Using New Materialism to Examine What School Uniform Policies Do to Students

Using a new materialist lens, this paper focuses on what school clothing does to students and beyond. The medium in this “hidden” media education is what children wear to school. A comparison between the school clothing and uniform policies of all publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland in 2019 (n=357) and a subset in 2024 (n=32) was conducted. School uniforms are prevalent across the state sector, with 96 % of secondary schools having a school uniform. Here, school uniforms are considered in terms of affordability, comfort, and sustainability, as well as their affect on students in relation to the cost of the uniform, how it genders them, and its environmental affects. While there was some change to a less gendered approach over the five years under examination, there is still much that could be done to make students more comfortable and to make uniforms more affordable and sustainable.