The Curse of Clothes

Clothing is a serious problem for teachers. I got the heeby jeebies earlier this week reading a column in the TES. Seems that some schools object to their staff wearing anything with short sleeves. Wonder how they're dealing with the heat stroke epidemic.

At my school, anyway, the dress code's pretty straight-forward for men (we only have about 25 anyway), being suit and tie, as one might expect. For the prodominant female population, however, the decision isn't so easily made. No one other than trainees in their first week, NQTs in their first month and heads of department upwards wears what you might describe as office-smart, i.e. matching suit and blouse efforts. Everyone else comes in a variety of different flavours.

Take the officially award-winning best-dressed teacher: she admits to there being no difference between her evening wardrobe and her work wardrobe - she goes for the layered, sparkly, gypsy look with incredible shoes. Nice, but effortless only for her.

Then you've got the standard: dark trousers (usually black - teachers wear a hell of a lot of black) and a range of tops depending on the weather. The plague of suit-shorts prevailed for some time this year in certain quarters. Obviously, the standard for PE teachers is different.

Now, on INSET days and mufti days, this system is abolished. Everyone turns up in jeans (including the head) and my head of department wears her Dogmatix t-shirt. Conversely, you can tell when there's a parents' evening that day when everyone turns up looking slightly better cared for than usual.

Whatever you wear, you're still subject to judgement by the children, who don't hold back on venting about one's poor fashion choices. I admit that throwing their petition for me to go on 'What not to wear' across the room was a little childish, but they got the point. They haven't commented since.