Mark Said’s article Keep Your School Uniform On (August 2) is worth taking note of.

At this time of the year, when in a few weeks’ time school doors will reopen to welcome back thousands of children, the question whether to keep school uniforms or not tends to crop up.

Nobody can deny that school unforms are expensive and with books and stationery added, not forgetting school fees and transport, the parents spend a fortune. However, the advantages of having a school uniform are limitless. The uniform is smart, decent, practical, gives identity to the school, offers discipline, eliminates competition between children and so on.

Doing away with a uniform will eventually prove a mistake.

What, however, irritates me is when heads of school and school councils insist on little insignificant items, which, more often than not, are used by children only when they are outside the school premises.

What I have in mind is the hood, scarf and mittens or gloves that keep children warm in winter while on their way to and from school. Insisting that these should be bought from a particular outlet costing more than three times as much as those knitted at home is, to say the least, scandalous. And such items make parents upset.