Parents have been left fuming after their children’s primary school introduced a strict new uniform policy – but didn’t tell them.

Hackney Gazette: Latasia Williams in her Dr Martens bootsLatasia Williams in her Dr Martens boots (Image: Dieter Perry)

Mossbourne Parkside Academy in Sigdon Road, Hackney Downs, has been threatening to place youngsters in the Learning Support Unit (LSU) away from classmates for not wearing the correct clothes.

But parents were not sent a letter about it until Thursday, one week after the new term started, and have hit out at the “militant” discipline being imposed by the academy.

Leona Williams, 28, has two daughters at the school – Latasia, six, and Angel, four. She bought them both Dr. Martens boots ahead of the new year, but when she picked up Latasia on Monday she was wearing a pair of plimsolls.

“I took her to school and they did a uniform check at the door and it was fine,” she told the Gazette. “At the end of the day she comes out with different shoes on saying they took hers off because she’s not allowed to wear them.

“That’s wrong – they should have called me. Angel had the same shoes on and it was fine.

“They said if she wore them again she would have to spend the day in the LSU. I thought this school was trying to help children?

“Fair enough I understand rules but it’s too militant for children.”

Latasia said the new policy should have been included in the newsletter, so parents buying their children a new uniform would know before term started.

Another parent, Flor Diaz, was approached three times by a teacher while in the gathering area outside the school one morning.

“It’s too much,” she said. “The first time she said my daughter couldn’t wear the socks and I said ‘sorry, don’t worry tomorrow she will come in proper socks’. Then she said they were going to remove them and find other socks for her and I said ‘no, that’s not acceptable’.

“The third time, and by now my daughter was very uncomfortable, she said she would be put in Learning Support Unit.

“I had already acknowledged it. It was embarrassing and humiliating, we were in the middle of a crowd of parents.

“Is a pair of socks more important than my daughter attending class to learn? She doesn’t deserve to be put in the LSU for a pair of socks.”