Why Schools Should Have Uniforms

Many schools have found that requiring their students to wear uniforms has great advantages that promote a better learning environment for both the students and faculty. While students may initially protest the uniform restrictions, the benefits are too many to ignore. Overall, uniforms keep students focused on the real reason why they're at school: to learn.

The natural tendency of society is to judge others based on what they wear. A person's style of clothing is one of the first things others notice, and the clothing one wears can often determine the type of treatment they receive from others. These are the reasons why people may spend excessive amounts of time obsessing about their wardrobe, and in a scholastic environment, it's far better to shift the focus of students away from their wardrobes in order to pay more attention to what they need to learn to become successful in life.

Uniforms promote harmony between students for better relationships within the school

When everyone wears the same uniform, it gives a feeling of unity among people that encourages individuals to work together in a more harmonious way. Just by the act of wearing uniforms, everyone has something in common, and the opportunity arises to see more of each other's similarities rather than each other's differences.

Uniforms minimize the ability of school gangs and other extreme social cliques to express their personal loyalties through what they wear. Psychologically, uniforms emphasize the unity of students rather than their differences, and this shift in focus helps reduce gang-related violence.

When students wear whatever they like, they'll invariably express their social status through their clothing. Students from a wealthy background will wear the latest fashions from top brands and often begin to worry more about their appearance than about learning. Many students who cannot afford expensive clothes strive to compete with their peers for a better image; however, they often don't earn much extra income by working extra hours at a job, so they can resort to selling drugs at school to make money easier and faster. The more drugs penetrate a school system, the more violence and corruption results, and it's extremely difficult to stop.

Uniforms are more economical for everyone

When a school adopts mandatory uniforms, the students and faculty save a lot of money on personal clothing expenses. This saved money can go towards a higher investment like saving for the students' future college expenses.

Uniforms promote the mental and emotional health of students

The number of junior high and high school student suicides continues to increase each year, and many different studies have shown that it's getting more difficult for the average student to maintain a healthy level of self-confidence. When the differences between students are emphasized in a school without uniforms, they become more self conscious about their appearance, and those who can't afford the clothes they want to wear to feel accepted develop even greater inferiority complexes that aggravate suicidal tendencies. When all students in a school wear uniforms, these negative tendencies become minimized because the students' clothing is no longer a divisive barrier they can use to judge themselves with. When clothes are no longer a standard of comparison, the well-being of students increases.

Jessie Teh writes on issues happening in schools today. She is currently researching the English school system in Malaysia and also the affects so the many different types of international schools in the country. To learn more about international schools in Malaysia, visit POWIIS .

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Formative And Summative Assessment

Many a times it's observed that a student who scores great marks the whole year is unable to replicate the same level of performance during the final year end exams. The reasons are plenty, but is it the right way to assess a student? What about the good scores s/he generated in the earlier exams, during the year? Should one single exam hold a student's fate?

Assessment of a child is not an easy task; Gibbs Nuttal Et Al (1992) defines assessment as, "Assessment on education is the process of gathering, interpreting, recording and using information about pupils responses to an educational task". But this definition is not the way assessment is done in majority of schools; it's about completing the curriculum via lectures and then expecting the child to memorize everything that has been taught and score well, popularly referred to as Summative Assessment (SA) in which there is no feedback and active learning involved from the side of the student. To solve this problem and create better learning opportunities for students CBSE made Formative Assessment (FA) mandatory in schools from the 2009-2010 sessions.

NCERT describes FA as "a tool used by the teacher to continuously monitor student progress in a non-threatening, supportive environment. It involves regular descriptive feedback, a chance for the students to reflect on their performance, take advice and improve upon it."A total opposite of SA, in FA the teacher measures and then nurtures a child's ability to understand, learn and apply by asking questions like - Are the students learning what they need to learn? Do they understand what they are learning? How can I help them be letter learners? FA works in diagnostic and remedial forms, where diagnostic is giving students different kind of assessment test like aptitude tests, reflective writing and observational skills and find out where the core problem in learning rests. In the remedial form the teacher gives a feedback to students,as to why do they lack behind and also provide solutions to support their improvement.

The Curriculum Company (TCC) provides teachers with a teachers' companion book which helps teachers to conduct assessment efficiently. In the teachers' companion TCC provides FA techniques after every chapter to evaluate the understanding capacity, analytical and creating skills of a student by various methods- activities, projects and classroom discussions. Even SA is dealt in a manner, such that it forces a child to think beyond the obvious, the question banks provided are designed keeping in mind that the idea is not just to test the child on the 'What' of a concept but to encourage students to think on the 'How' of every concept. This helps the teacher to understand their students better and create a culture of athinking classroom.

The reinforcement of FA doesn't let the importance of SA disappear; both the assessment forms go hand in hand to create a better learning platform for students. Students are still given end term examinations as per the SA format (SA - I and SA - II), but students simultaneously undergo FA throughout the year where their day to day learning and development can be scrutinized and evolved.

TCC provide formative summative and objective assessment to teachers to evaluate the skills of students. TCC experts in CCE solution and CCE implementation.

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