Is This A Hanging Offence?

So here I am, happily working with a class of children who only started school three weeks ago. Most people involved have played their part in helping these little treasures to adjust to pupildom [is that a word?] but I am not sure how the children will feel when they discover that this will be their way of life for the next fourteen years.

Carrying bookbags and lunchboxes, they arrive with Mums[Dads, Aunties, Grandparents, Older Siblings...] And because it is Autumn, they are all wearing their smart new winter school coats. 99% of the mums have put name tapes in, which is a help – and my colleagues prepared the coatpegs before term started. Every child has their name, and an icon [vehicle, animal, cartoon character] on their peg so they can learn to identify their special place in the cloakroom

Here’s the thing – in the morning, they take off their coats and hang them up, and usually the adult with them checks they have got the right coat on the right peg.

But after the children have been outside for playtime, or at the end of the lunchhour, there are always two or three coats on the floor. And we, the staff, say to them “Hang up your coats properly” or “This is your coat – please come and put it on your peg”

But on Friday, I realised something – a significant number of the coats do not have proper hanging loops inside the collar.  Maybe the manufacturers expect the children to hang the coat by the top edge of the hood. But our hooks are small single ones [left] not large double ones [right] So it is really hard to keep a thick hood on them.

Hence quite a few coats fall off when dislodged by another child.

And every coat I picked up from the floor came from the same shop

I do not blame Mums for trying to get a bargain when it comes to buying schoolwear, and I don’t suppose a hanging loop is high on their list of criteria for a winter coat. But I think that maybe the manufacturers should give some consideration to this detail!