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!

Finished 6th form in 86.
Slipper for girls, cane for boys but it wasn’t an everyday thing. Board rubbers thrown at us in primary. Remember a child made to stand on a chair facing the corner as they’d been naughty in primary too.
Signed on during uni hols and you had to pick your money up at the Post Office.

I was born in the 70s and was in education right through the 1980s. I don't remember anyone getting "the belt" - we didn't have the cane in Scotland ever. Definitely not at senior school. I do remember when I was about 5 a little boy in the year above getting smacked on the bottom with a gym shoe for being naughty. That's the one and only time though.

Family Credit was introduced in 1986 by the conservative government, there was a massive advertising programme around it at the time. It is the fore-runner of tax credits.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Credit

In my primary school (late 70s onwards) teachers were allowed to (and did) hard slap all children from literally reception children upwards (ie 4 and above). Also they could throw things at children in temper.

So when people talk about corporal punishment they picture "the cane", but often even with no cane it meant generally being allowed to physically abuse kids through slapping or throwing items (such as hard backed books) without any inhibition or recourse. There was no cane at our school but that didn't matter because the teachers could just do what they wanted. However this was only a handful of the teachers, not all of them. But those who felt like it could and did.

You signed on at the dole for unemployment benefit
To help the OP visualise it: it's that scene in The Full Monty.
I now have an ear-worm of Hot Stuff.

I started school in 1982. Don't remember any physical punishment apart from 1 boy actually having his mouth rinsed out with soap and water for swearing aged 9/10.

Beating or strappng children in school was a product of 19th century case law. Schoolmasters (sic) were in loco parentis and so had the same rights to discipline children as parents.

By the 1970s, lots of parents were starting to write to schools saying they did not consent to assaults on their children. This meant there were two classes of kid: The ones you could hit and the ones you couldn't.

In an effort to end this, Sir Keith Joseph tried to get corporal punishment made legal by statute. The govt lawyers came up with a definition, 'that which would be an assault...' which was sucessfully used by parents and the NUT to have all assaults on children specifically outlawed, first in state schools and later in independent schools.

You could get Supp Ben, id forgot about that. And Education Grants for school clothes, but only certain clothes from certain shops. I remember my bil crying because he didn't want to wear his snorkel jacket (you know, the ones that are trendy now) because al, the kids would know he was on Eddy Grant.(80s pop reference)
Ub40 obviously, were called that because that was the name of your signing on card.

I started primary school in 1980 and there was no corporal or otherwise cruel punishment at my primary school. It was very similar to school now but children with learning difficulties were generally not in mainstream classes.

Benefits were paid in cash but so were wages in many jobs. Little wage envelopes were filled and sealed and handed out weekly. By the time I was 16 wages were going into bank accounts in retail.

I was at primary school/ lower secondary school in the 80s. Don’t remember any corporal punishment as such, but our science teacher used to thump us on the head with textbooks for talking in class.

Not a punishment, but something that would not happen now (I hope) is our male teacher would walk into the girls changing room after swimming if we didn’t get dressed quickly enough. This was one big changing room that opened onto the playground so no individual cubicles. Ugh.

Early 80’s a boy got the slipper and we all had to watch, poor kid. He was howling. Some boys had pushed him in the pond and he was punished ironically for going in the pond. We were all too scared to say anything. I also remember boys sitting outside the heads office waiting to be caned.

A particularly cruel teacher used to pull children’s ears and told us about what she did and how she did it. Even demonstrated it on a boy a couple of times and got us to laugh. All to keep us under control. She also drew a pen mark on the back of the neck of a girl, who smelled and whose parents worked long hours so a latchkey kid as they were called in those days.

I went to an awful secondary school and discipline was pretty much non existent. You had to be really bad to get a detention. I never heard of anyone getting the cane / slipper etc.

It was ironically then the kids beating up eachother. Someone getting their head kicked in was literally a boy beating another child to the floor and repeatedly kicking him with the whole school watching (1000+ children) until a teacher broke it up. The only thing I remember at that school was someone being hit over the head with a set square in technical drawing.

Born 1980

my mum managed to live alone with me as a single mum til 1987 so must have had some benefits and housing support. Lived in a few places, never more than one bedroom though, mum would give me a room and sleep in the living room on a sofabed. Benefits were collected at post office via a little book with dated slips, I think. We were very poor but never hungry, though I know mum used to be relieved when she was invited to friends for dinner so that was one less meal used up that week.

I know in order to get a job she had to move in with my grandma so getting off benefits off your own steam must have been very hard

as for schools, I remember a boy getting a smacked bum over the teachers knee once. I think I'd only just started school... 1984/5 but that was the only corporal punishment I was ever aware of

I was at secondary school in early 80's and the cane was normally dished out daily at a said time (by the headmaster), and you would always see a queue of boys (never saw girls, although I think it applied to boys and girls), waiting outside his office. I found it strange that it was normally the same group of boys (so although it must have hurt, it obviously didnt put them off being naughty!)
Teachers would also throw chalk board erasers across the class, aimed at anyone who was playing up! Writing lines was also a form of punishment at detention times (normally 100 lines of the same sentence (something along the lines of... 'I will improve my behaviour...
(not that I ever had to do it mind!).

I remember m boyfriend at the time early 90,s getting paid weekly in cash in a little brown envelope , there was no miinimum wage at the time and he got about £80_80/week but he thought this was great because he had been taken on by the company where he had done his YTS .

Ohwhatfuckery
My parents made me wear a snorkel. I had no idea that they were given to children from low income families. I did know they were shit and it was embarrassing though, especially being a girl. I was actually only bought two coats the entire 5 years in that secondary, snorkel included. All fine, you may think. Except I was very very likely the child with the richest parents in the school.

Giro-Cheques:

(This one is from 1985)

www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/302903296099_/D168national-Giro-Bank-Bootle-Merseyside-Giro-Cheque-Dated.jpg

Posted to you. You then paid it into your bank account or cashed it at the post office.

I was in primary school from 1984 until 1988, and there was definitely corporal punishment there. Our deputy headmaster used to dole out "the slipper" when absolutely necessary (I think it was used more as a threat, though, than ever actually employed) and one of our class teachers used to use a wooden ruler, which - if you talked out of turn/were cheeky/didn't understand what she was teaching quickly enough - she'd bring down against the knuckles. She only did it to me once: my father raged into the school, still in his Army uniform, and bellowed at her about how if she ever touched me again... DB2 (10 years older than me, so at senior school during the '80s) regularly got the cane. Learning difficulties weren't picked up on/recognised so much then, and his stutter made him a target as he was branded "slow" by everyone (which he's completely not - one of the sharpest brains going, actually). Drugs were also more easily available to school children then, too, hence the "Just Say 'No'!" campaign by 'Grange Hill', during the early '80s.

As a PP said, parents were still permitted to wallop/slap/hit their own children, too. And frequently did, in my experience (both personal, and witnessed in my friends' homes).

Family Allowance had to be collected from the local Post Office. I remember my mother had a cardboard covered book for it. Oh! And we needed a license for a dog back then, too, which also came from the Post Office.

I had no idea that they were given to children from low income families. I did know they were shit...

My snorkel parka wasn't free. I loved my snorkel parka, and most of my friends seemed to have them.

A 19th century law stated that all hourly paid workers had to be paid in cash. This was to prevent employers paying them with tokens that could only be spent in the company shop.

Tax credits were brought in by the Blair government but they replaced something called Family Credit. I have a friend who is a lone parent who was worse off as a result of tax credits as she had previously paid less income tax as a one income parent. Lone parents on low incomes could also access other benefits. They could also get one off grants to buy cookers, nursery stuff etc. I have never seen anything calculating if you were better off in the 1980s being on benefits then than today rainyeastcoast so I can’t say it was better or worse. I remember the queues in post offices though! They used to pay different benefits on different days but even so, as others say, the queues could still go out the door.

I remember.lots of kids at!y primary school wearing those snorkel.coats, and my school.was in a fairly affluent area I doubt many parents were low income tbh .

I was born in 1980, I don’t remember any specific CP at school but I do remember board rubbers and chalk being thrown at kids who were messing about.
Our German teacher in the 1990s used to throw pens at kids for talking in lessons, he was really strict but we all loved him.
My mum used to get family allowance and widowed mothers allowance, we’d collect it on a Wednesday from the post office after school. We were poor but not destitute, lots of cheap filling foods like stews and pasta.
Getting new clothes was for birthdays and Christmas and our holidays were a week in a caravan in Wales.

I wasn't caned at secondary school in 85 and 86, nearly a third time but fortunately it had been banned by then

In the late 80s I receive do income support as a teenager as I was estranged from my parents - paid via an order book, which I still have somewhere as a momento

*was caned

Benefits were paid in cash but so were wages in many jobs
I was still receiving a wage packet in 1999. Once you received it you guarded it with your life. Pickpockets and thieves made a killing on payday. Dodgy employers often scammed people by claiming they’d given them their wage packet and they must have lost it. They weren’t above forging your signature in the book so they could claim you’d received it.

I left school in the mid 80s and I don’t think caning / hitting children was the norm at all .