T-Shirts for Schools: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
Sizes inside the 50-piece minimum are free to arrange, so a school split costs nothing extra however you set it. Collect sizes against the register rather than by asking for volunteers, publish measurements instead of letters, set a hard closing date with a stated default, and order a small number of spares in the middle sizes. That is the whole method, and the hard part is the deadline.
How do you collect sizes from a whole year group?
Work from the register, not from replies. Print the list, collect against it in form time, and you will see the gaps immediately instead of guessing how many are outstanding. Say in advance what a non-responder gets, because a published default converts most of the stragglers on the spot. The alternative — chasing forty individual pupils and their parents — is what turns a week into a month.
Publish a flat measurement chart with the form. A year group spans a wide range of builds and letters alone are meaningless across it; chest width and body length are not. State the fit too, because a boxy cut and a regular cut measure differently and pupils choosing for how they want it to look will pick differently in each. Our blanks run 150–240 GSM combed ring-spun cotton in both fits.
What does a school size split usually look like?
Wider at the top than most people expect. Leavers cohorts in particular skew toward adult sizes, and pupils buying a shirt to keep and sign will often ask for one larger than they actually wear. Take that into account rather than ordering a neat bell curve. The ends still need to be thin: a single shirt in the smallest and largest size is fine, four of each is dead stock.
If parents are paying per shirt, the split is not a forecast at all — it is a list of paid orders, which is far more reliable. Close payment and sizing at the same moment and you get one number rather than two that disagree. What a school t-shirt order costs covers how the per-pupil figure is built from that total.
Should staff shirts go in the same 50?
Only if the design is identical. The 50-piece minimum applies per design, so a staff version with different wording is a second run of 50. Most schools solve this by putting staff in the same shirt as the pupils, which is also the friendlier look at a leavers event. If staff need to be distinguishable, a different garment colour with the same print keeps it inside one design — but if the ink colours change to suit, it is a colourway with its own screens.
How many spares should you order?
Enough to cover the pupil who was absent on size day, the one whose shirt is unwearable within a week, and the one whose name was spelled wrong. Around one in ten, concentrated in the sizes the cohort actually wear, is a sensible allowance. Because a top-up is a fresh 50-piece run, buying those spares now is much cheaper than needing them later — and if adding them crosses a quantity tier, it can genuinely reduce the total. The pricing page shows where those steps sit, our schools and leavers page covers the wider kit, and handing out t-shirts to a team covers the day itself.
What should the size chart you publish actually say?
Flat chest width and body length in centimetres, per size, taken from the garment you are actually buying rather than a generic table. State the fit and the fabric weight next to it, since the wholesale t-shirts page offers more than one of each and they do not measure alike. Add one line telling pupils to measure a shirt they already own and compare, which is far more reliable than asking a fifteen year old to guess. Schools that publish a real chart get a size sheet they can order from; schools that publish letters get a swap queue.
