Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Joining us today we have Shirley Sweeney, head of the school uniform policy team in the Department of Education; and Margaret Rose McNaughton, director of transport and food in schools in the Department of Education. You are both very welcome to the Committee.

We are keen to hear the departmental input on the guidelines. Obviously, they are the outworking of the Bill that has just passed. We have had discussions around the guidelines for a long time, so, now that we have them available, we want to have a chance to look at them in a bit more detail. We thank you for your time. I do not know how much of a presentation you intend to make on the guidelines, but I am happy to hand over to you for any initial remarks that you want to make. You have up to 10 minutes, and we will then move into questions and answers. Over to you.

Ms Margaret Rose McNaughton (Department of Education): Thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about the school uniforms guidelines. They were issued to schools on 12 November and were shared with the Education Committee, I think, later that day. They follow not only the Bill but detailed letters from the permanent secretary in September 2024 and again in October 2025. The October 2025 letter specifically stated that it was:

that schools

Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, we will reissue the guidelines. They will go to grant-aided and independent primary and post-primary schools. At that time, we will be able to confirm to schools that the guidelines are statutory; at the moment, they are non-statutory. The duty on the manager of the school to adhere to the guidelines will apply the day after the Bill receives Royal Assent.

I will talk about how the guidelines evolved. We worked on draft guidelines throughout the Bill's scrutiny. The first set of draft guidelines was produced in relation to the Bill as introduced, not with an assumption that it would not be amended but, rather, to ensure that, once the Bill passed Final Stage, a set of guidelines would be ready for schools in order to assist them. The first draft was tested with a group of school principals and shared with the Departmental Solicitor's Office (DSO). Both sets of feedback indicated that greater clarity was needed, and the DSO's advice was particularly helpful on how the guidelines could be structured. That advice led directly to the layout of the guidelines that have been issued.

The guidelines differ substantially from those that were originally envisaged. The first draft followed the existing non-statutory guidance approach, setting out information across a wide range of areas in the form of written text. The guidelines that have been issued to schools are structured differently. They provide much more focused information. That recognises that the guidelines are there to give effect to the requirements in the final Bill and need to provide clear information for schools on what is required of them. The Bill requires certain matters to be provided for in guidelines and places a duty on the manager of the school to adhere to them. The guidelines are what schools must follow when it comes to how their uniform policy is devised and what it can require of parents and pupils.

The Committee will be aware that there are 16 guidelines. Each is numbered and followed by supporting explanatory information in the format of "What this means". That information is to assist schools, which are responsible for ensuring that their policy adheres to the guidelines. In turn, the guidelines cover what the Bill requires schools to include, as well as other information that the Bill enables them to include. Any cap will be consulted on to make sure that unintended consequences are avoided and that a cap is agile and effective. We are writing up the consultation and are at the stage of considering the questions that need to be asked in it. We will then need to take a decision about the timing of the consultation, particularly as we are coming up to school holiday periods.

Of the 16 guidelines, 15 are written in terms of what the manager of a grant-aided school "must" do. The other guideline, guideline 9, states that schools "should" support the lending of uniforms to pupils. At this stage, requiring schools to lend uniforms might generate costs that the Department does not wish to insist on, especially given the financial pressures facing the education system, including schools.

The Bill requires the guidelines to cover consultation, reviews, unfair costs aspects, comfort and practicality, the nature and adequacy of the uniform relating to the curriculum, for example, play-based learning, affordability and accessibility, including value for money, lending uniforms, use of clothing banks, multiple suppliers and the publication of information. The Bill also enables the guidelines to cover particular factors for uniform policies to take account of, transitional arrangements, what the Department considers as reasonable or unreasonable, restricting the number of branded items and placing a cost cap once section 5 has commenced, and it allows the guidelines to differentiate between schools and pupils, depending on year groups.

We have included an introductory section that explains the legal duty on schools to adhere to the guidelines. That section confirms that it remains a matter for schools to choose whether to have a uniform or not, but, if they do, what that uniform consists of, and it is clear that the requirements of the guidelines must be followed if a school decides to have a school uniform.

The Minister introduced the Bill to address the affordability of school uniforms, and that, as well as comfort and practicality, is therefore fundamental to the requirements that schools must follow when devising or reviewing their uniform policy.

I will not go through each of the guidelines. I am sure that you will want to go through those during members' questions. I will just say that, in addition to the guidelines that are written, there will be a consultation on the cap, which, as I said, we are already finalising. We are also working on monitoring arrangements, and we intend to use an electronic method for collecting school-level information, which will provide information in a format that we can analyse. Additionally, the information that we seek has been aligned with the information required to be published by a school in order to keep it manageable. Any information required on top of that will be to ensure that the Department has the information that it needs for the triennial report to meet the requirements of the final Bill.

As to what the guidelines will mean on the ground, logically, we consider that a school will set out its rationale for the uniform items that it wishes to include in its policy, alongside the cost of each item and where the uniform can be purchased from, noting that any agreement with a supplier needs to demonstrate value for money for parents. It must then consult its parents, pupils and anyone else whom the school considers to be relevant. It will finalise its policy based on the consultation and publish that information alongside any other requirements of guideline 12.

The guidelines ensure that affordability, comfort, practicality and more underpin each school's uniform policy. The Bill ensures that any school found not to be adhering to the guidelines can be directed to do so. We look forward, therefore, to seeing the positive impact that the guidance will have for families who are struggling with the cost of uniform requirements.

I will pass over to the Committee for questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Margaret Rose. There is a lot that I could ask, but there are two things that I want to cover. One is around the timings. I have rehearsed it so many times, but it still remains unclear to me. It seems that there are two statutory requirements that may be pulling against each other. There is the date that the schools need to get their policies published in their prospectuses, and then there is the requirement to adhere to the legislation. As far as I can tell, at the point when schools will be publishing their prospectuses, the Bill may not have Royal Assent or may have just received Royal Assent. It would afford schools no time to do all the things that they need to do for a revised uniform policy, such as consultation and engagement with suppliers. It is my understanding from engagement with them that suppliers have ordered their stock. Suppliers are telling me that, if a school approaches them now to say that its policy has changed, they are in trouble because the ordering cycle is such that they have already done their orders. How will that work? If a policy goes in that is not compliant with the guidelines, but it is compliant with the guidelines at the point at which it was published, which is also a legislative requirement for schools, but it did not have legal effect at that stage, will the Department be directing schools to go back and revisit the policy? How do you do that at this point in the school year and in the cycle of prospectus publishing?

Ms McNaughton: That was the purpose of the letter that was issued in September 2024. We were very clear in that letter —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): But we did not have guidelines then; we now have those, and that is what has the legal effect.

Ms McNaughton: That is right, but the letter itself set out what was likely to be in the Bill. The letter included a specific point about suppliers.

They have known for the past year that this was coming. I am not aware that any prospectuses have been published yet.

Mrs Shirley Sweeney (Department of Education): Some may have been. That is why we have been keen in all the correspondence to flag that nothing should be published in a prospectus that would not align with what we anticipate. You are absolutely right, Chair, that, until the Bill receives Royal Assent, the guidelines are not statutory. However, the Department has been clear with schools in all communications that this will now be in effect for the 2026-27 school year. The day after the Bill receives Royal Assent, the legislation will come into effect and the guidelines will be statutory.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I still maintain that we are in a scenario where it feels unclear that schools must have something published by this date but that does not give us enough time to do the work to change the policy. That aside, and I know that you have a different view with the earlier letter having gone out, the question then is this: what work will the Department do once all the prospectuses are published? Will there be proactive work to look at the policies and ask, "Are we content that they are compliant?", or is it a case of sit back and wait to see whether anybody raises a concern? The first year is almost the acid test. The Minister has made a big point that it will all be done by September 2026 and we will see the difference. Will there be proactive monitoring from day 1 about what is in those new policies?

Ms McNaughton: Our intention is to look at the prospectuses, but I was not expecting them to have all the areas covered. Our thoughts are that prospectuses will lay out the general school uniform policy for parents, but schools will still have to carry out their consultation process with parents, because they certainly will not have time to do their consultation between now and some time in January, which is, I think, the final date for their prospectuses. Over the past year, some schools have already been consulting with parents. Yes, we will look at their prospectuses to make sure that they have not asked for anything that is absolutely not consistent with the Bill. However, it will only be as they finalise their consultations and start to publish their policies online that we will be able to start really monitoring.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will see how that pans out.

There are many questions that I could ask, but I want to make sure that everyone has time. I will ask about the status of some of the language in the guidelines. I think that we would all agree that the main outworking of the Bill was that guidelines would be created that schools must adhere to. That is the legal impact of the Bill: schools must adhere to the guidelines. What do we do then about language in the guidelines that is framed differently? We have a set of guidelines that schools must adhere to, but there are lots of references to things that schools should do. What is the legal status of those "shoulds" in the guidelines? If it is something that they should do in a document that they must adhere to, do we just treat that as being that they must do that or not?

Mrs Sweeney: We took legal advice throughout, and the language is important because statutory guidelines differ from non-statutory guidance. However, the legal advice kept bringing us back to the language in the Bill. The Bill, as you correctly said, Chair, sets out the powers, the duties and what must happen. It does not mean that every word in the guidelines has to be directive. The guidelines that we would be looking to are those that are numbered, with explanatory information below. There may be alternative ways for schools, depending on circumstances, to ensure that uniforms are affordable for families on the lowest incomes and do not impose unfair costs. That is what is most critical, and they must achieve that. What we are not doing is saying, "To do that, you must". That is what we will be looking at when analysing adherence.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Looking at guideline 1 as an example, it goes straight in on affordability. It sets out that uniforms must be affordable. That is great, and we all agree that policies must ensure that uniforms are affordable. However, then, there are things on which schools seem to be able to pick and choose. For example:

That is a "should be" equitable.

The guidelines talk about a range of ways to measure affordability, saying that schools may want to consider free school meals entitlement or may want to look at other aspects of household income. They may want to look at using the school uniform grant as a threshold, or they may want to look at it being 5% of household income. For an awful lot in there, I think that a parent reading the guidelines may think, "I am not sure how that is going to be set, and for whom is it affordable?". There is a concern that schools now seem to have a huge amount of latitude in assessing what, they think, is affordable, because the guidelines say that they "might want to consider", but overall they must ensure that they are affordable. If we are not clear about what affordable means, which is a discussion that we have had throughout the process, I am concerned that parents are left with very little certainty. Schools are potentially left with very little certainty about how they are meant to be defining affordable.

Mrs Sweeney: The glossary defines lower income households in the context of eligibility for free school meals, and that is what the references mean throughout the guidelines. If it is affordable for the families who are eligible for free school meals, logically, it is affordable for the remainder of the school.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): The other side of that is that, if it assessed as not affordable for a lower income household, it would be in the space of a direction being issued. Is that right?

Mrs Sweeney: Ultimately, yes.

Ms McNaughton: Yes, if they have not met guideline 1.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Guideline 1 is clear that it needs to be affordable for lower income households as defined in the glossary, which is the category for those entitled to free school meals. If that is demonstrated not to be the case, the schools will be in breach of the guidelines.

Mrs Sweeney: We would undertake an assessment under the power of direction in clause 8 of the Bill and go through the steps, which include engaging with the school to obtain its views. The Committee will be very familiar with the fact that the Department is required to give a direction if the school is found to be materially not adhering to the guidelines. Affordability is the reason for the Minister's introducing the Bill, so that is a material point.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is very important. Schools will be concerned about making sure that they get it right, and parents will want to be assured that schools will get it right. The clear position is about affordability for lower income households as is clearly defined in the guidelines, and we will keep a close eye on how that rolls out. Currently, my assessment is that many school uniform policies would not meet that threshold, and I hope to see that change. We shall see.

Mr Sheehan: Many of us were totally underwhelmed when we eventually saw the guidelines. Before the summer, when the Committee was scrutinising the Bill, you appeared in front of the Committee a number of times and told us that the guidelines were imminent and that we would have them the following week or within days. In a private meeting, you told us that, when we saw the guidelines, we would realise that there was no need for amendments. Was it genuinely your intention to provide the Committee with the draft guidelines?

Ms McNaughton: As you said, I have been here a number of times. Yes, at that point in time, I thought that we could provide the Committee with our draft guidelines. At that point, I had not shared those with any of the schools or the departmental solicitors. I said at the time that the guidelines were not forthcoming because I wanted to share them with the schools. When the guidelines came back, it was clear that the first draft was not going to be of any help to the Committee in scrutinising the Bill.

Mr Sheehan: How did you know that, Margaret Rose?

Ms McNaughton: What we have now is completely different from what we had originally drafted. What we had originally drafted was based on the current non-statutory guidelines. At that point, I was not aware that, when you are writing statutory guidelines, a very different language is used. Those guidelines have to stand up in court.

Mr Sheehan: But are they not the same issues? Are they not about affordability, equality and so on? For example, was there anything in the guidelines that you were drafting about the right of girls to be able to wear trousers, or were there any issues around equality? Were they ever in your original guidelines?

Ms McNaughton: Not that I can remember. There was nothing as specific as that. We did not even have anything in it about what a lower income household was, so we could not —.

Mr Sheehan: Let us stay on the issue of equality for girls. Did you not think that it was important to have that in your guidelines?

Ms McNaughton: We did not put anything as specific as that in the guidelines that I can remember, because I am going back to the first draft of those.

Mr Sheehan: You got sight of the amendments that we were proposing, and one was about giving girls the right to wear trousers. Even at that point, did you not consider that that should be incorporated in the guidelines that you were drafting?

Ms McNaughton: At that point, our view was that there is no barrier in the Bill to schools offering girls the option of wearing trousers. It is there.

Mr Sheehan: We are talking about giving girls a right, not giving schools an option to decide whether they will allow girls to wear trousers, but you never considered that.

Mrs Sweeney: As we have said, all the equality legislation applies. The annex to the existing non-statutory guidance sets that out. You will see that it is reflected as links etc in the annex to the guidelines. Therefore, we always felt that the broader equality pieces were there. That was still reflected in the very first set of draft guidelines.

It was never the Department's intention to start being so prescriptive to schools. Through the Assembly stages, the Minister has said that there is a balance there in respect of the autonomy of schools to decide their uniform, while ensuring that there is not that —.

Mr Sheehan: Should there be a balance in respect of equality?

Mrs Sweeney: Equality legislation applies. Where we see it working, though, in practice, is that, in the consultation process, the pupils will be told, "Here is the rationale for the uniform: comfort, practicality, the adequacy to support learning, play-based learning and outdoor learning" and all those aspects, and the pupils will have the opportunity to say, "We wish to wear trousers", all of which will be published —.

Mr Sheehan: You will know that the Committee is bringing forward its own Bill on giving girls the right to wear trousers.

Margaret Rose, you said that you did not give us the guidelines because you knew that they would be of no use to the Committee in its scrutiny. If they had been of use, would you have given them to us?

Ms McNaughton: If they had been?

Mr Sheehan: Yes.

Ms McNaughton: If they had reflected properly what was —.

Mr Sheehan: Let me just repeat the question: you said that you did not give us the guidelines because you knew that they would not be of any use in our scrutiny. If you had believed that they would have been of use in our scrutiny, would you have given them to us?

Ms McNaughton: At that point, I would have been going through the normal processes in the Department. I had not asked the Minister if —.

Mr Sheehan: Let me just stop you. You are saying that you did not give them to us because they would have been of no use to us in our scrutiny. The Minister actually mocked the Committee at Consideration Stage of the Bill, and both of you were sitting in the Chamber at the time, as far as I can recall. He mocked the Committee saying that it was never getting sight of the draft guidelines. Did you hear him saying that?

Ms McNaughton: I do not know. Honestly —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Can you give a brief response, and then we will draw a line under it?

Mrs Sweeney: The guidelines were more complicated, but with regard to the sequencing of sharing or not sharing with the Committee, it was in genuine good faith. Just to be clear, there was absolutely no intention to mislead anyone.

At the point at which we thought that we would share them with you, they had not been tested. We had not asked for the Minister's view. The Minister's view, as he clearly stated in the Chamber, was that the guidelines should "follow the law."

Mr Sheehan: I have just one final comment, Chair, thanks. Although both of you told us that we would see the draft guidelines — you told us that they were imminent and that we would see them within days — it is now absolutely clear that we were never going to see them, because the Minister stated that clearly in the Chamber. Anyway, thanks for your evidence.

Mr Burrows: I have a couple of questions. The first is on coats, because I get a lot of questions from constituents about them. I asked the Minister about that on 15 November. Guideline 3 says that pupils should be allowed to wear a "generic coat" to school, and guideline 6 says that they can wear a "non-branded coat". The non-statutory guidelines reiterate that by saying that it is non-statutory, which almost confuses issues for me rather than providing extra reinforcement. Can I ask one straight question first? As it stands, is there a right in legislation, under the guidelines, for every pupil to wear a non-branded generic coat to and from school when it is raining? That is a yes or a no.

Mrs Sweeney: When the guidelines come into operation, yes, all pupils should be permitted to wear —.

Mr Burrows: Show me each line as though we were in a judicial review. Imagine that the school has not done that and I say to you, "Point me to where it says that the school must do it".

Mrs Sweeney: I think that the terminology of "reasonable" and "unreasonable" comes in there. Paragraph 45 says that:

You may be aware that the terminology of "reasonable" and "unreasonable" has a legal context.

Mr Burrows: The principle of Wednesbury unreasonable.

Mrs Sweeney: It is Wednesbury unreasonable. It is referenced specifically for schools at the outset that it has a particular meaning and weight and that we can set out in guidelines under clause 2 what we determine to be reasonable. That is the Wednesbury unreasonable principle.

Mr Burrows: It is not, because the Wednesbury unreasonable test is what the man on the Clapham omnibus — the reasonable man in the street — would say is unreasonable, whereas this is what whoever has drafted the guidelines has said and what the judge has to say. A high barrier for unreasonableness is to say that a school, which is entitled to make its own decision, will then say, "You have to show that decision is unreasonable"; not that another option was reasonable but that that one was unreasonable.

The second level of a judicial review is whether it is unlawful for those guidelines to say that a school "shall" or "must" permit a pupil to wear a non-branded coat. We are setting ourselves up for a situation in which the school can say no and the parent then has to demonstrate that the school was acting unreasonably, which is an incredibly high threshold, because, as the judge has made clear many times in judicial review, "Even if I think that there is a better choice, it has to be demonstrably unreasonable". Why can the guidelines not simply say that a school "shall ensure" that every pupil can go to school and back in a non-branded coat?

Mrs Sweeney: I think that that is the intention. We can certainly —.

Mr Burrows: We are talking about law here, not a non-binding motion. Let us give clarity. I will put this on TikTok later. I do not mean that in any way — I just want to be able to tell pupils and parents what the legal position is. A lot of time has been spent drafting this, but I am no wiser now. Can a pupil go to school in the rain wearing any form of coat?

Ms McNaughton: That is the intention of that guideline, yes. As Shirley said, we have clearly said that the Department would consider it unreasonable for a school to say —.

Mr Burrows: It is not the Department's choice. If the school refuses, we have got a different Minister.

Mrs Sweeney: That is where the power of direction would come in. We would make an assessment about whether the school was —.

Mr Burrows: Why can you not just put it into legislation so that, when those guidelines come in and parents send their children to school, it is clear. I do not understand why, in legislation, we have doubt when we could have certainty. It is very easy to write, "Every school shall require that every pupil can attend school wearing a non-branded item of uniform" .That is very simple. Instead, we have two references to it, and then a reference to it in non-statutory guidelines that leaves people scratching their head and saying, "Well, I really don't know". Do you get my point?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Jon, you have made your point.

Mr Burrows: I have made my point.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is very clear. I am conscious that you said that you have two questions, and I am aware that our time is running out.

Mr Burrows: I actually have seven.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): If you want to get a second one in, you need to do it now. The point has been very clearly made.

Mr Burrows: Have shoes been incorporated into the calculation of what constitutes a reasonable cost for a school uniform?

Mrs Sweeney: Shoes form part of the definition in the Bill if they are referenced in the context of specific styles. Clause 10, which is headed "Meaning of clothing and styles", states, "references to clothing include footwear", so, broadly, yes.

Mr Burrows: What is a reasonable cost for shoes?

Ms McNaughton: In the earlier part of this year, we researched the cost of uniforms generally across a number of fairly well-known high-street stores, as well as some of the cheaper brands and a school uniform supplier. I have those costs here. From a very well-known high-street shop, you can get a total boy's uniform, excluding shoes at this point, for £90, and you can get a total girl's uniform for £93. That is at the higher end of those high-street stores. If you add shoes, it brings you up to probably £140 or £150, depending on the price of the shoes.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will invite Jon for a comment, and then we will need to move on to the next member.

Mr Burrows: We will stick with that. I have some other questions, but I will follow them up in questions for written answer to the Minister. We have run out of time, but thanks for that. We have established that there is not absolute clarity on school coats. We live in a very unseasonable climate —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): If there are further questions at the end of this session, we can see whether, through the Committee, we can raise them with the Department. We can feed that back at the end of the session.

Mr Burrows: I appreciate that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I agree with much of what Jon said about the fact that the guidelines felt as though there were an opportunity to deliver certainly. There is a clear imperative with "must adhere", and then there are areas where — we heard clear evidence on things such as coats — that clarity does not seem to be there. That will, unfortunately, be a disappointment to a lot of parents who are watching.

Mrs Guy: It is nice to see you again, ladies. You spent a lot of time here a few months ago. My line of questioning is similar to that of Jon and others. This was an opportunity for certainty. Parents will not sit and read the guidelines; they just want to feel their impact through what they pay for school uniforms. One of the things that came through strongly in our evidence concerned PE kits and branded PE kits. I am worried that some of what is in the guidelines will create a divide between schools and among pupils. If we look at paragraph 49, we see that primary schools are allowed to have branded PE kits as long as they are optional. However, there is a sense that, if the majority of pupils in a classroom decided to take up that option, the kids who do not do so would be singled out, because they cannot afford the school PE kit. Do you understand how that could create a detrimental situation for some in a classroom?

Mrs Sweeney: Yes, I understand your point, Michelle.

Mrs Guy: You could have just ensured that there was no branded PE kit in primary schools, but you opted not to do that.

Mrs Sweeney: Again, it is about trying not to be too directive at this point until we see whether there is an issue. The evidence was that, although some branded PE kits are creeping in at primary school, it is predominantly at post-primary schools where the cost of such kits have been a big issue for parents.

Mrs Guy: Let us look at post-primary schools, then. You have said that post-primary schools should keep branded items to a minimum. You have also said that it is:

What is "a large number"?

Ms McNaughton: We have not defined "a large number", because —.

Mrs Guy: Could it be 10 items?

Ms McNaughton: It could be 10 items, yes, but the consultation paper that we are writing on the cap includes the question of whether it is a cap on the number of branded items, a financial cap or both. We will be able to be more definitive once the consultation on the cap is completed and the results are in. At this point, we are not really able to define "a large number". In general, however, it is probably anything over three or four items.

Mrs Sweeney: Part of the reason for that is that, as the guidelines state, we will be looking at the cost to parents. If a school chooses to have a large number or a number of branded items but brings in a subsidy or operates on a lending basis, that is not a cost to the parent. It is about balancing allowing a school to operate its uniform policy and ensuring that that is not at a cost to the parents. We have also stated that that does not preclude our defining "a large number" of branded items in future guidelines. That is the benefit of the guidelines being more agile, so if it becomes apparent that there is a big issue with schools requiring parents to pay for a large number of branded items, we can change them.

Mrs Guy: You can understand the concern about the vagueness of a lot of this the whole way through. It is not certain. Our concern was always that some schools will be minded to do school uniform policy well and consider affordability sincerely while others really will not. I am not sure that the guidelines will tackle that. When we look at the costs, we see that the key cost that usually comes through is that of the blazer. What would you expect the maximum cost of a blazer to be? Affordability was the key thing about the Bill, so what will the guidelines do to clarify what you consider to be reasonable or affordable in that context?

Ms McNaughton: I will go back to the research that we carried out. Again, blazers are available from popular high-street brands for £34.

Mrs Guy: Do you see that as a maximum?

Ms McNaughton: We are not putting a cap on that at the moment. We are not saying that there is a maximum cost for a blazer; it is the overall cost of the entire uniform that matters.

Mrs Guy: It is not clear when you will step in to say that someone is in breach of the guidelines. There is so much latitude for schools and so many grey areas that it is hard to see when you will step in. Take the word "reasonable": what is a reasonable amount for a primary-school uniform? Have you given any thought at all to what the figures will look like across the piece and not just for individual schools? The guidance mentions 5% of monthly income, which might work for a school with parents who have a high income, but that is not helpful for kids whose families are on a lower income. Throughout this process, the worry has been that there is an opportunity to create some stigma, and the lack of clarity means that schools that want to do what they want will continue to do that. There is no sense of what "reasonable" figures are for a primary-school uniform in particular, which means that I am not sure how much impact the guidelines can possibly have on affordability, which, as we were told repeatedly, is what the whole thing is about.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I ask the officials to respond, and we will then move on to the next member.

Ms McNaughton: Up to now, clear data has not been available to tell us what the costs of a school uniform are for each school. As schools publish their policies and we gather that data, we will be much clearer on what costs are associated with each school's uniform.

Mrs Guy: Very quickly, the bit at the back of the guidelines that has caught us all is the section titled, "Practical Ways Schools Can Reduce Uniform Costs", which is not part of the statutory guidelines. That felt quite affronting. If that is the stuff that will practically reduce costs, it is really hard to understand why it is not in the actual guidelines. I will leave it there.

Mrs Sweeney: May I quickly respond?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Please respond, but briefly.

Mrs Sweeney: On your previous point, the 5% limit is set in the context of lower-income households. It relates to them and not to the general population. We are also mindful that the guidance needs to address prospective parents and pupils, not just existing ones. I was struggling to find this earlier, but, under guideline 1, paragraph 20 sets out the fact that there should not be a "material difference" if options are available. We are mindful of visible differences between pupils if some have more uniform kit than others.

Mrs Guy: I just thought that that felt slightly like trolling. You have told us all the things that you could do to make costs lower, but you will not put them in the guidelines. Why even put that in there at all? You "could" make people do some things. Anyway, that was just a personal bugbear that came to me when I saw the guidance.

Mr Baker: Thank you. My first question is a quick yes or no to follow up on what Pat said about the guidelines. Did the Minister intervene at any time to say that we could not have the guidelines?

Ms McNaughton: I had not asked the Minister. At the time, I said that you would get the guidelines. I had not even asked him at that point.

Mr Baker: Did that happen at any point? I ask that because we were getting reassurances from the Department that we would get them, and then, that went on. It was not just once but a number of times that you said that it was "imminent" or coming "in a week". Did the Minister step in at any stage?

Ms McNaughton: Not in those earlier stages. When, eventually, I got all the information —.

Mr Baker: Did the Minister, at any stage, step in and say that we could not have view of the guidelines?

Ms McNaughton: It was not a case of him saying, "You cannot have them"; it was more a case of —.

Mr Baker: That is fine. If he did not intervene, that is fine. I just wanted clarity on that. That is 100%.

I will move on to the affordability side. The paper on that really contradicts the evidence that we took sitting here throughout the whole scrutiny of the Bill and even the work that I have done by myself in West Belfast. I went to schools from one corner to the other, and I found that, for the blazer alone, there was no blazer at £35. They actually averaged between £80 and £145.

Ms McNaughton: Was that for a blazer with a crest?

Mr Baker: Yes, a blazer with a crest. That is what the school requires.

Ms McNaughton: The figures that we have —.

Mr Baker: Your figures say £35. That is some difference.

Ms McNaughton: That is not for a blazer with a crest. That is a plain blazer that you can then have a sew-on crest for.

Mr Baker: The schools do not allow that.

Ms McNaughton: The point is that they now have to consider allowing it.

Mr Baker: They have to "consider" it, but they will not do it.

Ms McNaughton: They have to prove to us that they have ensured that their uniforms are affordable for families who are on the lowest incomes.

Mr Baker: Those are our amendments that we introduced. We mandated for that, yet you said in this very room, that, once we saw your guidelines, there would be no need for our amendments. Again, that is what it boils down to. We could be sitting here this time next year talking about the cost of blazers.

By the way, from the work that I have done in West Belfast, I have found that those costs are not that bad compared with costs that we heard about in some of the evidence. We heard that some schools in Belfast are charging well in excess of £200 for blazers. Some uniforms are as high as £800, but the bog-standard, average costs — that means all in, with PE kits and extracurricular requirements and all that — came in at around £300 to £400. That excludes lots of children from all aspects of education. In September next year, we will have no guarantees that the cost of a uniform will be anywhere near being affordable.

Mrs Sweeney: The guidelines require the school to provide a rationale for any branded items that it wishes to include and to consult specifically with the parents and pupils on that. Again, that consultation has to come back to the lower-income households.

Mr Baker: What is affordable? What should I expect if I am buying uniforms for my children next year? Let me use my daughter as an example. I paid close to £300 this year. Should I expect to pay £100 next year?

Ms McNaughton: We can look at the lowest-income household for any of the schools. From memory, every single school has at least 1% of its pupils on free school meals. The figure for the free school meals threshold is £15,390, and 5% of that is something like £64. When you add the uniform grant to that, you have — what? I cannot add it up — £87·60 plus your £64. That means that you are up to £150-odd. That would be a reasonable figure for a uniform.

Mr Baker: For a whole uniform? I should be expecting to pay —.

Ms McNaughton: That is for a generic uniform. You should remember that, in those cases, schools cannot be asking for woollen blazers.

Mr Baker: Some of the blazers have nice wee additions. That will not change. I will not name any schools, but I guarantee that that will not change one iota: not with your guidelines; and not with this Bill.

Ms McNaughton: They will have to show that they have met guideline 1 and that the uniforms are affordable for families who are on the lowest income.

Mr Baker: What happens if no one in the school is on free school meals?

Ms McNaughton: I have poor hearing.

Mr Baker: If no one at the school is on free school meals, does that change what you interpret as being affordable?

Ms McNaughton: At the moment, every school has at least 1% of its pupils on free school meals.

Mr Baker: I am just throwing that out there.

Mrs Sweeney: The definition does not relate to an individual school; it defines lower-income households as those that are eligible for free school meals. They do not have to be in that school.

Mr Baker: Sorry, Chair, I know that I am going over time. This time next year, therefore, schools should not charge anywhere near £100 for a blazer alone, and that is me lowballing the figure. That should not happen. Does that mean that, next June, if I stand at a school and take pictures of pupils' blazers, I could then say, "The Minister will guarantee that those blazers will cost only £34"?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will let the officials respond to that point, and then we will move on to the next member.

Ms McNaughton: The overall cost of the uniform has to be affordable. Therefore, a school could choose to have a more expensive blazer and lower-cost trousers, shirts and skirts.

Mr Baker: The blazer alone costs £150, and I am lowballing the figure.

Ms McNaughton: Sorry?

Mr Baker: The blazer costs £150 in my constituency.

Ms McNaughton: Generic blazers are available.

Mr Baker: I do not think that you are getting my point, Margaret Rose.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will move on to the next member.

Mrs Mason: Do you wholeheartedly believe that the current guidance will secure a girl's right to wear trousers as part of their uniform?

Ms McNaughton: Neither the guidance nor the Bill provides any barrier to a school's giving that option.

Mrs Mason: I am not asking about the schools, Margaret Rose, with all due respect. I am asking this: do you believe that the guidance secures a girl's right to wear trousers to school?

Ms McNaughton: It is not as clear as that in either the guidance or the Bill. However, if, when carrying out their consultation, schools find that girls feel really strongly about wearing trousers, that needs to be brought up. If parents feel strongly about girls wearing trousers, they need to be bring it up in the consultation. If that has been a big issue for a school during the consultation, it needs to explain why those views have not been taken on board. It will be the same for any other aspect of the uniform.

Mrs Mason: Would you accept that, as part of the uniform policy, a school will still be able to not allow girls to wear trousers, even if the guidance is in place?

Mrs Sweeney: It would be very strange for a school to do that, Cathy.

Mrs Mason: It is not strange at the minute.

Mrs Sweeney: There are no statutory guidelines. All the information will need to be published with the statutory guidelines, including specific information on how the consultation engagement was conducted and its outcomes. It all ties back to the school's rationale, because that will be published. What was its rationale for turning down that request from a girl? The schools are competing for pupils.

Mrs Mason: The school could still provide a rationale, and, ultimately, a girl would not have the basic human right to wear trousers or equality in doing so. Am I right in saying that?

Ms McNaughton: Is that rationale reasonable or unreasonable? What is the rationale for not allowing it?

Mrs Mason: Who will decide whether it is reasonable?

Ms McNaughton: It is for the Department to decide the reasonableness.

Mrs Mason: You mentioned the links in the guidance to the equality legislation. I think that that was in an answer to Pat. Were those in previous guidance?

Mrs Sweeney: Information about all the equality legislation was in previous guidance.

Mrs Mason: It was in previous guidance for schools, and some schools chose to ignore it and make it a part of their uniform policy that girls had to wear skirts.

Ms McNaughton: That is in the current non-statutory guidance, but there are many other things in it that schools choose to ignore. That is why we have gone down the route of trying to put it on a statutory footing.

Mrs Mason: Yes, but there is still nothing statutory in the guidance that will ensure that girls can wear trousers to school. Is that what we are ultimately saying?

Ms McNaughton: It is not in the Bill, and it is not specifically in the guidelines.

Mrs Mason: It is not in the guidelines, either. OK, that is fine. Thank you.

Mr Brooks: I was not going to come in, but there is a point that is worth exploring. Elected members, understandably, have focused on the idea of a cap and want to be able to say that a school uniform will not cost any more than a certain amount. During the Committee process, there seems to have been an effort to put that into primary legislation. That is a difficult thing to do, and it should not necessarily be done. There is an argument that it could be done through the guidelines. What challenges are brought about by putting down a number? It would have to be dynamic because, as we have seen in the past few years, an item can cost a certain amount one year but significantly more the next, so there will have to be flexibility. It sounds to me like you are doing work and research on the numbers. As I am sure that everyone would agree, that is good practice so that if we do put numbers down, even in guidelines, they will have been properly researched and will reflect reality. There is a temptation for elected politicians to want a number to be able to put it up on TikTok, Facebook or anywhere else, and say, "This is what we've achieved". That is not how policymaking always works.

Ms McNaughton: There is real danger in putting a number in the legislation. First, it will not be easy to change in the legislation. The figure will change year-on-year. Our consultation document will try to address how flexible we can be and how we set that rate. First of all, who sets the rate? In the first few months of next year, when uniform policies are published on school websites, we will have a much better understanding of the cost of each uniform. That alone will give us a good indication of the reality of some of the costs. Again, it will depend on whether the schools have started to adhere to our guidelines. Some costs will, presumably, still be high. If they are, we will not be taking those figures into account. We will be going for the average costs of the reasonable items that they have been asked for.

Mrs Sweeney: At an early stage, the Department received legal advice that we needed to be careful to not stray into competition law. The Competition and Markets Authority, which the Committee has heard evidence from, was clear with us that the most effective way to keep costs down is through open competition. There is the risk of unintended consequences. Events on the other side of the world can have an impact on costs. As policy officials, we are not able to predict the price of fabrics, shipping and all those things sitting here today. The consultation is the place to unpick some of that information and see what people's views are. It is about making sure that whatever is in place makes a difference and can be adapted if it is found that it needs to change.

Mr Brooks: I think that we all want a similar outcome. We should not lean in to the fact that something appears simple on the face of it and can be communicated much easier that way, because, when you look underneath, the situation is more complex, and you have outlined some of the issues. We were talking about school shoes earlier. I understand that school shoes are very expensive and are often left out of the equation. If you do a quick search, however, you will find types of black school shoes for under a tenner. Similarly, that is the case for other items. However, there will be a choice, and some people will, for various reasons, go for the branded or better quality product. You cannot stop that — it is the nature of the market — but there are options that allow people to keep the costs low, and we need to understand that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That brings this item to a close. There may be issues that members want to pick up on for further correspondence. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate that it is very early days for the guidelines. We will want to keep a close eye on how this pans out and what school uniform policies look like on the other side of Royal Assent, so no doubt we will hear from you again. We thank you for your time this afternoon.