No more half pants for upper primary Telangana govt school students

The Telangana School Education Department has announced a major uniform overhaul for government schools, prescribing trousers and shirts for Class VI and VII students from the 2026-27 academic year. The new design, featuring light blue shirts and navy blue bottoms, replaces the maroon and ash combination introduced earlier.

Hyderabad: Embarrassment over wearing half pants to schools will be a thing of the past for upper primary government students as the Telangana School Education department has overhauled the uniform.

In a significant change, the department has prescribed pants and shirts for Class VI and VII students from the academic year 2026-27. So far, these students had half pants and shirts as part of the uniform.

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Uniform colour has also been changed for the forthcoming academic year. The light blue and navy blue uniform colours have replaced the existing maroon, and red and ash coloured uniform. The shirt for boys and top for girls will now be light blue, while the bottom for boys and girls, as well as the waistcoat for girls, will be navy blue in colour.

As there were complaints of uniforms being unappealing and dull after the tweaks in the last academic year, the department reverted to the corporate school-like uniform design that had been introduced in the academic year 2023-24.

The new design will again feature navy blue colour straps on the shirt shoulders, front pocket and sleeves. Further, waistcoat coloured (navy blue) straps have been prescribed on the sleeves of Punjabi dress and shirts as part of girls’ uniform. These features were removed from the uniform during the academic year 2025-26.

According to department’s estimates, a total of 17,71,744 students in Classes I to XII in all Government, local bodies, TGREIS, Model Schools, KGBVs, Urban Residential Schools, TW Primary and Aided Schools will be provided two pairs of school uniforms for the academic year 2026-27.

Meanwhile, even as the schools are set to reopen for the academic year 2026-27 on June 15, they have not received cloth for stitching the uniforms. Self-help women groups that have been entrusted with the stitching work have already taken students’ body measurements and are awaiting the cloth.

The officials attributed the delay in cloth supply to schools to the centralised procurement. Unlike the earlier practice of ordering uniform cloth from the Telangana Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society Limited, the School Education department, as per the government’s directions, joined the centralised procurement process along with social, tribal and BC welfare residential educational institutions societies. The tenders were recently allotted to successful bidders, who were given 45 days to supply cloth to schools.