Uniforms in Australian Schools

My first few days in Australia have been spent shadowing teachers at Brauer College (a year 7-12 school) in Warrnambool, Victoria. The first thing that really struck me at Brauer College was the emphasis on uniforms in Australian Schools. Even public schools have strict uniform policies, though some teachers are pretty lax on enforcement. 

On my first day, I noticed students being spoken to for wearing the “wrong” socks for their uniform, and one girl got a talking-to for having an extra piercing in her ear, to the point that she was sent home for the day. I wonder what is the benefit in these rules? Why is it so important to have them conform? I can appreciate that the uniform makes it difficult to tell the socioeconomic status of the students, especially in a school that is known for having a lot of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, but prohibiting piercings and a few other things won’t help achieve that goal.

I have never been a fan of sending students home from school, unless they are somehow harming the well-being of others around them. I would be interested in learning more about the logic behind these actions.

Before arriving in Australia I had heard that, in general, the men here were very chauvinistic. It’s not entirely been my experience with the adults, but the boys in the school are definitely more rowdy. And while classrooms are mixed gender, they do tend to separate into boys and girls, sometimes intentionally. If there are an uneven number of students, the extra student is placed in a group that is the same gender as them. 

This all leads to so many questions. I wonder if the separation of genders is related to the uniforms. Are gender roles more enforced here than in Canada overall? Does this lead to less understanding between men and women or is it just a symptom of it? If students are given very tight control of what they wear as boys and girls, how will that affect their gender identity? I wonder how open these schools are to transgendered students and how they would integrate them, given the tight uniform controls?

Warrnambool is a fairly rural place. Are things different in larger cities, or are the gender roles enforced just as strictly?

Just a few musings on uniforms in Australia.