At the start of the school year, we met Daughter’s form tutors and were brought up to speed with the school’s new uniform policy. Teachers would henceforth take a dim view of untucked shirts and rolled-up skirts, both of which would incur detentions.

“This doesn’t really apply to you,” said Tutor, while Daughter proffered a few examples of pupils who most definitely would fall foul (mostly boys who think it’s funny to drop smelly farts in confined spaces).

Two days later, she incurred her first detention for an untucked shirt. It became swiftly evident she considered this the most minor of breaches. My ears rang with regular tirades about the teachers she regarded as the main instigators of such injustice.

January began with a letter from one such member of staff. In summary, “polite requests” to desist from uniform infringements were falling on deaf ears, with students either ignoring them or reverting to type once the teachers had departed. In future, lunchtime detentions would be instant. No more Mr Nice Guy.

The following week, I bumped into a mum friend in the veg aisle at Tesco. As we chatted, the conversation turned to the subject of uniform. Her view was that in this age of post-pandemic teenage anxiety and rising absence figures, the school had more pressing concerns than untucked shirts.

Indeed, only yesterday, a protest was due to take place outside New County Hall regarding a perceived failure in serving students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families.

I didn’t disagree, but pronounced myself largely ambivalent on the subject. I mean, how hard is it, really, to tuck in your shirt?

The next morning, I was idly scrolling through social media when my gaze stopped at the sight of the headmaster’s face on a rival news feed. I was astonished to see the letter quoted and all hell breaking loose beneath it, as other parents ranted about the uniform policy.

Maybe I’d become inured to the subject, having endured it daily, to consider this a genuine news story. In my eyes, it simply represented teen drama. While adults get het up about world politics, mortgate rates and broken-down vehicles, school uniform ticks the adolescent box.

What amazes me, however, is how the adults turn to social media and vent. I’ve seen it happen elsewhere with schools on one patch or another, and the reaction follows a pattern. A named teacher is seen as the root of an extreme position and accused of all manner of crimes: lining kids up in the playground in the freezing cold, for example, and making them lift trouser legs to check the colour and length of their socks, or placing them in isolation for the day to punish a seemingly inoffensive contravention.

In my day, if I’d gone home with a uniform-related detention, I’d have been cuffed around the ear and told not to do it again. Today’s parents are as likely to threaten to take their kids out of school over such matters.

My own secondary school had a very relaxed approach to uniform, given the headmaster’s doubts regarding its impact on learning. Instead, we followed a dress code with certain expectations of smartness; I always played it pretty straight, sticking to black and white (I was never the coolest girl in school).

In contrast, Daughter’s school uniform is on the formal side, with a branded blazer and a tie (her father decries this as an anachronism in the 21st century).

I do understand that uniform is about more than just smartness and discipline. To a degree, it prepares kids for other aspects of the big wide world – personal hygiene, dress codes, attitudes to work.

It also irons out fashion and financial disparity between students – although the government recently debated plans to cap the number of branded uniform items to three (70 per cent of secondary schools require five or more), giving parents more choice in where they buy standard items and potentially saving more than £50 a child.

Ultimately, this is an argument that’s likely to run and run. Skirt-rolling is as old as the hills. I admit I do not like to see school skirts skating around girls’ buttocks. Don’t they feel the cold, or fear upskirting?

Unfortunately, expressing this opinion risks a) sounding like an old maid, and b) flying in the face of the current (not entirely unreasonable) view that women should be able to dress however they like without being subjected to judgement or repercussion.

A dyed-in-the-wool trouser-wearer, Daughter read this last argument with a characteristic eye-roll. She has conducted a sociology survey on a similar subject, and concluded with some despair that “everyone does it because ‘everyone does it’”.

‘Twas ever thus.

PS. World exclusive: Daughter received her second uniform-related detention while I was filing this column. Does that make it my fault somehow?