The headteacher of a secondary school has banned coats bought from high street shops, leaving its pupils freezing in cold December temperatures.
Mums of pupils at Patcham High School in Brighton have been left fuming after being told that their children weren't allowed to wear their own coats.
This is despite the fact that Brighton has seen plummeting temperatures, meaning that the children are left freezing as their coats have been confiscated by school staff.
Parents are claiming that the school are forcing them to buy "flimsy, school-issue" jackets for the winter, and have been informed that any other coats worn on the school grounds will be confiscated.
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Kerri Barnes-Dredge, 41, told The Mirror that her Year 11 daughter is being forced to take off her coat at the school gates, adding that her daughter has two "perfectly decent" winter coats.
She said: "They're trying to make us buy these new coats but it's pointless - my daughter has two already and she's only there for a few more months.
"The kids can wear other coats to the gates but if they're on show on school grounds, their coats are confiscated until the end of the day."
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The mum-of-four added that if her daughter's coat was confiscated, the young girl would not have time to collect it until the end of the day, at which point she may miss her bus and Kerri would be forced to go and collect her.
She said: "One of her friends actually bought a blanket in and walked through the gates with three of them wrapped in it so they wouldn't get cold.
"This is leaving kids without coats and I don't know what to do about it really, it's ridiculous. My daughter has a hacking cough and this will make it worse, it's freezing."
The coats from the school-approved shop vary in price, but a padded coat is £32, a mid-range waterproof with a fleece is £28 and a lightweight rain coat is £14.90.
However, the school's headteacher John McKee has hit back at the claims, saying that he is enforcing the rules to be fair to children from underprivileged backgrounds.
He said: "The reason we've done this is because we want all students to be equal.
"It's part of our school values and we don't want any pupil to stand out because they're wearing a different type of coat.
"We want to support students so nobody feels isolated because they can't afford a designer jacket.
"It's about poverty proofing - we don't want to exclude children from a disadvantaged background and we don't want any children to be singled out for that.
"Everything I do here is in the children's best interest - there are always going to be gaps in whatever inform we enforce, and we're trying to mitigate against anything that's going to make a child feel uncomfortable.
"I haven't got any hard evidence, but there are many children who have chosen not to wear coats, whether school coats or not, for years and I do feel that some kids weren't wearing them because didn't have the 'right' coat."
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