Thanet District Citizens Advice campaigns to change unfair policies and improve poor services. This page highlights some of the issues we are campaigning about.

School Uniform Campaign

Thanet Citizens Advice raises cost of school uniform with KCC election candidates.

Thanet Citizens Advice Bureau manager, Ian Driver, has contacting all KCC election candidates to seek their support for the re-introduction of school uniform grants for parents who are struggling to make ends meet.

The Education Act 1996 allows KCC to provide grants to parents who are finding it hard to pay for school uniform, but in 1997 KCC abolished the grant on the grounds of cost.

The recession is causing serious financial hardship for more and more people, especially families with school age children said Mr Driver. I call on prospective KCC councillors to agree to review the policy on school uniform grants and to make funds available to help those families who are struggling with the cost.

According to research carried out by Citizens Advice whilst most parents support the idea of school uniform, three quarters of parents of secondary school children and two-thirds of parents of primary school children found it difficult to meet the costs. At the same time more and more Education Authorities have abolished school uniform grants with less than half offering any sort of financial support parents.

The cost of uniform is also high because many schools insist on having logos embroided on shirts, jackets and coats said Mr Driver if schools were prepared to allow students to wear uniform without logos then costs would be much lower. We will be carrying out a survey of Thanet schools to find out about uniform policy in the next few months and we will try to persuade school Governing Bodies to adopt affordable uniform policies.

The KCC policy on school uniform grants can be found here

For Citizens Advice research on the cost of school uniform can be found here