It’s baffling. Coming from Australia, most schools have uniforms. With varying degrees of age formality from requiring blazers and ties to simple polo shirts emblazoned with the school logo.

When I was in high school, my school changed its logo, and at the same time made other updates to the uniform. Only there was a transition period, all uniform sales were the new version but the previous version remained conformity with policy for either 3 or 5 years.

There were also systems in place to help kids whose families can’t afford uniforms, typically via parents donating uniforms their kids grew out of.

Which is of course ludicrous. Why is education so insanely expensive should include all the materials?

My degree in Australia had some suggested text books, but none of them required it^, and all the content you actually needed was supplied in the course materials.

^ one exception, a computer network admin class had a book for lab instructions. But the library had a set of them sufficient for a lab and limited the borrow duration to 3 hours so you’d check it out, run to class and return it back afterwards every week.

As with anything it’s even more “it depends”. Melbourne busses are slow an unreliable, the vast majority of tram routes share roads with cars and get stuck behind them making them painful in busy periods, and the train network is primary built around the idea of getting white collar workers from the suburbs to the city in the morning and back out again in the evening.

For example, without a car the 10-15 minute trip to drop the kiddo off with their grandparents would be over 90 minutes. It’s less than 10km but because we’re on different train lines it’s require either going all the way to the city and out again, or a train and a bus that runs 3 times a hour with no timing connection to the train.

Australian here, Melbourne specifically. I have never had to prepay. It’s always fill up then go in to pay.

• Steam OS v3
• 3 products announced today
• steam machine is a cube. Cube is three dimensions.

Half life 3, Team Fortresses 3, Left 4 Dead 3?