There’s a thread on the chat site Mumsnet headed “P7 proms - WTF??”. It was started by a Scottish mother who expressed her shock after seeing a Facebook friend’s pictures of her daughter’s P7 prom, on which parents “spent a packet”. The prom - according to the thread - involved “a hotel/function room, suits/kilts for the boys, very posh dresses for the girls, hair, make-up, nails, jewellery, the lot”.

On the other hand, the P7 leavers’ dance that Justine Nicholson’s daughter, Lucy, attended to mark the end of her primary schooling over six years ago was a rather more sedate affair. The children were dressed up in their best clothes - some even took a ride in a limo - but, at the end of the day, it was just a ceilidh held in the school hall.

However, that dance stuck with Nicholson because it was apparent that, although fairly modest in comparison with the one that provoked the ire of the Mumsnet parent, it was still out of reach for some pupils. So, while some children proudly paraded around in their best party clothes, others were dressed in school uniform.

“One wee girl was wearing her school skirt and a jumper,” says Nicholson. “It was clear she didn’t have anything special to wear and her discomfort was palpable but it was her leavers’ dance and she wanted to have that night. I had other daughters - I knew I had old dresses - but it wasn’t my place to offer and it wouldn’t have been appropriate.

“So, I sat with that for a while, had my twins and then, when I started to have the time, I sent out a round-robin [message] to my friends asking for any old party dresses.”

And so, in 2016, Paisley Posh Threads (which has since become Kitted Out) - a community organisation, based in Paisley, that lends out dresses and suits free of charge for P7 leavers’ dances, senior students’ proms and communion - was born.

In the first year that Nicholson ran the service, she stored the dresses in her garage and ran fittings in a community room at the back of the local fire station. That year, she supplied around a dozen dresses for P7 leavers’ parties; this year - with the service now operating out of a couple of storage units in the town - there were about 120 items lent out during the peak period in June, with the vast majority used for school events.

In total, Kitted Out - which runs a confidential service and one-on-one appointments - has a stock of more than 500 prom dresses, 100 P7 party dresses, 60 communion dresses, 80 suits for senior boys and 40 suits for P7 boys.

Nicholson - who handed Kitted Out over to a committee, chaired by Deborah Russell, after she returned to full-time employment - says: “This isn’t saving the world, and there are more important things when we have neighbours using food banks. But what it does do is make a young person feel happy and feel like a princess for a day.

“It is frivolous - we are not doing anything really profound - but it puts smiles on faces of kids and parents, and it takes a bit of the weight off. You see the relief on the parent’s face when their son or daughter finds something they like. Many of these parents work full time but still cannot afford to feed their family - let alone [fund] this.”

According to Tim Wallace, who has just stepped down as president of primary school leaders’ body AHDS, the phenomenon of the P7 leavers’ dance has been around for at least 10 years and there can be pressure from parents for their children to have this kind of experience to mark the end of their primary schooling. But he urges schools to think carefully before they bring the high school prom into primary.

“I think it has grown and grown over quite a long period now, but the question is whether it should, or should not, be becoming as big,” he says. “At the school I am at, we don’t have a prom but we have a leavers’ disco, and we have tried to make it something that all our children can be part of, given many children would struggle financially to pay for an expensive event. Also, for our children with additional support needs, big prom events can be too overwhelming. But I am aware more and more that there is a demand from parents for there to be proms.”

Now, Kitted Out is poised to enter another busy period as schools celebrate the festive season, and one school - Port Glasgow High in Inverclyde, which has a dinner dance in December - has been promoting the service.

At Port Glasgow High, “equity” is one of the values, and cutting the costs of the school day has been a major focus for a number of years - as it has been in many Scottish schools. Here, the vast majority of senior pupils hire a blazer for just £5, as opposed to buying one.

In some ways, then, it might seem like a natural progression for them to borrow posh frocks and suits for their dinner dance but, while Kitted Out and another service that supplies eveningwear through the post, Prom Ally, have been promoted, the school suspects that uptake is low.

The depute head of the senior school, Suzanne Welsh, believes that as well as the stigma of borrowing clothes, there is a “bizarre female mentality” at play that means the girls are determined to have their own dress - even though they will wear it for only a few hours. “Some brides say they are not hiring a dress and they want it to be theirs for their big day,” says Welsh.

“I think that some girls feed on that - but boys are a bit more comfortable with hiring a suit for a wedding or a prom. For them, it might rest a bit easier, but for girls the mentality seems to be slightly different.”

Russell recognises the issue, which is why she has recently started to highlight Kitted Out’s green credentials and to promote it as a sustainable service counteracting the much-criticised trend of “throwaway fashion”. She hopes taking this new tack will increase Kitted Out’s appeal among students, some of whom will, of course, have joined the recent international strikes and protests to demand action be taken to address climate change.

Now the “about” blurb on Kitted Out’s Facebook page talks about reducing the environmental impact of waste first, and reducing financial stress second. This is not because Kitted Out has changed direction but because Russell believes that the key to removing the stigma of borrowing a dress - or a suit - is for it to become the norm.

She says: “We are trying to promote Kitted Out as sustainable fashion and say to people, ‘It’s not about charity, but why spend money on a dress you will wear once, will lie in your wardrobe and then, in all likelihood, will end up in landfill? This is about common sense, it’s about the environment, being sustainable. Just borrow a dress and return it to us.’ ”

This approach might mean that pupils who can already afford a dress will instead use Kitted Out. Even so, there are no plans to introduce charging, says Russell. Instead, there is the option of making a donation for the families who feel able to afford it. She is also unconcerned about stocks drying up if demand rises - Kitted Out has had to put a hold on donations of dresses and suits twice, such has been the response.

“All the families that use this service are hardworking families,” Russell adds. “They make ends meet and they get by but having to pay out extra for a suit or a dress is enough to push them over the edge.

“I’ve had a mum burst into tears when her kid put a dress on: she was so relieved. She told me she hadn’t been sleeping for weeks, worrying about it. It’s the sheer relief, that’s what comes across.”

Schools elsewhere in Scotland, without a local service liked Kitted Out, have been taking matters into their own hands.

Tynecastle High in Edinburgh has its own stock of around 60 prom dresses and suits. Students on the school’s N4 and N5 photography courses have been taking pictures of the collection with a view to creating a section on the school website where the clothes can be showcased. It will be called Occasions for All.

However, even with the range of dresses that is available in the school, uptake is low, says Yvonne McGregor, the pupil support officer who runs the service. She has ambitions to turn one of the school’s interview rooms into a showroom for the dresses, suits and accessories, and provide space for students to come to try them on - which is exactly what the Royal High School, just a few miles away, has already done.

The Royal High started off with a uniform bank in 2014, where parents could come and swap the clothes that their teenagers had grown out of or buy second-hand for a small donation. That service, which supplies everything “from knickers out”, as headteacher Pauline Walker puts it, then expanded into eveningwear hire a few years later at the behest of Diane Aitken, who works in the school office.

Aitken realised that the school’s very popular June prom - for which students would spend up to £500 on a dress - was leaving some struggling to keep up. That prompted Walker to put out a call for dresses and suits, and the school was “inundated”.

Now, a storage cupboard in the school basement has been converted into a boutique where the dresses, suits and kilts are showcased and where there are fitting rooms for the students to try things on - there is even a hairdresser’s sink, so hair can be washed and styled ahead of any big events.

Every year at the senior prom, Walker estimates that there will be about a dozen students who hire from the school boutique, paying just £10 to cover the cost of cleaning. Staff at the school also use the hire service for black-tie events.

“I haven’t bought a dress for years,” says Walker. “I just go down and use the boutique - and so do a lot of the other staff, and we’re very vocal about it around the kids so they can see there’s no stigma to this.”

Like Kitted Out, the Royal High recently changed its promotion of the service so that it emphasised sustainability, as opposed to poverty and deprivation.

The next goal for the Royal High, Tynecastle and Kitted Out is the same, in that they all want to expand their stock to include suits and workwear so that if a student is going for a job interview or out on work experience, they can borrow outfits that will allow them to feel confident that they look the part.

Walker says: “There is a determination across Scottish education to make sure that money is not a barrier to participation, and every school is working hard to make sure that happens. For me, that’s particularly important in a school like this, where two-thirds come from very affluent areas and a third come from what would be described as deprived areas.

“Those children should never see themselves as second class. What matters is not what you have got at home or where you come from - what matters is what you yourself do.”

Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

Find out more about the Kitted Out lending scheme at kitted-out.co.uk

This article originally appeared in the 20/27 December 2019 issue under the headline “Feeling like a princess for the day”