Memories of secondary school in the 70s (or thereabouts)

[waltzingparrot]

Pink custard and Spam Fritters (not together)

Budgie Jackets

Smoking in the toilets at breaktime (with lookout)

There was a phase of piercing friends' ears with a safety pin in the corridors (any old safety pin, no antiseptic) If you were lucky, they'd agree to do it at the weekend with an ice cube behind it.

Bomb Alerts - always seemed to be piling out to line up on the school field - garrison town.

But best best memories of packed lunches on the school field with your friends in all that glorious sunshine.

Essex 74-79

Oh and no calculators for maths lessons - it was still British Thornton slide rules and log tables. The school had one primitive computer that had to be programmed with a stack of punch cards.
The cane was still very much in use at secondary school. Primary was a slipper, plus throwing a heavy wooden blackboard rubber at pupils’ heads if they weren’t paying attention in lessons.

Flex yellow hair conditioner

Huge hair with ozone layer killing hairspray. I ran out of it once and my sister wouldnt let me use hers. In desperation I use air freshener instead....the shame of it not working (funnily enough) and leaving me with flat hair that day [shame]

History/Geog teacher throwing board cleaners at boys not concentrating

blue eyeshadow on eyelid, with a pink overlay - with a stripe of blusher over not blended in foundation. I looked the bomb as you can imagine

@CovidClara

Blotting paper in shoes to induce fainting in assembly-dozens fell each week

At primary boys did football and girls sewing

How did it cause fainting? I've never heard this before.

We made our gym skirts in needlework in the first year
One yard of navy fabric cut into 3 with one small bit for the waistband , and the other 2 pieces made into a box pleated skirt
Big navy blue knickers worn underneath with a red airtex PE shirt on top

People smoking behind the bike shed

Having amazing lipgloss that was really sweet , and a lipstick that went on one colour and changed ( from dark purple to something useful ,like apricot 🎃)

Having crushes on ... Donny Osmond .. David Cassidy and thinking the older girls who liked Marc Bolan and Trex we're so grown up

The Bay City Roller trousers ! And the song
B A Y , B A Y , B A Y C I T Y !
With an R O Double L E R S
Bay City Rollers are the best

And then in 6th form , we all loved Leo Sayer singing
When I need you 🎼

Slipper for the girls, cane for the boys
Skirts routinely checked so not too short or not too long
Smoking in the lavs
Leaving cross country run part way round to go off smoking then rejoin run at a later point
Spam fritters, Gypsy tart and school stinking of cabbage
Tapioca, rice pudding with jam and left overs scraped into slops bin
Gymnastics and trampolining
School discos
Divinity classes
Domestic science
You will end up working in Woolworths

Everybody's make up looked like this at the school disco. Presume they only sold blue eyeshadow in the 70s.

(That's not me by the way).

@waltzingparrot

Everybody's make up looked like this at the school disco. Presume they only sold blue eyeshadow in the 70s.

(That's not me by the way).

spot on!

@Fridgeandkitchen

I was early 80s. We had external huts as classrooms as well as the main buildings. We spiked and drank vodka there!

Ear piercing too. Needles sanitised with said vodka.

Roller lip gloss. I think it was max factor.

There was a shop in Edinburgh called Razzle Dazzle. Shoes and bags. We all wore them to school.

Shaders and toners in our hair. White high heels.

Yes, to sewing up pencil skirts!!

I had forgotten about Razzle Dazzle!! And we had ' The Huts' as classrooms outside school as well!

Pe knickers still a thing late 80's / early 90's when i went in a shade of royal blue with a horrible yellow t shirt - no wonder most of the girls tried to get out of pe
By then toilets were locked though during day and had a dinner lady monitoring them at lunch and break so no smoking , that happened at the back of the field

We loved David Cassidy and the girls who loved Michael Jackson or Donny Osmond were our darkest enemies.
Girls' school. Brown knickers.
We were allowed to go to a dance at the boys' school but had a talk from the headmistress warning us that the boys would want to do certain things, and we should say 'No!' (accompanied by a firm forbidding hand gesture). I got kissed, liked it, and didn't say no.

Annoying the Bay City Rollers fans on the school bus by crossing the ll's into tt's where they'd traced it in condensation on the windows.

Nearly dying in the classrooms during the heatwave summer of 79.

Getting minus marks if caught not wearing beret while travelling to and from school. In summer we had a boater hat, but that was optional.

Dreading the communal showers after PE.

Comparing it with my sons school I was lucky in having a personal desk to keep my books in so only had to take home what I needed to do homework. Plus school cloakrooms so I didn't have to lug coat around with me all day.

Biology lessons where you actually got to cut things up for dissection.

All of these, and showers after pe.. oh the mortal shame and dread. Late 70s to early 80s. Scary kids starting to listen to punk, the rest of us learning every word of the Grease-double album cover with the lyrics on . Later on it was the Duran tribe v the Spandau Ballet tribe (SB, obvs)

not secondary, but Warwick/Leamington plenty of bomb scares whilst we were at junior school (being near to Cov and Birmingham)

Jackie magazine
Discussing what had been on Top of the Pops on Thursday night, on Fridays
Bomb scares (lots)
No calculators - we used log books, and slide rulers were still around, but were being phased out
We were very advanced and did have a computer room at the end of the decade
There was a pay phone by the staff room if you ever needed to contact your parents
Really, really wide ties
Great cookery lessons though, where we actually learned so many useful skills

Girls used whicker baskets to carry their school books
DS tins every Thursday full of whatever disgusting thing you had cooked that day so you could transport home so your parents could taste it
We had baby jackets - little tiny pastel coloured fluffy jackets
A nurse coming round to check our hair for nits and also our PE teacher doing termly checks on our feet for verrucas
CSE's

Everyone smelling of patchouli, 4711, Hawaian Tropic, Vosene.
Reading Jackie, Smash Hits or New Scientist if you were geeky or wanted to look clever.
Playing detective to find out teachers first names.
Making up stories about teachers private lives.
Having chalk thrown at us for chatting in class.

We were allowed out at lunchtime in the 80s. A chippy round the corner from the school did a roaring trade! There was no policing of pupils at all over lunchtime because it was the era of teachers' strikes and they were all working to rule.

@cherrytree63

Everyone smelling of patchouli, 4711, Hawaian Tropic, Vosene. Reading Jackie, Smash Hits or New Scientist if you were geeky or wanted to look clever. Playing detective to find out teachers first names. Making up stories about teachers private lives. Having chalk thrown at us for chatting in class.

It was body shop Dewberry at our school. Stinks.

Our school was quite progressive for the time. No gender divide between cookery and woodwork. Girls had to wear skirts so we all organised a petition and went on strike til that changed (tbf we were always finding excuses to 'strike' aka sit on the field after lunch and refuse to go back in) The school changed their rules and we all bought Farah trousers after that.

But yy to everything else, smoking by the netball courts (The shops next door to school eventually banned cigarette sales to anyone in school uniform), someone selling a squashed oxo cube claiming it was cannabis resin, carving initials on your arm with a compass etc

'Panache' perfume was very popular at my school.

Hoiking up the waistband of my skirt to make it shorter. Hockey, hated it, brutal sport resulting in multiple bruises on legs. Me and my friend were hopeless at it, always seemed to be running in the wrong direction.

I was at primary school in the 70s. At Infant school the headmistress used to put kids over her knee in hymn practice and whack them. Seemed to be for fidgeting mainly. She'd also smack them several times if she came across them misbehaving around the school. At Junior school the headmaster would give boys the slipper (in private unlike the infant school head.) I remember him coming in.a lesson and giving a boy a whacking for kicking a boy in the head.

Just remembered the terrible goat smell of those fashionable cheap 1970’s “Afghan” coats, made of badly cured hide, on wet mornings, hanging up in the cloakroom and steaming over the radiators! Mingled with the noxious pong of Brut from the boys, patchouli from the girls, and unwashed body odour from everyone who could only afford hot water for a bath on Sundays...!

I have very hazy memories of secondary school- late 70s into early 80s.

Lots of smoking - pupils and teachers
Doc Marten boots (only on boys)
Over the knee socks held up with bands of elastic
Very short school skirt
Caning - but I don't know if it was just a threat
Big hair - sun in and perms
No school lunch for me - I saved my dinner money to buy cigarettes
Horrible wintry games sessions outdoors - cold muddy hockey, cold muddy cross country runs - all done wearing aertex shirt and gym knickers or a gym skirt (if you could afford one)
Communal showers afterwards - most just ran through and stayed sweaty/muddy for the day

Other than that I remember very little - some kind teachers and some horrors!

Fishnets tights with Adidas trainers

Griffin Savers holdall - everyone had one so we used tippex to write out names on them.

Old fashioned baskets to carry our cooking stuff for catering lessons and only remembering to tell mum the previous night.

Chip bap at break time

Chocolate cake with chocolate custard

Pink toilet roll blocking the sink, and scrunched up with water and thrown up on the ceiling, setting rock hard.

Always the rumour of a 6th former shagging a teacher