What was THE INCIDENT at your secondary school?

[NoviceNewMN]

Inspired by a thread on another website that I randomly came across throught google.

Every school has some sort of 'infamous incident' that passed into the annals of school infamy and was the sole topic of gossip for months if not years.

What was yours?

Mine was the head teacher had an affair with another teacher. Both were married. It all became public on the last day of term and neither of them came back the following term. Just disappeared. No one talked about anything else for a long time.

The day Nicola Harlech-Smythe refused to eat a single broad bean which was in her serving of mixed veg and Miss Archer*, the housemistress, made the WHOLE BOARDING HOUSE stay in the dining room until she ate it, hissing at her all the while “you are preventing the middle fifth from attending their semifinal lax match you know” and “nobody will like you for this”. It took TWO HOURS before she put it in her mouth. miss Archer stood up, pushed in her chair and walked out, sensibly (for once) pretending not to notice (a) that Nicola spat the broad bean at her feet as she walked past and (b) the eruption of huge cheers and cries of “Well done Nicola!” as the door shut behind her.

We talked about it literally for YEARS because I ended up at the same Uni as Nicola and we brought the story there too 🤣😎

• Not her name but a close approximation ** Also not her name. Alas, she died earlier this year.

This was c.1986 at a private girls’ school with a distinctive Anglomanic uniform, complete with kilt and school blazer with a bottom’s motto, “Love, Loyalty, Lowliness.” A girl attempted to check into the city’s best hotel with an older man in his early 20s whilst in said uniform using her mother’s American Express card. A lawyer attending a private function whose wife and daughter attended the school intervened and called the headmistress. There was much gossip and discussion following this. To this day, my peers and I wonder how she was not expelled.

Two teachers having “relationships” with pupils. One female teacher moved in with the boy when he left school at 16. The male teacher groomed and raped an underage girl, we all knew but it was brushed under the carpet. He was prosecuted years later and is now in jail.

One of our technology teachers collapsed and died in front of the class.

School in Devizes when the lions escaped from the circus and rampaged around the school

A boy in our year killed himself in the school a few weeks before Christmas. He was a quiet lad and no rumours of him bullied were around. I still think of him and his family all these years later.

That was the first time we were locked in the teaching blocks for hours without explanation whilst everything was being dealt with.

The second time we were locked in was when the chimpanzees from the neighbouring zoo escaped and were marauding around the local area including our school grounds.

There were plenty of rumours about teachers and inappropriate behaviour but they're the two newsworthy incidents from my school.

God so many can’t list them all:

Dep Head’s husband left her for another teacher at the school (he was a teacher there too)

Year 10 girl pregnant by a 6th former

Over zealous dirty old man PE teacher used to smack our bottoms

2 business teachers would go out with the 6th formers and snog them

My year 8 friend went out with the local 20 something drug dealer and would arrive with bruises on her covered by a polo neck

Head of English eloped with with a 6th former

God the list goes on! This was THE top performing comp in the city

Oh yeah business teacher squeezed my breasts

My Year 9 RE teacher who everyone thought was really cool was found to have been in a “relationship” with a Year 11 girl, which continued into sixth form. When he tried to end it she told her parents what had been happening.

In primary school a boy in my class died after falling when sliding down the banister of the stairs at school

So many…..

An ex-pupil burned my secondary school to the ground

Another ex-pupil married Paul McCartney

Baby Jesus was kidnapped from the nativity scene and a ransom note sent for something random like a £3.50 and a jar of pickled onions.

A french teacher was locked in a cupboard by her class and then apparently left because she’d had a nervous breakdown

Pretty sinister, science teacher tried to rape a student then locked her in a prep room turned on the gas taps and tried to blow up the school - thankfully the windows were so leaky it wasn't dense enough to set fire and the caretaker caught him! Brixton prison was his next home

Toilets set on fire would be the main one.

Science block struck by lightning - from across in the main building we saw it happen and watched a chunk of bricks fall to the ground.

One of my sister’s friends hung himself in the woods.

@bluebeck was that a girls grammar school in the south east? I feel like I’m aware of that!!!

Deputy head wandered into an art exam, picked up the celery still-life the students were drawing and took a bite out of it. It was on the news. God knows what he was thinking.

A fifth form boy was caught having sex with the home economics teacher during lunch break. He was caught as he'd been bragging to his mates who reported it to HT. Incredulously he was suspended for a few days but the teacher remained in school and subsequently married the Geography teacher.

@Lindor

On a residential geography field trip we were given freetime in a seaside town one afternoon. Some of the upper sixth got drunk, and the headboy was caught shoplifting and punched the shopkeeper.

A few weeks later the head of geography had to go back to the seaside town with him for his court case

On the same trip.on the way home the coach dropped one teacher off before we reached school and as we drove off the back seat boys all mooned at her out the back window (1980s)

I recall taking a school trip to London for the day and we did the usual head count before setting off back. Half was up the M1 we found we had a couple of extra boys from another school that the girls had smuggled on. We spent a lot of time at the Services contacting their parents who were frantic as their teachers had found the discrepancy, all before mobile phones or even landlines weren't common.

Sixth form boys circled naive new 11 year olds like prey, pretended to be their friends, got them in their cars, and offered to "break them in".

A popular teacher groomed all girls from their arrival at 11, and as soon as they were 16 and nominally "legal" he picked a few to have sex with.

Nothing was ever done about either situation during my years there, despite actual pregnancies resulting.

All the protection the new girls had was the warnings of older girls.

@bluebeck

Oh I forgot - seriously there are so many!

15 year old female student had fling with coach driver on school trip to Germany. Was found naked in wardrobe of coach drivers room by a teacher.

I went on a German exchange trip and snogged the coach driver. There were two of them and another girl snogged the other one. However, we were 18 and in upper sixth. I have a feeling it might have gone further with the other girl but the one I snogged smoked and I thought yuck.

I don't know how old they were - mid to late 20s maybe?

The only "scandal" I can remember is a couple of teachers having an affair but then getting married to each other. The female teacher sadly died of cancer when she was only 40 .

A girl gave her bf a blowy in class during a lesson.

They're still together!

Loads in my year...

• when we were 12/13, two pupils had a baby together.
• in year 11 a female pupil stabbed a male pupil outside the school gates (thankfully he was fine)
• 2 girls found taking heroin in the toilets
• a boy tried to spend a forged £5 note in the tuck shop, the whole town got shut down and police helicopters were circling. Apparently he's been spending them in quite a few places.

This was a supposedly 'good' school in a naice town.

Somebody covered the walls of one of the communal toilets with threatening messages written in period blood. They held an assembly about it trying to shame the person into admitting it was them.

Sad to think now how sad and unheard that teenager must have felt.

This wasn't too long ago. Needless to say I won't be sending my children to academic private all girls schools- such a toxic culture.

@Animood

A girl gave her bf a blowy in class during a lesson.

They're still together!

And they say romance is dead...

A student in year 8 killed himself by hanging (very sad, knew him well).

A boy two years younger got hit by a car after walking around the front of the bus in the morning, he sadly died.

There were a few in one year: two teachers having an affair the married couple BOTH worked in the school as did the other woman his line manager.

Two lots of teachers caught having sex on the school grounds (one couple same sex which back in the 90s was treated like something Outrageous. More sad was one had a daughter in the school and some students were awful to her).

Fraud from the bursar who happened to be in a relationship with the seedy chemistry teacher.

A teacher suffered some sort of breakdown after a few incidents in lessons.
Cameras were found in the changing rooms a couple of years later.

Prince Charles had come to the school for a visit. Media was following him and his entourage around and we were told of the visit before hand so we could be on our best behaviour.

At lunch time a massive fight broke out on our side of the playground where the year 9s would chill. One of my friends had a fight with a boy in the year above. I remember practically the whole playground ran over to see what was happening and the camera crew started filming us😂💀

No clue what happened to the footage but the next day we had a whole school assembly and our headteacher was FURIOUS. He was Irish and usually had quite a subtle accent but he was so angry he was talking in his mother tongue ans we could hardly understand what he was saying!

Then there was the year when we got sent home early two days in a row because the closest school next to us kept on starting firework fights!😭 they would literally wait on the road opposite and throw fireworks at us once we left school (of course people from my school would throw them back.) So to avoid this our school would send us home at lunch and we wasn't allowed to loiter around.

So many other stories but that's secondary school in South London for ya!

Our school sounds pretty boring reading through these replies.
The only things I can remember happening at our school is someone pushing our head teacher into the school swimming pool and a few of the school leavers stealing some chickens from the local farm and letting them loose inside the school cafeteria, it was chaos.