School uniforms need shared responsibility

A school uniform is the sort of thing adults argue about only when something is wrong: the sleeves are too short, the fabric is too thin, the price seems too high. Few people would put it alongside the bigger questions of education.

Yet in several Chinese cities, a change in how school uniforms are bought is raising a bigger question: What should a school actually be responsible for?

In 2018, schools in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, no longer organized uniform purchases, allowing students and parents to buy school uniforms themselves through shops, supermarkets and online platforms.

More recently, Zhuhai has barred schools from organizing purchases, while Haikou, in Hainan province, has introduced a citywide uniform design and allowed qualified companies to produce and sell it.

The change may sound mundane, but it is a useful test of where the boundaries of a public service should lie.

For years, schools handling uniforms was convenient. Schools collected sizes, placed bulk orders and distributed the clothes, while parents simply paid and moved on.

But convenience can also lead institutions to take on responsibilities that aren't essential to their core mission.

Schools are primarily institutions with teachers, classrooms and an educational mission. They need not become retailers simply because every student needs a shirt.

When schools spend less time dealing with suppliers, orders and complaints, they have more time for the work only a school can do: teaching, supporting students and communicating with families.

Stepping back from a transaction does not have to mean stepping away from responsibility. It can mean putting responsibility in the right place.

That does not mean leaving families to fend for themselves.

Once parents are free to choose where to buy a uniform, they also have to compare products, check sizes and deal with after-sales problems. Choice is useful only when people have enough information to make it. A parent should not need to become a textile expert to know whether a school uniform meets basic safety and quality requirements.

That is where government has a different job to do.

If schools no longer act as buyers, public authorities still need to set clear standards, make product information accessible and police the market.

Quality and safety cannot be left to the luck of individual shoppers. Nor should a wider choice of suppliers become an excuse for opaque pricing or poor quality products.

In other words, giving families more choice should not mean giving public institutions less responsibility. It should change the kind of responsibility they bear.

This is perhaps the most useful lesson in the uniform reform. Good public services are not necessarily those in which an institution does everything for people. They are often the ones in which different parties do what they are best capable of.

Families know their children's needs better than a school purchasing office does. Schools know how to educate children better than a supplier does. Businesses are better at making and selling clothes than either schools or government agencies. And government is better placed to set the rules and make sure they are followed.

The challenge is to make these roles work together without allowing one to become an excuse for another to do nothing.

Giving families a say in an everyday matter such as clothing is important. A child's education is full of rules, and many of them are necessary. But education should also teach young people how to make choices within rules, understand consequences and take responsibility for those choices.

A school uniform may seem too small a subject for such a lesson. Perhaps that is precisely why it is useful.

Large reforms are often discussed in terms of systems and strategies, but everyday reforms reveal whether those ideas actually work in real life.

If parents can buy a uniform more conveniently, schools can focus on education, and regulators can keep standards high without micromanaging every purchase.

This seemingly minor change in procurement can lead to a more effective division of labor.

The point is not that schools should simply do less. It is that they should spend their time doing what cannot be done by anyone else.

A uniform has to be worn. The question is simply who needs to decide how it gets into a child's wardrobe — and who needs to make sure that, whichever route the family takes, the result is safe, fair and fit for school.

Sometimes better governance begins with knowing when to step in, when to set a rule and when to let families choose.

Wu Ni is a researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences; and Yuan Yu is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education, Tianjin Normal University.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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