How do you choose the right school shoes for your child?

Forget school uniforms, forget lunches. As summer holidays come to an end, school shoes are far and away the most Googled topic for families with children going back to school.

It’s easy to see why. Children will spend hundreds of days at school every year going through one, two, even three pairs during a growth spurt. Ka-ching!

"School shoes can range in price from $15 to $140," says Gail McHardy, executive officer of Parents Victoria, which represents the families of children who attend government schools.

"For families with more than one child to kit out for the school year, this can be expensive."

We ask big things from school shoes, too. "Your children’s feet will spend most of their growth period in school shoes," says the Australian Podiatry Association. "Whether your child is standing, sitting, walking, running, jumping or skipping, their feet are always on the move."

So how do you find good-value school shoes, stress free?

How can I ensure it’s a good fit?

Try shoes on at the end of the day – feet expand as the day goes on. Shoes should feel comfortable; you shouldn’t feel relief when you take them off, says the Australian Podiatry Association.

Also ask:

• Were the shoes tested on a range of surfaces?
• Does the widest part of the shoe match the widest part of the feet just before the toes?
• Again, is there enough room between the longest toe and the end of the shoe?
• Were the feet professionally measured, and do the shoes fit the larger foot?

There are several key components to a good school shoe.

What's the most common mistake parents make?

They buy shoes that are too big to save money, but the shoe makes the child fall over or gets scuff marks because the child is dragging their toes, says Alicia James, who is an ambassador for the Australian Podiatry Association. "They end up replacing it because the shoe hasn’t lasted but it’s because it never really fitted to begin with."

Children refuse to wear the shoes because they cause blisters, make the child fall, or stop them from keeping up with their classmates.

"Families come in and you go, ‘Oh wow, that’s three sizes too big’," says James, who works at Kingston Foot Clinic in Cheltenham.

"They say: ‘My child needs orthotics, they keep falling over.’ No. They’ve gone out and spent $200 on a pair of school shoes because that’s what the internet told them, and they could have gone and looked for the [correct] features [see graphic above] and spent $20, and just replace them three times a year."

Does more expensive always equal better?

It depends who you ask. "Gone are the days where you have to spend top dollar for school shoes," says Alicia James, a podiatrist at Kingston Foot Clinic in Cheltenham.

"If you can recognise the good features of a school shoes, and you pick them up on sale, or you walk into a Target or Big W and it’s got all the features, then you’re a good shopper rather than being caught up in the fact that it’s not the brand – especially if they’re going to go through three pairs in a year."

Doncaster East mother Nada Marhoon buys shoes only when they're on sale, most of which are cheaper brands, for her eight-year-old daughter, Hanna.

"Of course, price [is a factor] … if there’s no discount, I won’t buy it," she says. "When her shoes are torn, I have to replace it as soon as possible so I just go to Target and buy her anything regardless. In this case, I’m just looking for something between $20 and $30."

But Melbourne Foot Clinic founder Rohan Coull says price does make a difference. "You probably get what you pay for in terms of the longevity of the shoe and how well it’s helping that person be able to do everything they want as well as grow," he says.

Which shoes tick the boxes then?

There’s probably not a bad Clarks school shoe, says Coull, who holds a Sports Medicine Fellowship with the Australasian Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine.

Coull has a client who is so attached to his old school shoes – Clarks Daytonas – that he intends to wear them to uni this year, despite the fact that they look like kids’ school shoes.

“He’s still wearing his [Clarks] Daytonas because that’s what he likes,” Coull says.

“From a podiatrist's point of view, [the shoe] ticks so many boxes.

“You could be running around in it in the schoolyard, you could be doing sport in it, it’s got longevity. And it feels good.”

For a runner-style school shoe, Coull recommends a brand called Ascent, which is endorsed by the Podiatry Association of Australia.