MikeB4:
Fred99:
gzt: The vast majority of NZ schools are not particularly focused on dress standards. Most parents would find it a bit silly and annoying if that was the case. That may explain some of the differences in expectation. Short answer, it's a Kiwi thing.
My understanding is that the quaint concept of school uniforms has survived to this day for only a few reasons:
Snobbery value (as in the case of schools for children of the the well-to-do)
Fund-raising (in the case of the official uniform supply rort)
Expectation that it promotes some kind of "team" or "military" pride concept.
Very false assumptions that high-school age children would either go completely wild if there weren't uniforms or at least strict dress codes, or that kids would turn up in expensive designer clothes to flaunt wealth - some kind of socialist "leveler" thing - which even if it had merit - is completely futile. By about age 8 kids know what mommy dropping them off at the gates in a Porsche Cayenne GTS - means.
Our son went to high school where there weren't any dress code rules at all. Surprisingly few "went wild" - almost all just wore the normal clothes that teenagers wear. A very few had plenty of body piercings and wore some pretty radical teenage fashion (none of which ever offended me in the slightest), but as that had zero shock-impact and there was no need to "rebel" against a rule that didn't exist, there wasn't any problem for which a rule might have been needed.
I think your assumed reasons for uniforms in NZ are wrong, period.
Then please explain what you think the reasons could be.
(apart from "inertia" - hanging on to concepts from the past because it's "part of culture - just the way it is, always was, so is the way it should be")