Introduction : 

We, the undersigned students, parents and carers of students at HAHS, respectfully petition the school administration to review the current sport/PDHPE uniform policy. This issue affects students directly, every week, and we believe their voices matter just as much as ours in raising it. While we understand and appreciate the exceptions already provided by the school (allowing sports uniform to be worn to school when the lesson falls in period 1, and allowing students to remain in sports uniform after school when the lesson falls in the last period), we believe the underlying policy still creates significant practical, hygiene, privacy and wellbeing issues for students that need to be addressed.

Following are the key issues :

1. Inadequate, unsafe and unhygienic changing facilities
The changing arrangement currently offered to male students does not provide adequate privacy, and as a result students avoid using it. This leaves them with no option but to change in the male toilets, where many stalls have broken locks. This raises genuine safety and privacy concerns — and students themselves have told us they feel uncomfortable and unsafe having to change this way. In addition , school toilets, like most public toilets, are not always clean, exposing students to an unhygienic environment for longer than necessary. Students must bring their school bag and sports bag into the toilet stall and complete a full changeover in a confined space, exposing books, uniforms, and food/water bottles to unhygienic surfaces. In winter, the extra layers of clothing (including long pants) make the changeover in a small stall impractical, with clothing frequently ending up on the floor

2.  Loss of transition/recharge time and increased stress and injury risk
Transition time between periods is meant to give students a short break to reset before their next lesson. Under the current policy, this time is instead spent queuing outside toilets and rushing to change — twice per PDHPE/sport lesson (before and after). Students experience this firsthand as stressful and rushed, and it comes at the cost of the break they need before their next lesson. It also increases the risk of injury as students rush to change and get to class on time. On many days, children are unable to finish their food during designated lunch/recess time as they spend a lot of their time changing.

3. Added weight and burden of carrying sports uniform
School bags are already heavy with textbooks, stationery, laptops and other daily essentials. Requiring students to also carry a full sports uniform, including shoes, on top of this adds further unnecessary weight to bags that many students already struggle to carry comfortably. This has implications for student comfort and posture, particularly for younger students still growing, and adds to the overall burden of the current changeover policy.

4. Inconsistent policy on sports jackets
Students are currently not permitted to wear their sports jacket on days they have sport/PDHPE, despite it being part of the official school uniform. This means students are often left cold on winter sport days with no clear option. It raises a reasonable question: if the sports jacket cannot be worn on sport/PDHPE days, what is its purpose, and should HAHS instead adopt a single, universal jacket suitable for both regular and sport/PDHPE days? Alternatively, is the expectation that students forgo any jacket during sport/PDHPE on cold days?

 

What We Are Asking For

Our request is to Reinstate the previous policy allowing students to wear their sports uniform for the entire day on which they have a Sport/PDHPE lesson, regardless of which period it falls in.

This single change would directly resolve the concerns raised above:

• Students would no longer need to change in unsafe or inadequate facilities during the school day.
• Transition time between periods would be freed up for students to actually recharge, rather than queuing and rushing to change.
• The risk of injury from rushed changeovers would be reduced.
• Students would no longer need to carry a full spare uniform, including shoes, in their already-heavy school bags.

 

We raise this concern constructively, in the interest of student comfort, dignity, safety, and wellbeing.

Students are the ones living with this policy every day, and we believe their firsthand experience should carry real weight in this review.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with the administration.