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?

I started school in 1978 and they still used the ruler as punishment. I remember going to my nana’s house on a lunchtime and watching The Sullivan.

I can also remember the TV on wheels. It would be wheeled into the classroom each week to watch ‘Look & Read’ and The Boy from Outerspace.

The Tufty Club!! I had forgotten that, I've got my badge somewhere!

I was in secondary school in the 70's. Does anyone remember the Bertion family in french lessons. It was still cartoon images projected onto a screen with french narrative to listen to. I remember Mr Bertion was a pilot and there were 3 children Phillippe, Marie-Claude and a younger boy. The so called stories were extremely boring. Our teacher would always threaten us with no more of this if we played up, we longed for her to carry out the threat but it never happened and we had to continue watching the awful things.

Yes went to private convent in late 60S.My teacher was a nun and called Sister Catherine. We always had a nap on little sleeping bags after lunch.
French skipping was a thing and playing with marbles!

@TuxedoJunction yes I remember Dark Towers, it was part of a programme called Look and Read. I've just posted about The Boy from outer space which was also part of it.

Looking back there were kids in the class who were labelled naughty or weird that would have a SEN diagnosis now. In senior school (mid-late 80s) there were quite a few male teachers dating female students and we repeatedly complained about being groped by the male swimming teacher. He was finally imprisoned years later for sexually assaulting kids. I don’t remember a single non-white child or teacher in 12 years of school in my working class northern town. I’d like to think things are better now……

We had him come to our school too. He lived just around the corner from the school.

Started school at the beginning of the 80s, but so much of this is familiar.

There was no milk, and there was no corporal punishment but horror stories were still going round. Our headmaster was said to have a slipper reinforced with metal, and as he was quite a terrifying man this was easy to believe. I remember some truly frightening episodes of shouting from teachers at 'naughty' boys, that reduced them to tears. The board rubber throwing happened at secondary.

I think the staff room may have been no smoking?

Duralex glasses and metal water jugs in green or gold in the dinner hall.

Assembly and hymn singing from 'Their words, my thoughts'.

Roger Red Hat et al. Then another scheme of reading books that had dark blue covers and coloured spines. And Scottish Primary Maths. Country dancing (with music from a radio/tape recorder with big reels), Time and Tune, Singing Together. The obligatory guitar-playing hippy male teacher one year in juniors who taught us WWI and Beatles songs.

Windowless TV room and TV on wheels. Watch (with the plasticine animation title sequence), Look and Read, Words and Pictures ('Why don't you build yourself a word?'), How We Used To Live (which was really very good), Zig Zag (science programme?).

No play equipment in the playground, just bare space. We loved being allowed to play on the school field.

Projects, endless projects. A lot of quite independent learning. Suited me fine.

French elastics, going around in the playground arm in arm chanting 'all join up for playing [name of game]', the odd game of British Bulldog which usually then got banned for another few months. Clapping rhymes: 'When Susie was a baby...' and 'I had a magic fever...'

Nastiness and bullying were rife. PSE (as it was then) just started becoming a thing when I started secondary.

The girls had a period talk in Y6 and were given a shocking pink plastic tampon holder. The information leaflets described (with pictures) looped towels, but the samples were press-on (very thick, though, and I remember how pathetic the stick-on stripes were).

Born in 67, and went to school in September 1971. Infants for 2 years then juniors for 4. Started secondary in 1978.

remember having watch out theres a humphrys about stickers at school
Played Grease and Charlie's Angel's
Also remember green cross code man coming with real child size vehicles including an ice cream van
metal cones with slits on you put a bamboo stick across to jump over
sports days with ribbon for the winner different colours depending where you came pinned on you with a gold pin
country dancing and country dancing festivals
black unflattering cotton leotards and black plimsolls for sports day
silver jubilee all had time off school and had a school party buffet with long tables set out down the playground got a coin and a mug
father xmas visiting and making party hats to wear
country dancing with big cassette player on 2 reel
rarely wore school uniform
caretaker with his blue overalls on coming with the sawdust bucket when someone was sick!!!
paper mache frequently
sewing on binka
making wieved baskets
glowing loads of screwed up coloured tissue paper on everything
playing with clay
black paper and using pastels for the first time
old wooden desks in juniors that lifted up and if you happened to let go it would trap your fingers in there

I loved the SRA scheme. It was one of my favourite things at school. I was desperate to romp through the colours.

I did romp through the colours. I still remember the satisfaction of picking the next one 😂

I absolutely loved primary school. All my teachers were brilliant. I lived on a council estate and they were all very glamorous,totally different to what we were used to. Years later I trained as a primary school teacher, not the same. The people on my course could barely spell

I can still remember that bloody peregrine falcon story now. Look and Read was the one with Wordy, wasn’t it? For anyone who didn’t experience him, Wordy was an irritating rudimentary cartoon character with a voice like a robot Terry Scott who appeared on the screen with the presenter and told you how to spell things.

The story before the peregrine falcon one was called The King’s Dragon and was about plucky children investigating foul play at an archaeology site where king Harold’s arm ring was buried, or something. It involved the editor of the local paper telling the plucky kids that they had to get facts before he ran the story. Then sodding Wordy popped up and told us at least three times how to spell ‘facts’.

Wordy at his worst, the little git. It’s even got his “I’m an apostrophe” song, which Robbie Williams should cover.

Not sure how QI got in there. Unless Stephen Fry is possessed by the ghost of Wordy, I’m not ruling that out. Here is the link with Wordy.

Puff the Magic Dragon - every flipping morning.

If anyone was sick, the caretaker would sprinkle sawdust on it.

There was a lot of fighting.
Often involving me, I won't lie.

The schools varied a lot. I spent one term in the most awful middle school in 1979 ish and some of the kids would be hit across the bottom on stage if they forgot their hymn book. I was only 8 and I was absolutely terrified! We’d sing proper hymns like adults in church. I bit most of the skin off my fingers while I was there.

Then I moved to a different school and it was completely different and like being back at primary school. We sang ‘I have seen the golden sunshine’ and ‘The ink is black’ and the teachers were kind.

At primary we had bottles of milk but I couldn’t drink mine because they were left outside and usually warm. I used to heave at the smell of the semolina with jam in the middle!

My parents refused to send us to the local school because the head teacher was known to send the kids down to the shop to buy fags for him. So we went to another school in a tiny village. By the time my younger brother left there were 14 kids in the entire school.

At middle school our science teacher started a taxidermy club. He used to pick up roadkill and bring it in for the kids to stuff!

The Sullivan or Paint With Nancy ☺️

I may have been involved in a trouser strike at high school. We sat on top of port cabins and called the local press. Girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers back then in winter, we stood up for ourselves, I was expelled for 2 weeks. I still don’t regret it.

In the equivalent of Year 2 - 1978/9 - the punishment the teacher used was 'if you don't..... you'll have sit next to smelly Mathew'

We had the text book of that. I actually bought a copy second hand a couple of years ago.

@toomuchlaundry yes! We also had pretty much free rein in what we did all day in last year Primary . We had 5 tasks for English/story which were given out at the beginning of the week and worked through our maths book at our own pace . It must have been a 'thing' then - thought it was just my school .

I remember the music and movement in vest and pants - although I think we wore shorts and top toward the top half of primary . We also listened to a music programme on the radio with song books .

No uniform in my primary school.

In both primary and middle school I managed to skive off lessons making tea for the teachers and tidying the staff room .

Also remember the hard concrete under the climbing frames - we used to hang upside down from the top bars