Can I ask some stupid questions about life in the 80s?

[rainyeastcoast]

What benefits were available to single parents? Tax credits didn’t come in till Blair’s government, that is correct isn’t it?

How did people collect benefits before direct payments and how were people paid, did it go straight into the bank?

Was corporal punishment quite common in schools, not just caning but shoving and so on?

I was around in the 80s but was very very young so don’t know!

Think my mother got Income Support and Family Allowance (aka Child Benefit). Collected it from the Post Office.
I remember children getting walloped on the bottom in assembly in the very early 80s. According to DH he was punched by a teacher at his comprehensive .

Benefits collected from the post office. My dad was still paid in cash, weekly. The belt was commonly used in my high school.

I was in school in the 80s and the cane or the slipper was still a thing - I can remember people queuing outside the deputy heads office at break time wait8ng for their turn!

Benefits and pensions you had a book and used to queue up at the post office to get the cash, I used to work next door to one and there were always massive queues on certain days of the week.

I was aged 11-20 in the 1980s.

I know that our school Head had a cane, but he used it incredibly rarely (maybe once per term).

I signed on for Unemployment Benefit for a couple of weeks, collecting it involved queuing up in a building and then being paid cash. My Mum had previously queued up in the same building for her Child Benefit, again paid in cash.

I don't know what benefits were available to single parents but I would imagine it was Income Support.

IIRC Benefits were paid by the Post Office - You had a payment book that you took in and signed and then your allowance was paid out.

And not uncommon to be walloped round the head with a board duster in class or have it thrown at you

I don’t know precisely what benefits were available, although I would say it was some kind of iteration of “Income Support”. What I do know is that benefits were paid via a book that you took to the Post Office on (it after) a certain day of the week and they paid out in cash. I used to collect our child benefit this way as it made up my allowance as a teenager. Pensions were also paid this way and there was always a huge queue on pension day.

I was only at Primary School in the 80’s but I don’t recall any corporal punishment, I have a feeling it was outlawed in the 70’s. People were hit by their parents at home though for sure. School punishments usually involved some kind of standing against a wall with your hands on your head, or even standing on your chair with your hands on your head.

I started school in 84. There was no physical punishment!

I know my mum got family allowance but don't know about anything else.

Thank you

Could people work and claim benefits as they can now?

I was a single parent in the early nineties. Lone Parent Allowance was paid alongside Child Benefit, which was collected from the post office on a weekly basis. Even when they moved to monthly CB, if you received the Lone Parent element you could stick at weekly. That £6 per week was often what kept us fed before pay day!

That was the only benefit I got with two children and a salary of around £17k in 1993. No tax credits, no other support. Childcare was £500 per month for two.

To get benefits you went to the post office.
I did that in the 90s and I remember people collecting their pensions from the post office well into the 2000

I don’t recall anyone getting the cane or even being threatened with it. But you did know it could happen and you would still get the occasional clip round the ear. Children knew this could happen.
I remember the day the law changed and so did the attitude of the children. They knew they were untouchable. Not that I’m saying I want corporal punishment back.

I was unemployed for a period in the ‘80s and remember having to ‘sign on’ once a fortnight. I don’t remember how I was paid or what the benefit was called.

When I started working I was paid in cash in an envelope with a pay slip and just spent it from there.

I remember pupils being caned on the hand in front of the whole school.

I remember classmates getting the belt (Scotland) in my first two years of high school so that was up until 1984.

No corporal punishment at any of my three (Catholic in case it makes a difference) schools in the 80s. English teacher threw a blackboard rubber at someone once but that teacher was a loon. She also taught PE which makes sense

I was at primary / secondary school in the 80s and I don't recall any corporal punishment. I was smacked at home though.

Could people work and claim benefits as they can now?

Not the 80s but I was signing on in the early 90s. You could work up to 16 hours a week. I got housing benefit and the dole. I got lucky with the housing benefit as to my surprise the chap signing me on was my landlord.

I was teaching primary in the 80s. I can’t think of a single state school where corporal punishment was acceptable. Certainly on my PGCE, it was not seen as an option.

There was the cane in the 1970s,
there was family allowance.

in the late 1980s i lived in a house share and the students got housing benefit in the summer holiday, i think,

I was a student early 80s. Back then, you could claim unemployment benefit during the holidays. (happy days!) You signed on every two weeks, and a giro cheque was sent out that you had to cash at the post office.

I lived rurally, so rather than sign on at an office, I had to post a coupon every fortnight.

Corporal punishment in English state schools was outlawed in 1986 (private schools were much later, end of the nineties). However I was at primary school from 1984 and they’d not used it for years.

I just googled and corporal punishment was outlawed in 1987 in the uk.

A boy was hit in primary in the 1970s on the bottom by a blackboard rubber.

CP was banned in 1986, so it must have been on its way out well before then. I do remember it in the 1970s.

I was watching back in time for school last week and they said corporal punishment was outlawed around mid 80’s . Shocked me that it was so late .

I was born in 81. No corporal punishment or board runner throwing in my schools.