When I started work as a teacher in a sixth form college, I was only 23 and very conscious that there wasn’t much of an age gap between me and the students, so I felt I had to dress very frumpily to show that I was older. I can just remember wearing buttoned up blouses and ‘smart’ skirts for the first year or so, which I hated and did not feel like me. By the time I left, four years later, I was in jeans and t shirt most days. Don’t think I would get away with that now.
