Parent life / A summer before secondary school, 2014, with a Sheffield memory from the early 1960s
The Blazer Fitted Perfectly. In Year 9.
Buy the uniform in June and the boy keeps growing. Leave it until August and the shop has a 26, a 40 and a queue.
In June 2014 a father on a parenting forum posted the key statistic of the uniform season: his son, starting secondary in September, was growing an average of 4mm a month. I did the sums for ours on the kitchen door frame, in pencil. Three months to September. Twelve millimetres. My husband announced that this was a whole size at the collar. He has never measured a collar in his life.
The thread split, as every household does, into parties. The June party said buy early or there will be nothing left; one mother had bought in June, tried to swap up a size in August, and could not get the bigger items until the middle of September. The August party said wait, because children grow over the summer. One reported that hers have two growth spurts a year, mid-September and the beginning of July. “I think they do it just to annoy me.”
Then a third voice spoke with the authority of statute. You buy all Year 7 uniform with lots of growing room, “it’s the law”, aiming for them to outgrow it in Year 9, and “it’s OK for Yr7s to look swamped by their uniform.”
I did not know it was the law. I complied immediately.
The law is old. A woman called Sue, remembering her schooldays for the Sheffield U3A, started at Grange Grammar School for Girls at the beginning of the 1960s. Her mother bought the uniform at the Sheffield and Ecclesall Co-op at the end of the holidays, and because it was expensive it was bought to grow into. Sleeves nearly to her fingertips. Skirt nearly to her ankles. She does not say whether she caught up with it. On the 2014 thread, a mother who never grew into the blazer her own mum bought adds that she is 5ft 7in, so it was not for want of trying.
We went in August, because June ended before anyone agreed. The shop had his size in everything except the blazer, so I bought the next one up, and then, because it was the law, the one above that. He stood in the middle of the shop with his arms out and no visible hands. The assistant said this was normal. My husband photographed him by the door frame on the first morning, cuffs turned back twice, looking like a boy wearing a spare boy.
Twelve years later a uniform shop’s blog advises checking actual measurements and not buying much too big just because the size is there. It is a sensible post. It is also twelve years late.
He started Year 9 in September 2016, and the blazer fitted perfectly, exactly as the law intended.
The school had changed the uniform in July.
Sources
- Public parents’ discussion, When are you buying new school uniform for September?, 1–2 June 2014
- Sue, memories of Grange Grammar School for Girls, Sheffield U3A Secondary Education compilation, PDF pp10–11
- Grays Schoolwear, Ask Art: Have I Left It Too Late to Buy School Uniform?, 12 August 2026
Notes from the School Gates is a light-hearted column: home scenes and family characters are invented; schools and public facts are real. About the column