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!

A male PE teacher coming into the girls changing room, when we were getting changed, to ‘tick us off the list’.
I still see people saying what a great teacher he was on Facebook.

I remember my primary school teacher telling us Thatcher had resigned and all of the teaching staff whooping with joy and dancing in the corridor. Headteacher made a tannoy announcement and said we had an extra 30 minutes playtime.

Field trip to Kent with a Geography teacher. Our minibus broke down on the motorway so he left us (group of 13 year old girls) alone in the dark on the hard shoulder whist he went to get petrol in a Jerry can.

End of term trip to Covent Garden. Our teacher asked "who wants to see male strippers?" and took us to a theatre where the Chippendales were rehearsing! It turned out his boyfriend managed the theatre. We were about 15 I think.

Lovely South African teacher who gave us Free Nelson Mandela stickers. An Irish teacher who taught us the IRA were freedom fighters, not terrorists.

This was East London in the 80s/90s. It was like a civil with teachers vs the govt. I have two DC at school now in the same area and it's a world apart. I look back at a lot of these events in complete amazement

Izal toilet paper - ouch !

@LeanneBrownsLonelyBraincell

I'm pretty sure in the first or second year of comp we were given our BCG injection, and they only changed the needle when it got a bit blunt.

They just wiped it and filled the syringe from the vial. We were lined up and went into a classroom one by one to get jabbed.

Talking of health things, we used to have our hair checked for nits by a district nurse regularly at primary school. Don't think that happens any more.

My mum never Allowed me to have my vaccinations at school. She always booked them via GP somehow.

I think her own experiences At school put her off

I’ve remembered more!

Doing PE in your vest and pants at primary.

Year 6 (or fourth year junior as it was) being receptionists for the day - greeting visitors, answering the phone etc. We thought this was amazing!

Wet break, staying in whatever classroom you were in at break time. Now I am a teacher myself I realise how much of a sinking feeling that wet break bell
must have caused!

We used to do ‘music and movement’ in our vest and knickers at infant school. Basically dancing round however you liked to the music.

You could get a dinner time job at my junior school. You had giving out cutlery and a tray to those coming in, or scraping peoples plates at the end. The reward was getting to go early for lunch.

Doing PE in your pants and vests
Being given money and sent to the shop for milk for the staff room at break time.
Being sent out unsupervised with harvest festival packages for the elderly. We had a list of addresses and that was it. If the elderly people invited us in for a drink and a biscuit we were allowed to go in.
Creosoteing the school fence, I dknt even think you can buy creosote now never mind get small children to apply it to your fence.

Doing PE in your pants and vests
Being given money and sent to the shop for milk for the staff room at break time.
Being sent out unsupervised with harvest festival packages for the elderly. We had a list of addresses and that was it. If the elderly people invited us in for a drink and a biscuit we were allowed to go in.
Creosoteing the school fence, I dknt even think you can buy creosote now never mind get small children to apply it to your fence.

Forgot to say this was all Primary School age.

@LadyDanburysCane

Thank goodness children in a similar situation have you to look out for them now.

Corporal punishment - "the belt".

Walking alone to school from age 5.

Scratchy toilet paper and carbolic soap.

Missing primary school because of the coal strikes.

Missing secondary school because of the teachers' strike.

Being sneered at for getting the top mark in physics- because I was a girl. It should have been a boy who got the top mark apparently.

And all the bullying - was just accepted as normal, no action taken.

I started school early 80's. I used to take my alphabet letters to school in my dad's tobacco tin. Obviously it had an odour, and oddly enough I still love the smell today even though I don't smoke.
The group showering after PE was a nightmare, I guess that's no longer allowed but we had a husband and wife PE teachers and only the wife was allowed in to hurry us along.
I enjoyed my school days and my children now go to the same schools I did.

The communal showers were awful. The number of girls who used to be off sick on PE days should have maybe given them a clue that they were hated.

There was no uniform in my primary school but in secondary girls had to wear skirts only. When I was in second year (so 84-85) they brought in a new rule where girls could wear trousers in the winter if the temperature was below freezing. If you got to school and it was any warmer (as per the thermometer on the outside wall of the head's office) you were sent home to change. And absolutely NO trousers for girls before the Christmas holidays or after February half term.

Communal showers were thankfully never a thing in my school. The showers were there but they stopped using them a few years before - the older kids all had less than fond memories of them.

@0None0

Boys owning the playground for football. Girls allowed to play quietly in odd corners

I remember this too.

We used to do ‘music and movement’ in our vest and knickers at infant school. Basically dancing round however you liked to the music.

So did we.

We had hand wash monitors in the toilets to check whether you had washed your hands. Unfortunately this was due to a nasty dysentery outbreak at the school, on the positive side this led to the school being closed and us having a couple more weeks tagged on to the long summer holiday.

Year 6 pupils used to help out with reception pupils' school dinners. I used to love doing this.

Smoking in the girls loo next to the coal incinerator for sanitary items .

I went on a German exchange for 6 weeks when I was 14 (1974). There were 4 of us, 3 girls and 1 boy. We were put on the train at Victoria Station by the German teacher, then left completely unsupervised until we arrived in Frankfurt where the host families were waiting to meet us.

I can still remember the sheer exhilaration of that trip, crossing the channel, getting on another train, having a sleeper bunk for the 4 of us, chatting to people of different nationalities, and not being the least bit daunted about having to get there without an adult in sight.

My parents had no idea we would be travelling there and back alone - but we made it completely unscathed, God knows how.

I'm a primary school teacher and we do still say to kids who forget their PE kit, "Well in our day you'd have to have done it in your vest and pants."

90s primary school, there was a 'boys playground' just to play football on, girls got yelled at if they tried to step foot on it. I remember the lovely PE teacher doing an aerobic chest warm-up with the y5 girls that went "I must, I must, I must increase my bust. For bigger, is better, there's more to fill my sweater".
Then in secondary in the 2000s the caretaker left his wife for a 15yo student, his daughters were at the same school so it was awkward. He was allowed to resign rather than being fired.
Also one of the teachers was a single mum and if she was struggling for childcare she'd bring her 2yo in to our lessons and we'd all watch teletubbies on the TV. Good times!
Very glad I am young enough to have missed the corporal punishment and naked showers.

All of these. I hated the showers, normally supervised by female teachers but I remember one time it was a male teacher called Mr Reagan. I was upset so forgot to take my knickers off. Just gave my towel and got in the shower. Cue everyone laughing and me having to go back, remove my now sopping wet knickers and go back in the shower. I obviously spent the rest of the day in wet knickers. I was 12.

Girls weren't caned but boys were.

Bullying was rife. As was smoking (in the 3rd year girls toilets)

Another one who remembers the dreadful showering after loathsome PE lessons. I remember one PE teacher saying 'make sure you wash properly, some of you could do with it'. Vile woman.

In school 1972 to 1984. In infants if you misbehaved you had to stand on your chair. A child who spat was given a bucket and told he couldn't leave the room until he'd filled it with spit. Shoes removed for kicking and sent out barefoot in the cold and wet.
In juniors there was a remedial class for those not achieving and the students had to eat and use the playground at different times to the rest of the school. Headteacher would use a slipper on the boys who misbehaved.
In seniors HT would kick and thump students in the corridor before taking them to be caned if he was called to a class by a teacher. Board rubbers, chalk, metre rule and books were all used as weapons by teachers.
When the rival school were rumoured to be coming up to our school for a fight teachers armed the upper school boys with hockey sticks and chair legs and ordered them to keep them out of the school grounds.
Relationships between staff and pupils seemed frequent and when a fifth former was caught having sex with the home economics teacher he was excluded for a week but the teacher remained at school.

Chalk flicked at you, bullying pe teachers calling you useless, teacher having an affair with a year 11