If you were at primary school in the 80s

[isabellerossignol]

I've spent what seems like all morning printing off worksheets for my primary aged child. And I was suddenly struck by a vivid memory from primary school. Hand typed or handwritten worksheets that were printed on a machine, in the days before printers, with really poor quality paper and all the writing came out with a bluey/purple tinge.

I've had a Google and apparently it was called a Banda machine, and was used a lot in schools because it enabled relatively cheap printing. Does anyone else remember it?

The thing I remember most is that the printed sheets had a really strong, distinctive smell. If I could smell that now, I'd feel like I was 8 all over again.

Oh yes I remember that.

We still had one of those in school when I first started teaching in 2001!

What I remember from Senior school is taking loads and loads of dictation. Teachers had the 'notes' handwritten in a notebook and they read them out to the class as we copied them into our exercise books. I reckon most lessons other than maths involved at least 20 mins of dictation.

I remember a blue /purple tinge! I don’t remember the machine but maybe it was somewhere I didn’t go, not sure (tiny village school and we kids had access to the office and all other rooms.)

Also remember loads of dictation!

We called it the Duplicator but yes, I think it was a Banda

I vaguely remember the actual machine because there was a wee annex in the school corridor where the printing was done.

Did it print off a roll of paper? I seem to remember teachers spending an awful lot of time guillotining paper, and often getting wonky worksheets with slightly off kilter lines...

Yes they were fab sometimes a bit blurry. We also had a projector that was used in assembly with our teachers lovingly handwriting the hymns. Sometimes they were smudged so you just had to guess the word!

No, I don't remember that but I did have a flashback to the orange SMP maths books.

I do remember OHPs in assembly though for the song words!

We had a Banda when I first began teaching although it had been totally superseded by the photocopier at that point.
The fumes were... copious. 😂

We had an old school maths teacher in secondary who was using the Banda machine worksheets well into the late 90s/early 00s. Fantastic lady.

Overhead projector anyone?

YY to dictation.

The thing I remember most is that the printed sheets had a really strong, distinctive smell. If I could smell that now, I'd feel like I was 8 all over again.

I went to school earlier than the 80’s and remember these. We called them stencils. At least twice a day the teacher (no matter what year you were in) picked two people to go to the office to ask the office ladies for ‘Miss X’s stencils’. EVERYONE wanted to go. Because you spent the way back with your face pressed up against the stencils breathing the smell in. As soon as the teacher grabbed them and handed them out each child had theirs stuck to their face sniffing for a few minutes with the teacher always telling everyone to put their stencils down. Now we know it was some sort of solvent. God I loved that smell and can still remember it like it was yesterday (albeit 50 years later).

We called it the Roneo machine. I remember when photocopying came in and it seemed like actual magic.

I'm also of the generation that went from handwritten essays to manual typewriter to electric typewriter and, when I eventually did my master's, PC!

Tipex was a big part of my life.

I remember the banda....including using one as a student teacher in the late 90s. You had to make a template using purple duplicate film first, like the paper you get inside receipt books. Then you used the film on the drum to make your copies. And hand cranked it. It printed onto separate pages but you often had to cut down your paper if school hadn't bought A4 paper.

I cannot believe how different my job is these days as a teach even to when I started teaching.

Now my memory is going back. We didn’t have all the modern tech teachers have today. To ‘amuse us’ every now and then the teachers would show their holiday snaps. This was done as photos were converted into those little slide pictures that were loaded one by one into round carousels and projected onto a white screen. Invariable the pictures were of a shit caravan holiday where the teacher was wearing a bikini, her husband fishing and little kids running around in the nuddie. Once a year we had a ‘big treat’. We all dreaded it. The only male teacher at the school used to go on an overseas holiday every year (very rare when I was a kid for people to go overseas) and we were subject to his copious number of slides for at least an hour with him droning on incessantly about each one. Fuck it was tortuous. Oh, most teachers smoked in the classroom, assemblies etc back then as well. Parents never complained about anything back then.

Nowadays kids get to watch Finding Nemo as a treat. No inappropriate slides, no smoking yet you still get outraged parents who have indulged their kids being scared of a fish.

Did it print off a roll of paper? I seem to remember teachers spending an awful lot of time guillotining paper, and often getting wonky worksheets with slightly off kilter lines...

At my school it was always A3 paper they printed on then cut. It must have been cheaper than A4 or something

You've just made me remember the ssccccrrrrrr sound of the guillotine we had at my primary school - one was a covered cutting unit that slid along a bar (ie, relatively safe), the other was an actual HINGED BLADE that could have sliced off fingers all day, every day, and yet somehow never did.

Also Copydex. The 80s primary school Footner for infant hands. Slop it on, peel it off. Ewwwww, miss.

Remember this and the overhead projector. I was in Primary in the 70s so also remember a big tv being wheeled into a room so we could watch those frightening public information films!

I'd also forgotten about Copydex. We must have been high on fumes most of the day!

I remember we weren't very often allowed to write on worksheets - you'd get an old, dog-eared, used-15-times worksheet that someone had written on once in mistake and rubbed out their writing on, and you'd have to copy it all into your book.

Yeah I miss the toxins and risking life and limb to use the paper cutter, or even more scary the guillotine with a massive blade you brought down with a massive chop.
The Tele with its own cupboard was class. Teachers didn't smoke in the classroom, but they did in the staff room. Helpers would sit on benches, having a chat and a smoke whilst on 'playground duty'.

Does anyone remember having clock faces stamped into their work books to practice telling the time with? It was a blank clock face and then you would have to draw the hands to show the time.

Yes they always had the same smell , I was watching Jaws with ds1_a couple of years ago there was a scene where someone was typing a letter on a,manual typewriter ,first of all I had to.explain what a typewiter was and then he asked how they deleted mistakes I had to explain all about tippex😂

Have just remembered something about photocopiers of that era. I'm sure that photocopiers printed on really thin shiney paper. So you'd get a worksheet and then it would be really hard to write on because the pencil just didn't really mark the shiney paper.

We had a box of Ladybird books each with its own question sheet- you read the book and then answer questions. We did this every Friday afternoon. I loved the one about budgies! I think it was called SRA.

I remember being halfway through GCSEs about 96/97 and my teacher lamenting that these were her final banda worksheets as she gave them out

School letters were often on little strips cut down to save paper.

The "master" worksheet which was saved and kept seperate to not get generations of black blobs photocopying through.

I remember slides on the carousel.

The excitement of the TV and VHS being rolled in. Or the computer trolley... if it actually worked.

We were the final year group in my school to have typewritter lessons. I couldn't do it. My hands are too small to reach letters like P, and my fingers were too weak and kept rebounding off painfully down the gaps. A couple of years later, the computers with green screens were replaced too.