New academy agrees a uniform amnesty

PARENTS will have to splash out on new uniform after one secondary school announced it will make a change following its conversion to an academy.

Churchill Academy and Sixth Form Centre has announced its pupils will need to wear a new maroon uniform, beginning in September.

But to ease the financial burden on parents it has declared an amnesty meaning the old blue uniform can continue to be worn until September 2014.

Headteacher Barry Wratten said it was important to give the school and its pupils an identity.

He said: “Uniform helps cement a sense of belonging to our learning community and helps also emphasise each student’s association with one of our four houses.

“The uniform also helps us restrict the never far from hand influence of teenage fashions and the latest fads.

“From next year, we will be stipulating much more specifications about acceptable trousers and skirts to prevent the sometimes inappropriate from becoming the wholly unacceptable.”

A change of uniform has been rumoured ever since the school adopted academy status at the beginning of August.