Buying school shoes for young children

When children are first in school they are growing very quickly, so quickly in fact that they will probably outgrow their shoes before they wear them out. If you are a parent with two children in the infants’ school, you may be buying children’s shoes 4 times a year. That is not only the school shoe, black or brown, lace up or buckled. That is also the Black elasticised pull on plimsolls and the wellington boots too.

Children's feet do seem to slowdown in growth by around age seven or eight and by the time they are 11 or 12, they may only need them once a year. Obviously, by that time, they are beginning to wear them out, before they grow out of them and so it depends a lot on how carefully they look after them. The child that plays football or climbs trees or rides bikes trailing their feet along the ground to slow their speed will have holes or scuffs in their shoes.

Older children really need shoes for playing and school shoes kept for best. Shoe shops seem keen to promote school shoes around Easter and again in the summer holidays. Those are the times when the signs with BACK TO SCHOOL are emblazoned across the shop windows.