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.

There were a few at mine. NC because mine are outing to anyone that knows me.

Standard (married) PE teacher having an affair with a year 11 girl. Everyone knew, and once we left school and sold her story to Take a Break. He was sacked but not prosecuted as she said nothing happened until she was 16

Trips abroad to Europe in y9 and 10 both of which ended up with us and teachers drinking alcohol, and quite a bit of it, and boys in our rooms overnight. No sex though (as far as I know!)

Half the school was burned down by an ex pupil, over a weekend so no injuries luckily but lots of damage

Loads of girls (and boys!) having underage sex. People say it didn't happen so much as it does now but it was common for girls to lose their virginity at 14 when I went to school

Teenage pregnancy announced when we did our GCSEs (father was the same age)

A year or so after we left school we had a suicide from our year group

A pupil was killed in a car crash, he was driving (sixth former)

School was closed for a day because a boy apparently had a gun and a bomb and a hit list of children and teachers he wanted to kill. Said child was the one who died by suicide a year after leaving school. He wasn't excluded!

Last day hijinks included many pupils being drunk, smoking in front of teachers and pretty much running riot all day long. Huge drunken party after school at the house of one of the wilder kids, parents allowed it. No exclusions!

Fights. Oh the fights, there were many. One memorable one was when a load of kids from the hated rival school came into our annex field and half of our school piled out there too and there was a proper dust up. Dispersed by teachers and the police in the end. Fights would be routinely organised on the hill on the field for after school, because it was away from the staff room and the school wasn't fenced in then, so when word reached the teachers all of the kids could run off into the nearby housing estate and not be caught

This was all very late 90s.

I'm glad mine are still primary aged!

I don't think anything happened at my school

There was a transsexual teacher, MTF, that was really nasty as the pupils could tell and the teacher got loads of awful abuse, then pupils crowed that they had given the teacher a mental breakdown :( She did not come back. Nothing ever happened to the kids... it would (hopefully) be different now.

Teen pregnancy etc par for the course at our school. Usually a couple each year.

This was a comprehensive school in Soth Yorkshire in the 70s.

1. Massive school obsession with Ouija boards. We had a few people called in to address us all advising us of the dangers.
2. Sewing teacher sacked immediately after calling a girl a silly cunt.
3. School set on fire on last day of term

The school was the most highly regarded in our town as well! A famous telly person who likes a Grand Tour was in my sister's class all through school

All the same year. A 4th year girl went a bit wild and reputably shagged a young “Grange Hill” actor, another used to run off to all night-parties in South London and would frequently be brought home by the Police. A third got pregnant (rumour was conception took place at a local ice-rink).

A 15 year old who used to get my bus impregnated by the bus driver (in his 40s). She had another child with him afterwards and was with him a long time.

@GlomOfNit out of interest did the boy's behaviour change after that? (Not saying it's right, just curious!)

Gosh if it was just affairs! There's been a few at my kids school and it goes without comment.
My incident, in the 70s in USA, was bussing. Inner city kids, mostly black, were bussed out to more affluent, mostly white, suburban neighbourhoods. This was to try and give them equal education and integrate the communities. An epic failure. Resentment on both sides, the kids hated getting moved out of their own territory and the locals hated the incomers. No one integrated. This led to increased racial tension everywhere (it was also time of the Iranian hostage crisis). A kid was stabbed to death outside the local pizza joint by some other kids (not from the high school) and this was blamed on the bussing and everything. Soon there was talk of violence in the school and it all turned very sour.

Fernando072020 I honestly can't remember, this was back in the mid 80's. I do remember his face going very red and he was trying hard not to cry, and failing - he was quite a hard type, swaggery, wanted to join the Army as I remember, and that was at the time almost as shocking as the fact that this extremely mild-mannered teacher had snapped.

JurassickJay That is BRILLIANT! Now I want to make a rat with a pencil-sharpening arse!

@TattiePants

What happened at my secondary school was incredibly sad and very outing as hopefully nothing like this has ever happened anywhere else. In the space of about 12 months a first year student and some of his family were killed in a gas explosion followed by a second year student being swept into the sea and drowned. The body of a third year student was then found in a derelict building and a fifth year was arrested for the murder. The fifth year was detained for about 4 months which mean they missed all of their GCSEs and lots of us were questioned by the police. It took over 20 years before a local serial killer was charged with the murder. He'd gone on to murder 3 more children from my school in the following couple of years.

Was this school in the NE in the same town where during a big fire the fire brigade had to use water from a swimming pool?

If so, I wasn't in your school or year but my husband's older sibling was.

@Homeofthe yes to being in a NE town (that became a city not long after) although I can't remember the fire.

SchadenfreudePersonified
Poor bloke.

He was Scandal.

As snotty teens we didn't think about the human side of it - just thought it was hilarious, but looking back it's rather heartbreaking. He must have been desperately trying to keep it together, but couldn't.

The saddest one was at the boys' school next door. It was found out that the History teacher was a paedophile and had done some truly horrible things. He was quite a young man and had been a pupil at the school. Somewhat later another older teacher was also found guilty of offences going back decades. No one really knows but it's likely the older man had been abusing the younger one. I just thought how awful that was.

At my own school, one girl boasted about how quickly she'd passed her driving test - in a matter of weeks - then she had to drive in the wet, which she'd never done, hit a patch of mud and skidded and panicked, and she crashed the car. She was fine but one of the other girls she was driving home was quite seriously injured and lost the sight in one eye.

The parents of one of the pupils in our school owned a newsagent so, apparently, he’d often look at the top shelf mags. He was looking at a copy of Readers’ Wives and spotted one of our supply teachers (as the centrefold, if my memory serves me right). Someone photocopied it and pasted it on doors all over the school. Poor woman. I still remember her name almost 40 years later, and recently bumped into someone else from our school (another year altogether) and they do too. Mortifying.

The history teacher physically lifted a naughty boy from his chair and put him in the rubbish bin and told him that’s where he’d end up 😳
A girl got pregnant and then (very bravely) came straight back to school and her child went to a child minder, she was allowed to leave school early on a Tuesday to collect her child benefit.
A boy called David swallowed a pen lid and was wheezing and whistling asking for help (it was a posh felt pen with holes in the lid) Matron had to call for an ambulance, when a cold paper towel failed to remedy his distress!!

1960’s , I went to a very staid Catholic Grammar School , Taught by nuns.
One of my classmates started her periods for first time.
Went to nun , who gave her a Dr Whites ST to put on,
She emerged from the toilet with it soaked in cologne, across her forehead., the loops around each ear.

@Borka

Two girls were caught growing marijuana in the boarding house. They told the house mistress it was a tomato plant, so I think she may have become suspicious eventually when no tomatoes appeared.

I love this! I went to a convent school as a day girl. I was having tea with the Boarders one day after school and it was one girl's birthday. She opened her cards and presents and one was a vibrator. This was in Dublin in the mid-80s, none of us had ever seen one before. We turned it on and watched it move around the table, helpless laughing. One of the nuns came over and said, 'turn that thing off, it's making a terrible racket'.

Boy killed by javelin in 1973. Parent thumped teacher in 1972-to be fair,teacher did hit him first and I never liked the teacher anyway!

Sorry-not parent but pupil.

A girl in my year went missing, months down the line they sadly found her body, a boy in my year murdered her was very sad and quite terrifying.

Headmaster got a fourth form student at boarding school pregnant. She left school around exam time, so didn't sit them and she never came back. He was married with kids and old enough to be our grandad. School only went up to fourth form so we all left after the exams and never found out what happened.
Came to me years later and I went hunting on Facebook only to find out he'd died and she wasn't his only victim.

Our maths teacher completely lost control of our class, so stormed out and got his wife out of the staff room to come and sort us out. She was terrifying!

Our home economics teacher died from complications due to her suffering from anorexic