Let’s Chill; Challenge for Active School Week

About ten years ago, my husband’s workplace brought in a policy where neckties and jackets were no longer considered required dress unless one was meeting with outside clients. It wasn’t a “Dress Down Friday”. It was a “Dress Up on Red Letter days”. In practice this meant hanging a suit or a jacket and tie on a hanger to throw on for those fancy meetings with clients to impress. Why? Heating and Cooling an office building is costly. By encouraging staff to dress comfortably and for the temperature and seasons, energy savings could be made with a knock-on positive effect on our climate. I call on Irish schools to emulate this good practice. It is great to see so many children in comfortable clothes participating in Active School Week; after so long working from home where so many of us have got used to comfortable workwear, let’s build back better; a tie is very smart and how nice to dress up on formal occasions! Apparently the men get “hot under the collar” when it is warm – no surprise – so let’s relax a little..chill…and make earth a little cooler! I know the worry is in schools that children enjoy comfortable wear that the parents won’t buy the formal uniform unless the children have to wear it every day but PE day or days. If children travel actively to school, every day can be an active day. It was such a good idea to make a separate school badge compulsory so that parents could buy good-value school jumpers and blazers. Perhaps we can have tie libraries for those dress-up days!