School in the 1970s

[Malie]

Was chatting to a friend who also went to school in the 1970s. We agree they were quite different to now. Anyone else go to school then?

38 in a class and all but one passed the 11+. Lots of nature lessons & projects. Swimming in the school pool in the summer (was above ground & had a cover like a poly tunnel). Catching the bus home in London on my own aged 8. No children of colour in my first primary school, now it’s an area which has a mainly SE Asian population.

I got caned once at a UK secondary when I was 12...no idea why, think I was included with a group of friends who got the collective blame for something that happened. I still remember being really shocked, I honestly thought at the last minute it wouldn't be done.

Cheese pie.
dinner ladies with tabbards and violent tendencies.
lots of playground games involving rope or storming hordes of year groups.
dangerous as fuck.
I loved primary.

My junior 3 teacher (so current y5) used to set a spelling test each week. The highest scorers were then sent to the local sweet shop to buy Spangles to share out.

Started school in 1962, left in 1975. In secondary school we had an "A" stream and a "B" stream; A stream did German, B stream continued with domestic science. We were a girls school so no science beyond O levels and mine was the first year to do A level maths.

Careers guidance steered the bright girls towards a nice job in a local bank, the less bright girls towards a nice job in a shop, unless they were farmers' daughters in which case they would work on the farm of course, although obviously this was just a stopgap before marriage and babies.

Education was pretty formal both at the primary school and at the grammar school that wasn’t any of the worst for it I don’t think. We did have uniform for both and skirt lengths were a matter of dispute between pupils and staff at secondary school. Woe betied you if you were caught in a skirt inspection. Discipline was strict. Punishments included lines, detention and the slipper. That didn’t stop us messing about behind the teachers back but seemed to make it more daring.
School meals were pretty awful.
some of the teaching at the grammar school was absolutely terrific and I do bless the day I ever went there. Gave kids like me a real chance.

Lol yes!

I started school in the early 70s - small village primary. I remember music and movement in knickers and vest, no uniform and at lunch we sat on tables with older pupils who served everyone. Then we moved after two years and I went to a much bigger primary in a different county. They did ITA in the infants so as I joined in the Juniors and could read the teacher used to sit me in a corner to hear my fellow pupils read! I remember the teachers wearing coats whilst we did pe or games as it was called outside in a t shirt and being frozen. Remember playing french skipping and yes the climbing frame was on concrete. Staffroom was a haze of smoke, secondary school was no better, couldn’t wait to leave!

School sprinkle sponge cake
Do they still do that these days?

An Australian school I went to briefly when I was 13 had actual fucking tights as part of the school uniform...horrible bloody american tan bastards. Had to wear them all year around, even in the 45 degree fucking heat. Absolute nightmare!

An awful green beret was also part of the uniform...they used to have monitors on all the entrances/exits from the school every morning/afternoon to check you had the fucking thing on your head. Most people would wear them until they were out of sight down the road, then it would be straight off and stuffed in your bag. If you'd forgotten it, you were in so much trouble...we had whole school assembly every sodding morning and you had to wear it then...so it was obvious who wasn't. You'd get given a ticket and have to redeem it at detention after school, that same day...no 24/48 notice period to parents back then! They'd keep you in a classroom for an hour and then let you go. I was so glad to leave that school!

Ha yes ITA! My mum chose my primary school after asking the Head if he taught ITA there and he said ‘I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole’ so that was it, that was where I went to school. I vividly remember the warm milk and if you’d been ‘good’ you got to have one of the leftovers at the end of the day - seems like more of a punishment now. I loved the pink sponge with pink custard, chocolate sponge with chocolate custard and the Tottenham cake with normal custard. We seemed to sing ‘The ink is black, the page is white’ daily and I loved when one of the older pupils named Sonny used to play piano in assembly (The Entertainer, natch 😁). We also had an array of interestingly named teachers - Mrs Forest, Mrs Gittins, Mrs Organ (she was a music teacher, I kid you not) and my personal favourite Mrs Careless. The latter used story time to show us slides of her travels around the world, sounds boring but it wasn’t it was amazing, we were riveted. Especially the Kathmandu slides, I think my life long fascination with The Himalayas and Everest started right there. Ah, happy days 😊

12 is too young to cane a kid. Sorry!

Yesss. I was just thinking about that the other day and had forgotten what it was called. I remember the teacher getting flustered because we all pointed out that the spelling was wrong so we were giving ourselves double points. Poor Mr Rodgers, I think we may have given him a nervous tic by the time we left. "Never had a class like it", was one of his constant mutterings.

Yes,I remember doing music and movement prancing around the gym hall.I remember the Janet and John reading books and having a little tin with words printed on little cards and having to learn new words each week.

We certainly did 'music and movement' in vest and knickers. One girl who did ballet (who we thought very sophisticated) was the only one in tights - bottle green, and she was mortified at being different. We had to stretch out tall and pretend to be a tree, trying to look graceful - fat chance.

It was an era of children not being believed, if anyone complained of something like sexual abuse (which wasn't called that then) we were obviously making up stories.

Secondary school knocked out (not literally) any tiny ounce of self-esteem or confidence we may have had. I was glad to leave and wouldn't set foot in the place again if you paid me, and I was meant to be one of the clever ones, God knows what it was like otherwise.

Yep, started school in 1969. Outdoor toilets and you had to ask the dinner ladies for the Izal (?) loo paper. 3 sheets was max you were allowed. 😱

Lots of corporal punishment and as I’m pretty sure I have autism (online only tests), I think that explains a lot as to why I struggled at times.
I was very bright but not girly, so very messy and disorganised, constantly losing things and definitely treated differently. I’m sure if Trans had been a thing back then, everyone would have assumed I was really a boy as I exhibited lots of typical ‘boy’ traits (completely fearless), which was viewed as ‘a very bad thing’.

Also, our class trip to the local sewage works. I mean…just why???

Anyone remember the TV series ‘The boy from Space’? The tv on a tall stand got wheeled into the classroom occasionally and that’s the only programme I remember watching.

Our own TV at home didn’t work properly and we only got BBC2. Looking back, it was probably a faulty knob as you had to manually tune each channel but I don’t think it could turn. I think we eventually got a colour tv (radio rentals) in 1978? 😂

@Creepymanonagoatfarm that’s pretty much the same as now!

This has been an interesting thread for me. I was at primary school in the early 90s and many of the things listed here were present at my school.
country dancing
going home for lunch
Tv on wheels
sitting down in the hall for assembly and singing
Playing with marbles and yo-yos
The food; chocolate shortbread with chocolate sauce

@BinleyMegaChippy they do! My children have that dessert

Yes, we did this (although I was at primary school in the 80s). We did it to a cassette with a story and music.

I remember the reading cards and wide range readers books and also the pirate books, Gregory the Green?
I could read and write at a basic level when I went to primary school but that stupid I.t.a even had me spelling my own name differently!

Primary in the 70s.

Kevin the Kitten book series.

Warm bottles of milk.

If you didn't have PE kit you did PE in your undies.

kids getting smacked across the legs with the wooden board rubber.or being made to sit facing the wall.

Old Victorian building with unheated outdoor toilets.

Smell of fags coming from staff room.

Chewy lumps of gristly beef.

Huge school field. (Sadly most sold off for housing now). We had a pile of old tyres to play with and all took our big boxes of marbles. Lunch times in the summer seemed endless.

The nit nurse.

Hymns and the Lords Prayer in assembly.

Most Kid's lived very locally and walked themselves to and from school.

We were 'train trained' regularly as the train line went through our village.

Cycle training in the playground.

We also used to keep our crayons in old Golden Virginia tobacco tins (1980s). Can you image that now?!

Roger Red Hat (alliteration) and Billy Blue Hat but irritatingly Murphy Green. Never could understand why it wasn't Gregory Green or something like that 😂

I did this, started school in the late 60s.

I started primary in 1973. We had pe in knickers and vests. Warm milkvat break time.
I went to secondary in 1979. Boys were still caned but not us girls.
I actually quite enjoyed school