Parents in Northern Ireland are facing increasing financial pressure. A number of local families and advocates have pointed to the high expense of school uniforms as an added hardship. Recent attention in committee sessions have fired up the coal issue. Parents and small business owners testified in passionate detail about the ways that increasing costs are hurting families and local businesses.
For Kerri Denvir, a mother of two children, ages five and nine, this moment is maddening. She fights every day the daily battlefield of replenishing their lost and broken school supplies. Her kids go to primary school right down the road in Newtownabbey, County Antrim. As Denvir explains, the costs just keep on “going up, and up, and up.” She remarked, “They just don’t last and they’re growing out of them very quickly,” emphasizing the burden that constant replacements place on family budgets.
Tina Mellon, another like-minded parent and a single mother of three, supported her fears. As she put it, the increasing expense of uniforms is “incredibly challenging to navigate.” As Mellon noted, there will likely be good deals in August. By winter, prices tend to spike significantly as parents return for second helpings to replace fall-out. She stated, “Sometimes there will be a deal in August, but when you go in during the winter to replace it the price has gone up.”
The issue surrounding school uniforms was further examined during a committee meeting where Jan Buchanan provided evidence regarding proposed legislation aimed at capping prices. Buchanan pointed out a troubling trend: many parents now pay more for their child’s physical education (PE) kit than for their standard uniform. To illustrate, she used an anonymous example from one school. The overall cost of the full uniform was £86.90, but the mandatory PE kit jumped up to a staggering £198.70.
Buchanan went on to discuss the part branded sports kits play in inflating costs. “School uniforms themselves haven’t actually changed; what has changed is the introduction of compulsory branded sports kits,” she stated. She noted how these products are only provided because of sports companies that have created a monopoly for these products. This has created both a surge in overall uniform prices and massively hurt small, family-owned businesses.
One business that added their voice was social entrepreneur Liam Charlton-Killen, founder of Ethical Schoolwear, an online shop located in the heart of County Down. He was recently photographed at one of his city’s green spaces, a shovel slung over his shoulder. Charlton-Killen pointed out that many unbranded products are just as appropriate for elementary school kids. These products are super fun and durable for all types of active play.
Alastair McCall, representing McCalls of Lisburn, warned the executioner was already lurking. He warned against passing new legislation to mandate consistent pricing as it would devastate independent operators. He stated that such regulations might result in “bankruptcies and mass redundancies a very real possibility.”
Francesca Cahillin from Truly Fare in Belfast pointed out another dimension to the issue. The current school uniform grant for low-income families in Northern Ireland is significantly lower than those available in Wales or Scotland. This growing disparity only makes it harder for families who can’t afford the supplies their kids need to succeed in school.
Advocate lobbying and discussions about possible legislative fixes continue. Hundreds of thousands of families are still waiting, hopeful that a quick resolution will help ensure families can afford school uniforms and reduce their financial worry.
