体验英国二手校服文化｜大摇大摆去买二手！没人说你穷，还会带来意外的社交收获

A full British school uniform can cost the equivalent of more than ¥4,000, which shocks newly arrived Chinese parents. Dr Xiaoyun Peng describes the second-hand system that absorbs it: stock sorted by school section, age and size in an exhibition room on site, run entirely by parent volunteers, with items at roughly 20% of retail and half of them close to new. She sets this against policy — the 2021 School Uniform Guidance requires schools to consider cost and bars them from mandating particular brands or single suppliers — and against culture, where affluent families buy second-hand as readily as anyone else and charity shops are ordinary adult retail. Her observation for Chinese families is that concerns about hygiene and face dissolve on contact, and that children take their cue from whether the parent treats used clothing as a compromise.