If you went to school in the 70s/80s what happened that wouldn't happen now?

[TheVampiresWife]

I started primary in 1976, left secondary in 1989. Some of mine:

Corporal punishment (the most obvious one for a lot of us I think). In junior school (early 80s) we had a headmaster who would save all the week's canings for Friday afternoon assembly. The kids lined up on stage and were caned in front of the whole school. It was fucking horrific looking back - I remember a boy in my year crying and wetting himself on stage and he never lived it down, the nicknames followed him to secondary school

Girls doing needlework/cookery while boys did woodwork/metalwork

Boy in my class whose surname was Gaye. Geography teacher used to call him 'Poof' and 'Queer' which of course other kids found hilarious and joined in. He changed his surname halfway through secondary school

In my primary class an overweight girl was made to stand on a chair so the whole class could see what we would look like if we were greedy and ate too much

The headmaster who caned kids on stage also used to get girls to kiss him on the cheek and say thank you at prize givings. He also used to make comments about how we were 'developing' and once said in a conversation with my mum that I was getting 'a broad back'. The mums didn't seem to mind his comments

In primary school the children in the SEN class were described as [vile word I can't bring myself to type] by teachers and children alike quite unselfconsciously

In secondary school an English teacher had an affair with a sixth former and she became pregnant. He left but wasn't reprimanded and got a teaching job in another school the following year. The couple are still together all these years later!

It really was a different time and not necessarily for the better, either. I do have lots of happy memories of school too though!

In my junior school, school lunch was compulsory and you sat in the same seat everyday. Free school meal kids had a special table so everyone knew who they were.

Also, we were streamed according to ability - so you were in the A, B or C stream. There was always lots of speculation about who'd go "up" or"down".

On the last day of the school year, you'd go into assembly and sit down in your classes. They'd then read out the class lists for next year in alphabetical order and you'd have to stand up and physically move over to the space where your new class would sit.

Then you'd look back and see one or two kids who'd "gone down" sitting there disconsolately pretending to be very interested in their shoes.

Brutal.

1981 first year of senior school. Made to line up naked in pairs to queue for showers after PE. Not allowed to carry your towel with you and not allowed to attempt to cover your body parts with your hands. Made to share a shower to save water. I don't know how we put up with it or how they got away with it. At some point in the second year we were no longer made to do this - no big fuss or announcement made - they just stopped making us do it.

Primary school late 70's. Boys were punished for minor classroom misbehaviour by being made to bend over and then hit on the bottom with a slipper. Girls were never punished in this manner.

Some teachers would throw a black board rubber at you if they thought you were not paying attention.

Another one - but a nice one. Secondary school Home Economics we got to make afternoon tea and invite two of our favourite teachers. You got the afternoon off to host in part of the kitchens that were made to look like a house - table & chairs, sideboard, nice crockery etc.

You had to make a pot of tea and Camp Coffee (very sophisticated). My friend & I invited the two male English / Drama to ours and had a brilliant time because they were very irreverent and great fun. I'm still in touch with one of them now and I left in 1985.

I was amazed when DD started school (early 00s) to find that DC didn't go home for lunch anymore. When I was in primary only a handful had school dinners and their mums were seriously judged by the other mums. Mothers going out to work and not being at home to make DC lunch/pick them up at lunchtime was still seriously frowned upon. It was clearly the done thing for kids to go home - there were lunchtime cartoons before the news. Bod and Chorlton and the Wheelies were my favourites

I went home for lunch in secondary too. I lived a ten minute walk from school and all the other kids who lived nearby went home also. I looked forward to my lunchtime fix of Neighbours and liver sausage sandwiches all morning! When DD went to secondary leaving the school grounds during the school day was strictly forbidden until sixth form. Absolutely nobody went home for lunch.

This was a game at my school but there was also a version called "knicker chase" where boys chased the girls around and lifted up their skirts

No Lou, that was just you.

@littlequestion

In my junior school, school lunch was compulsory and you sat in the same seat everyday. Free school meal kids had a special table so everyone knew who they were.

Also, we were streamed according to ability - so you were in the A, B or C stream. There was always lots of speculation about who'd go "up" or"down".

On the last day of the school year, you'd go into assembly and sit down in your classes. They'd then read out the class lists for next year in alphabetical order and you'd have to stand up and physically move over to the space where your new class would sit.

Then you'd look back and see one or two kids who'd "gone down" sitting there disconsolately pretending to be very interested in their shoes.

Brutal.

We had a list issued at the end of each school year in primary of the whole year in order of academic achievement - from 1st to bottom. I can’t imagine what effect this had on the kids who were at the bottom - the same ones were every year. The list was made public to everyone and there was a big fuss made of it.

To be fair, all kids knew where they were in the academic pecking order, whether it was spelled out to them or not.

We had town names for our classes and our year was 'Chinley' so 7 classes. C and H were both top tier, INL middle tier and EY were lower tier. Everybody knew it.

What was more disturbing was that those who brought sandwiches were segregated from those buying school meals. The school meal dining area was a nicer, the sandwiches / packed lunch one, a bit naff. You'd almost be forgiven for thinking it was deliberate.

Something else that came to mind is the difference in work experience.

When my elder three did it there were forms and certain rules and regulations. Anywhere taking them had to have certain vetting.

I did mine (in 1995/6) in a the local special needs school. On my second day, at 14/15, I was left to supervise the dozen or so kids who weren’t allowed to go to the Christmas assembly. I didn’t even know most of their names!

Also near the end of the first week I was taken aside and told not to get friendly with any of the pupils similar ages to me (the school went to 18) and in particular one boy who’d taken to sitting next to me at lunch because he was there because he was “bad”.
Discovered when I went back to my school that he’d set fire to his house to try and kill his family, and then subsequently had to be sent to a foster home that only had boys as he “got obsessed” by two girls in the first one.
He was one of the kids I was left to supervise!

We had a list issued at the end of each school year in primary of the whole year in order of academic achievement - from 1st to bottom. I can’t imagine what effect this had on the kids who were at the bottom - the same ones were every year. The list was made public to everyone and there was a big fuss made of it

I've seen that in the last ten years on the wall in classes - it was allegedly part of ensuring that kids knew where they were and what they needed to do to meet their targets, 'essential if Ofsted come', apparently, along with A4 sheets plastered on the front of every exercise book where they had to write the level they had just been assessed at.

The one member of staff who refused point blank to do it because it was humiliating, 'they already know exactly where they are when they're at the bottom and don't need to be reminded of it every time they walk into the classroom', was first met with a 'Oh, they don't care, it's for the top kids and Ofsted really' and then, over the next term, had his position slowly but surely made so uncomfortable that he left.

And the kids who did vocalise being unhappy about it were told they should adopt a Growth Mindset and work more on the Resilience.

Country town primary in the 70s - 45 mins Christian assembly every morning with full service and hymns.

Nature walks, swimming (involving long walks either way with one teacher to 35 children through traffic), PE in vest and knickers. Some kids were filthy and very thin.

Some kids had filthy uniform and no shoes. They were given plimsolls out of lost property but stank in the classroom. No one wanted to sit next to them.

Gypsies came every year for crop picking. Most were years behind. I can remember my teacher tutting that 7 year olds couldn't read and didn't know their times tables. They were very aggressive and I couldn't understand their accents. They were clean and always had money.

We had a student teacher for one term where no one did any work at all - I think he was meant to be testing 'progressive' educational ideas.

Former Secondary Modern, then Comprehensive up to early 80s. Music teacher got a girl pregnant at 15, just changed schools. Most girls by 16 had either had an abortion or child. Sex was largely more innocent.

No national curriculum so some quite eclectic topics taught. There were still several teachers who had been in WW2. They were cut a lot of slack and near retirement. Including the alcoholic maths teacher whose form group took his register every morning and set work for his classes for the rest of the day.

School trip to France with alcoholic teacher, two more teachers having an affair and a very ill teacher with anorexia. Scary, but very free.

Lots of physical violence and bullying but most had friendship groups that defended each other. Lots of minor disabilities ignored. Lots of name calling and racism.

Overall, it was a rougher, harder but very much freer world. I miss the ability to be totally carefree that we had then. With no phones, internet or social media we retained our innocence and I think were happier for it.

I got smacked in the head by a teacher when I was at primary school. Thankfully that wouldn't happen now. I was about to tell a story and after she hit me, she said, "I bet you don't want to tell a story NOW..."

Horrid, sadistic woman.

Forgot about free school meals. Kids had a different queue and had worse meals. I never thought much about it at the time. But when mine started school I realised how humiliating it must have been for some.

I got the strap once in primary, for something I did not do (can't even remember what it was, I just distinctly remember I didn't do it!).

It hurt, not massive, but it hurt. They stick with you these things, don't they?

I left an inner London school in 1980.
One of my most vivid memories was 50 odd 14 year olds being taken to Bolugne for the day using the one day passports your could buy.
We were supervised by 3 teachers who all took off once we got to the town centre, the teachers appeared to treat it as a booze cruise.
On the ferry on the way back, one boy decided he would hang off the side. He actually fell in and the coast guards had to come out.
As long as Mr F got his duty free it didn’t seem to matter

Wow, I’m really shocked! I started school in 1973, left in 86 and absolutely nothing like that went on at all.

They tried the showering thing for a while (all girls’ school) but gave up because so many girls were making excuses to avoid showers when they were on their period that it became unworkable. One young male teacher did get together with an ex pupil but only after she’d left the school. Another male teacher apparently made occasional dodgy comments in lessons, and allegedly had an affair with a married female teacher, but he never taught me so I’m not even sure how much truth there was to any of that. That was about the sum total of the scandal.

Oh yeah now that I think about it, we did have some teachers who got away with not doing much teaching. First year of secondary, we had a young female teacher for history, I’m guessing she was an NQT and she’d changed her mind about teaching as a career because she REALLY didn’t want to be there. She used to come in and say ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today, everyone tell me what your favourite food / TV programme is’ and she’d go round the class in turn and pass the lesson that way. There was some teaching but clearly not enough because at the end of the year, most people failed the exam rather spectacularly. To the extent that she openly admitted to us that she had added 10% to everyone’s mark so that she wouldn’t get fired.

The problem was that I loved history and had got really into what little we’d done that year (personally I hated the ‘what’s yours favourite food?’ “lessons”) and as a result I somehow managed to get something like 86% in the exam. She actually came up to me and berated me for getting too high a mark because she had to add 10% to mine as well, which would raise questions because who gets 96%? And I guess the disparity with the lower marks was really obvious. I felt pretty miffed because it wasn’t my fault she couldn’t be arsed to teach us!

Anyway she didn’t come back the following September and her name was never mentioned again.

Other times we would get student teachers who were super keen and would go wildly off-piste with the curriculum. I remember we had one for music who decided that everyone ought to be able to play the recorder. Most people in the class already could, but a few of us had never learned and she seemed to take some pleasure in humiliating us.

At infants’ school, I’m sure I’m remembering this correctly though it seems crazy now - when it was your birthday you had to bring some or all of your presents into school and stand up in front of everyone in assembly and be kind of ‘interviewed’ by the head teacher about them (?). Absolutely mortifying!!

At infants’ school, I’m sure I’m remembering this correctly though it seems crazy now - when it was your birthday you had to bring some or all of your presents into school and stand up in front of everyone in assembly and be kind of ‘interviewed’ by the head teacher about them

Wouldn't have gone down well with me. We didn't do birthday presents.

It certainly didn’t take different families’ economic situation into account, that’s for sure! It’s very weird bc I can’t believe it was really done by everyone, every birthday, because it would have been daily, surely? Small school but even so. I know I only had to do it once (which was bad enough) but my birthday usually fell during the Easter holidays and was only ever on a school day if Easter was very late, so that’s maybe why. I do know that I knew this ordeal was coming up though so it must have been an established thing.

I’m sorry you never got birthday presents, that’s not nice for a child.

I don't recall the taking presents in... but I do recall the hair pulling for every year of your birthday. Usually in a very gentle and celebratory manner I hasten to add.

I read about one of my old teachers (30 years after I'd been there) losing her job for manipulating exam results!

She was really pleasant and likeable and from memory you'd think beyond reproach.

@VerticalHorizon

I don't recall the taking presents in... but I do recall the hair pulling for every year of your birthday. Usually in a very gentle and celebratory manner I hasten to add.

No hair pulling/taking presents in at my primary but the birthday boy or girl used to get given the bumps. Occasionally a teacher would join in with giving them. I was always stupidly grateful that my birthday was in the summer holidays!

One of the reasons for school uniform was supposedly to 'level up' how kids dressed and remove stigma between the haves and have nots. But no matter how you try and prevent it, the haves still buy expensive clothing that doesn't breach school rules.

Back in my day, people still wore Slazenger jumpers, or Pringle, as long as they were navy blue it was ok. Those that couldn't afford them, simply didn't have the branded jumpers and stood out. The same with footwear and pants (Farah were trendy once).

Kids will always find a way. 'My dad has a BMW' or 'My mother's a barrister' etc.

No one being worried about what you were wearing and certainly not imposing punishments for being dressed 'wrong'.
No one went through your lunch box to determine if the contents were correct.
The teachers lounge was just a wall of smoke
Teachers in the pub at lunch time

@VerticalHorizon

One of the reasons for school uniform was supposedly to 'level up' how kids dressed and remove stigma between the haves and have nots. But no matter how you try and prevent it, the haves still buy expensive clothing that doesn't breach school rules.

Back in my day, people still wore Slazenger jumpers, or Pringle, as long as they were navy blue it was ok. Those that couldn't afford them, simply didn't have the branded jumpers and stood out. The same with footwear and pants (Farah were trendy once).

Kids will always find a way. 'My dad has a BMW' or 'My mother's a barrister' etc.

I remember when Farah trousers were the only acceptable trousers for the boys!

There was also a lot of stationery competition which was another way the haves were divided from the have nots. Fountain pens, perfumed erasers and those pencil cases which unzipped and opened like a book and had layers of coloured pencils in marked you out as posh in secondary school. Also Head sports bags for the boys and leather saddle bags for the girls, which were too small for all your books so they were carried in those plastic baskets and everything got soaked if it rained.

Umbrellas were also a status symbol for a while in my school, weirdly. You were absolutely nothing if you didn't have a golf umbrella with a strap you could put over your shoulder

The sad thing is there are people who class these times as "the good old days" or "the golden era.."