I'm sure this has become worse. It seems to have happened with the change in many places to "academy" schools, where appearance reigns and they're run like businesses.

In the 1990s-2000s, when my parents were both teachers and I was at school, "uniform" meant wearing the correct colours (e.g. dark trousers or skirt, white shirt/t-shirt, blue jumper/sweater). It was still ridiculous, but being punished for it would require repeatedly breaking those rules. The usual response was the teacher saying "tuck your shirt in, William".

That’s a good observation. That was an academy school.

Is the point of school uniform to squash individuality? Is this how we want to prepare children for adulthood? I doubt that conformity, submission to arbitrary rules out of fear, and not standing out are good things to teach children, at least if you don't want them to become a bunch of zombies as adults.

Also, given the choice, who wants the sort of job that mandates a uniform?

A more recent justification was to remove the chance for rich children to "look different" to poor children -- everyone is equal by wearing the same.

Of course, it doesn't work that way -- the poor children have second-hand clothes or the cheapest clothes from Asda, and the rich children will spend money on whatever they can -- fancy shoes etc.

Arguably, this is the point of school, even if I disagree with it.

Uniforms are a big thing in the UK. Many jobs require them, even places where it seems entirely irrelevant. Hell, many non-customer facing office workers get a very strict dress code (black shoes, black trews, x/y/z colour shirt).

I never understood why that was a thing.

The point of modern Western education was to create factory and low-level office workers.

I regarded a uniform as one of the reasons to choose a factory job over an office job, since I would not have to make any clothes purchasing decisions or wear out my own stuff. Remote work is even better -- I got to have my cake and eat it too.

I wore school uniforms for 12 years in school. I don’t consider myself a conformist.

A lot of people decide to become pilots or work for the army.