Kids lose around nine things per year at school
Here’s how to save shelling out £2,000 on replacing their stuff
As families continue to deal with the ongoing cost of living crisis, new research now highlights the added costs parents face when their kids aren’t careful with their school property.
Previous studies* have shown that kids will lose around nine personal items per year while at school, forcing parents to spend an additional £2,000 over their child’s lifetime at school replacing these items.
Sonja Adams, founder of TigerTags.co.uk, says one way to prevent this is the implementation of name tags on each of your child’s personal items.
Below, Sonja shares her top tips for helping kids keep hold of their stuff longer.
“We conducted some research around the average cost that parents face during their child’s primary school year, and discovered that expenses generally exceed £6,000** on average by the time children leave year six. That’s before the consideration of having to replace items that are lost or stolen during that time, which is a real issue facing kids at school.”
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Label EVERYTHING
“Using iron-on or sticky labels on your children’s clothing and school items like bags and shoes, can mean the difference between those items coming home with your kids every day, and them ending up in lost property – or worse, someone else’s property – forever.
“Every year we see two waves of parents placing their name tag orders – the first is toward the end of the current school year when they’re thinking ahead and trying to get on top on their school admin for the next year, and the second is literally within days of the new school year starting as they frantically tick off the school supplies that still need to be picked up.”
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Daily Checklists
“Something that really helped my kids keep track of their own stuff while they were at school was a small laminated checklist I attached to the inside of their backpacks so that every day as they were packing up to go home for the day, they could visually check to make sure they still had everything they went to school with that day.
“It helped to incentivise this at times, whether that be with stars and stickers, or a monthly ‘reward’ for remembering to bring everything home – aka not losing anything’ – that month.”
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Use Nicknames
“Every year there are names that are more popular than others, and if your kid has one of those popular names then figuring out which Olivia or which Archie each item belongs to can be a teacher’s daily nightmare.
“If you have pet names for your kids at home, why not think about using this name on their school property to help make it obvious it’s theirs when it comes to divvying up the water bottles or school jumpers at the end of the day.”
Every year the ONS releases their baby name data for the year prior, but Sonja says they’ve seen a real range of names come through on orders for name tags for the 2025 school year.
Top 5 Boys Names
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Thomas
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Leo
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Alfie
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Zach
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Harry
Top 5 GIrls Names
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Ava
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Elsie
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Georgie
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Willow
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Aria
“Olivia and Oliver are usually the most popular names for babies, and this is the case for the Lockdown Babies who will be starting school next year as these were the two most popular names for babies born in 2020. Despite this, we’ve seen a real range of names come through on orders for the 2025 school year.
“Thomas was ranked 15th for babies born in 2020 while Zachary was ranked 56th, yet these are two of the most common names we’ve seen for boys, while Aria and Georgie are quite popular for girls next year, but Georgie didn’t even rank in 2020 while Aria was ranked 39th.
“Hopefully those kids with less popular names will have no problems keeping hold of their stuff next year!”
For more information on personalised name tags for kids, please visit https://tigertags.co.uk/
