Westlake Boys’ High School costs roughly $550<\/a>, headmaster Paul Fordham said and is central to its identity.<\/p>\n“When they are arriving at school with a strong sense of identity, they’re confident, and therefore they engage across the school in a better way as well,” he told Morning Report.<\/p>\n
“I know there’s some commentary around school uniforms and the cost attached to that, but it means that there’s no other clothing required to be purchased for school throughout the year.”<\/p>\n
Otago University public health researcher Johanna Reidy found secondary school uniforms can cost anywhere from $250 to about $1000.<\/p>\n
“Even the most competitively priced uniform can be unaffordable when there are other demands on the family budget.”<\/p>\n
Seymour said Boards of Trustees and principals governed schools.<\/p>\n
“There’s no government edict that says that you have to have this specific polo shirt that magically multiplies in value by a factor of about 90 because it has the school crest and you’re only allowed that one.<\/p>\n
“It’s well within the power of Boards of Trustees and principals to make rules – they can make a rule that they don’t have any uniform if they want.”<\/p>\n
Seymour said he was personally a fan of school uniforms but “they could certainly make rules that are far more inclusive”.<\/p>\n
When he was at intermediate, his school only required students wear a red or black polo with a collar, saying there were options that were a lot more affordable” than what is “pushed around now”.<\/p>\n
He urged Boards of Trustees to do something to help, saying it was an area the government could intervene “but we try let people run their own show”.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: RNZ \/ Richard Tindiller School boards need to keep the cost of uniforms in check, the deputy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-264538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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