that school uniforms were by far the biggest worry related to sending kids to school here. Right now, today, in Northern Ireland parents are skipping meals and turning to buy-now-pay -later services to afford school uniforms before the new school year begins. The Survey found that 22% of parents said they struggle to afford the costs of sending their children to school, while 19% said they had forgone food to pay for uniforms.
Similar results were found in a survey from the Credit Union which showed that more than two-thirds (68%) of parents in Northern Ireland see back-to-school expenses as a major financial challenge, with average spending reaching £947 for primary school parents and £1,094 for secondary school parents. The research also found that 36% of parents are forced into debt to meet these costs, with nearly one in five (19%) incurring debts exceeding £500.
No family should have to choose between putting food on the table and buying a new blazer. But this is about more than school uniforms, it’s about poverty in a wealthy capitalist country, a country in which the richest 50 families in have more wealth than the bottom half of the population, i.e., 33.5 million people.
In our response to the Northern Ireland consultation proposals last year, the Workers Party made similar arguments, but the education minister choose not to listen and missed a real opportunity to help parents by merely tinkering with the status quo.
In the next weeks, thousands of parents in Northern Ireland without savings and who don’t have access to credit, will go without food and heating and may also be forced to go to unscrupulous money lenders to pay for uniforms.