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School uniforms can help to improve pupils' behaviour, education minister Ivan Lewis declared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme last October. Among successful schools, a common characteristic was a "strong sense of ethos", he added, and "uniform undoubtedly contributes to promoting both self-respect and respect for the school".

Can we assume that the minister based his unequivocal statements on sound evidence? Sadly, we cannot.

Lewis's pronouncement might have passed me by except that, at around the same time, the head teacher of the inner London comprehensive at which I am a parent-governor, and which has never had a uniform, made similar claims when seeking parental support for his proposal to introduce one.


There is no doubt that many parents are concerned about how their teenagers dress, and that sexual expression among teenage girls and "gangsta"-style among boys raise challenging issues. With schools under intense pressure to improve results, who can blame teachers for trying just about anything to improve behaviour and the learning environment?

But if we are serious about training young people to become good citizens, shouldn't we teach them, by example, that decisions we make about them are based on sound evidence as well as consultation?

There is no problem with Lewis's claim that uniforms "can" help to improve behaviour or that a "strong sense of ethos" is a consistent characteristic of successful schools. But to leap from those propositions to claims about what uniforms "undoubtedly" achieve is contentious.

Other EU countries that do much better than we do at secondary education manage without uniforms, but some US inner-city schools introduced them during the 1990s, for reasons similar to those cited by Lewis. Having tracked the results over several years, research¹ concluded:

"The authors [of the analysis] were forced to reject the ideas that uniforms improved attendance rates, decreased behavioural problems, decreased drug use, or improved academic achievement. The authors did find that pro-school attitudes from students and their peers and good academic preparedness did predict the desired behaviour. They saw that wearing uniforms did not lead to improvements in pro-school attitudes or increased academic preparation."

A more recent study² actually found a negative link between uniforms and students' self-perception, and that uniforms did not affect identification with gangs.

Apart from anecdotal evidence attributed to head teachers who have turned around "failing" schools, what ministers do cite is a survey reported by education secretary Charles Clarke in May last year showing that most parents believed that uniforms work. The poll found that 83 per cent of parents interviewed were in favour of pupils wearing school uniforms with nearly 70 per cent saying they thought uniforms would improve school discipline and improve school standards.


The views of parents are important, but they do not justify Clarke's assertion at the time that uniforms "clearly have a marked effect on improving behaviour and standards in our schools".

Teaching our children (and ourselves) about the important distinctions between belief and evidence is surely one of the most important pedagogical steps we can take. And the issue of how teenagers dress could stimulate rich exploration of civic rights and responsibilities, and of the role of media and corporate advertising in shaping taste and consumption.

Ministers could also familiarise schools and their students with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 12 requires governments to "assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."

The convention's Article 13 asserts the child's "right to freedom of expression", subject to "certain restrictions". Those do not include the unfounded beliefs of parents, head teachers or politicians.

¹ Journal of Educational Research (Vol 92, No 1, p53),

² Education and Urban Society, (Vol 35, No 4, August 2003, p399)