School uniform comes to Germany

Ask almost anyone child in England who is learning German at school and there is one thing that they can tell you about German schools: they don’t have school uniforms.

Whilst some may like the sound of this more liberal attitude towards clothing, for the children it can mean the hard decision of what to wear each day, with conflicts arising among peers over designer labels, colours, and so on.

This, coupled with the fact that Germany has a general problem with uniforms anyway as a result of its past, meant that it was never going to be easy to introduce one into German schools.

But some are trying it out, and one of them is not far from us.  The new Grammar School in Rüsselsheim has opted for a “standard school clothing” rather than a “school uniform”, consisting of a standard blue T-Shirt, pop shirt, jumper with hood and a jacket.  A set costs around 90EUR.

Actually school T-Shirts are nothing new, but most children only have one that comes out for special occasions.  This extension of that idea may be sufficiently flexible (and “non-uniform”?) to catch on.

 

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About Graham

Graham Tappenden is a British ex-pat who first came to Germany as a placement student in 1993, returning in 1995 to live there permanently. He has been writing for AllThingsGerman.net since 2006. When not writing blog posts or freelancing for the Oberurseler Woche and other publications he works as a self-employed IT consultant solving computer problems and designing websites. In 2016 he gained German citizenship.

Comments

  1. Rather expensive though, eh.

  2. I have to admit that I don't have a clue what a school uniform would cost in the UK, but compared to some children's clothes I thought 90EUR wasn't bad.

  3. 90 euro sounds fair when comparing it to some students' (or rather the parents' money) trying to keep up with the trendy brands. It gets a lot more expensive then!!
    This idea is always worth a try.
    It might also eliminate indecent dress wear in the classroom in summer time.

  4. I think uniforms are better than having kids tease each other about what brand of clothing another is wearing…it's surprising how often that happens.

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