High school students begin Gentleman's Tuesday

[Hal]

Kids wear what is fashionable - baggy jeans and t-shirts for boys, for example. If their parents forced them to wear proper trousers or even polo shirts, they'd despise it just as much as a uniform - except they'd despise their parents too.

Possibly, but it's the parents' job, not the school's, to see that children dress properly (however that is interpreted). UK parents expect the school to do everything and (wrongly) believe that it is more influential than the home.

People on the continent dress better because you're allowed to care about how you look without being labelled gay or metrosexual. In the UK, as a teen, if you care about your appearance, you get teased. That's how it was when I was at school in Wiltshire a decade ago, that's how it is now (or so my younger friends tell me).

I'm sure this is true (and has been so for a long time).
The rest of your posting raises the important sociological issue of the need for parents to reclaim authority over the peer-group. I agree with your analysis but am sure that school uniform is not the answer; the equality argument for uniforms is a spurious one - children sniff out the subtlest of differences - second-hand uniforms would be mocked just as second-hand normal clothes were.

 

[Charlie74]

I went to a private high school where the uniform was shirt and tie. I believe that one of the reasons for the uniform was so that less affluent students would not be ashamed of their clothes. Also attended a private college where coats and ties were required in class

 

[Widebrim]

The dress of schoolchildren should not be a policing matter for teachers, who have more important things to attend to.

This I can agree with. While I was a junior high teacher, our school went to mandatory uniforms, and there was a lot of wasted time trying to enforce the rule.