What school rules from your day did you absolutely despise?

[Trothetoy]

The tie having to be at least 10 bars

Back in 72- girls grammar- tights not allowed , long socks only, beret to be worn when in town

Boarding school

Wearing shower caps in the nightly enforced shower. We were allowed 1 bath a week on a rota, and even then as a 12 year old Matron had to run it for us 'because of the hot water'. She would give you 50cm water. The senior boarding house (3rd form onwards) didn't even have baths.

We were never allowed to watch the TV. Ever. The only time we got to watch it was if it was someone's birthday and they had a film.

Netball skirts and PE knickers. Nuff said there. Except one of the masters would make you lift your skirt to check you were not wearing your own pants or cycling shorts. That particular master is now serving a long sentence for offences against young children.

Showers. Communal ones. The mistress checking you had showered. The period book she also held. You were allowed 1 week off showering every month. Anything more than that required a chit from matron.

Town leave on the weekends. We had to go in groups of no less than 4, had to walk a particular route (I.e. not the shortcut) and were allowed £2 a time 'incase we visited McDonalds'. By 3rd year I was wise to it and in my monthly book my Mum used to send me, she would also stick a few tenners. Money in letters would be intercepted. Money in books wasn't.

Letter writing. Each Sunday after church (yep, my school had a church on site). In the junior boarding house the duty mistress checked your letters to make sure you were writing 'a proper letter'. A letter writing set was mandatory.

Shiny shoes. Your shoes had to be polished at all times. Any kind of remotely decent shoe banned- it was strictly DM's. Those things take years to wear in and be comfortable. If your shoes were unacceptable you would get a chit and a detention. 6 detentions in a half term and you would get a head's detention. I managed to achieve this in a day and a half once.

I didn't go to Mallory Towers, The Chalet school or even anything like it. This was in the mid 90's. Unsurprisingly I got expelled when I was 16. I think the school had finally had enough of me.

Not allowed to walk down the front corridor of school. I get it to some extent as it's where the offices are, so I can understand that they wouldn't want kids there much - like lunchtimes and break etc. But it was very much part of the school rather than a significantly separate corridor and they could have at least allowed them to use it after the bell to get to their next lesson - going round was quite a detour.

Definitely happened in my secondary school. One female pe teacher would run her hand down your leg to check you showered. 1981 onwards.

So glad times have changed!

Same here. I'd just started a new school aged 6 and first day was custard for pudding - I couldn't eat dairy stuff, it always made me ill. I stood up to leave the dining hall and had a dinner lady yank me back to my seat and explain "we ALL finish ALL our food".

I had to force it down with her stood next to me, in an empty dining hall. Then I was allowed to leave but not before she stood over me and lectured me some more - and I vomited it all back up on her shoes.

Nearly 40 years ago and I've never forgotten how oddly satisfying that was.

This. The communal shower was bad enough. But to have the PE teacher staring was horrendous.

Another one scarred by communal showers in the mid/late 1980s. I wonder if it was officially stopped at a national level, or if it just petered out over time. Imagine the uproar now!

Loved backing my books and can still remember many of the wrapping papers I used.

The boys' stairs and the girls' stairs.

These were a hangover from when the school had been built, and there was a boys' entrance to the building (near the gate) and a girls' entrance (at the opposite end, miles from the sodding gate). Nobody cared which entrance or stairs you used during the day, because you'd use whichever was most convenient.

But at the end of the school day, we all wanted to be off-site as soon as possible. Many of us had buses to catch a mile's walk away, not much time to get there, and a half-hour wait for the next one. So everyone tried to get down the boys' stairs.

However, at 3.45 the usual rule about using whichever stairs you fancied was null and void and only BOYS were supposed to use the boys's stairs and girls were supposed, even if they'd had a lesson right by the boy's stairs, to go all the way to the other end of a long building to use the sodding girls' stairs, and then walk around the outside of the building.

Of course, every girl in the place tried to get down the boys' stairs, praying that the deputy head wouldn't be standing on the first floor landing by her office hauling all the girls out and sending us not along the first floor corridor but back UP the bloody stairs against the flow to walk along the upstairs corridor. And all the girls coming down would see an irate girl or six coming back up and there would be utter chaos, and the boys sniggering.

Four decades have elapsed and I'm STILL seething!

No snowballing or conkers were the most random ones.
No removal of blazers was just mean and pointless

Mini skirts for PE. Sadly times have not changed and my daughter is about to enter a school with the same ridiculous double standard. Boys get to wear shorts, girls get to display their knickers to everyone if they even dare to move energetically. No wonder girls have low participation in sports. I really had hoped that the world had moved on but here we still are.

Terrible poverty in areas of big cities like Glasgow, Liverpool etc meant there were children who never saw a proper nutritious meal until they went to school.During the First World War the authorities were shocked to find how prevalent rickets,pigeon chests etc were among recruits. The idea of public health programmes like healthy meals at school grew stronger.
By the time I started school in 1956, school meals had developed - home made soups, good quality meats,plenty of veg, rich puddings, wee bottles of milk. And yes, villainous teachers made us clear our plates and drink the milk. Those teachers had come through the Depression, then wartime rationing. They knew the importance of good food to a child. So did the school nurses who came to weigh us and measure us and test our hearing and sight.
Then suddenly it's all coming back - poverty and food banks and free school meals.It's so sad.

The communal shower late 70s,pe teacher told us, we all had little stroups and not to bother covering them. Thinking back that's quite disturbing.

I went to one school where you had to remove your school sweatshirt before each lesson which always messed my hair up and another one where you couldn't remove them at all not even at lunch time or in summer.

I went to a private all girls school and we had one PE instructor who would stare at us in the showers - I’m convinced she was a lesbian ( and she wasn’t the only one ).

It didn’t bother me , apart from being gawped at , but I knew a few of my Asian friends were very self conscious about communal nudity.

They installed individual cubicles in my final year but you still had to get changed in the locker room. But by then we were used to sitting around in the nip and thought nothing of it.

Skirts only with white socks. Which was not great but once combined with, "uniform to be worn to / from school" was madness. Walking through snow in a skirt and cotton socks is not pleasant.

I hated that I was forced to study music and art until year 9 when it is clear by then who is into this stuff and who isn’t. Much more useful stuff could have replaced it.

I loved ART but for me it was 3 years of compulsory cookery and needlework. And one year we only had half a year of needlework - YAY, but that meant we didn't get art for half a year.

Outside school I would cook and sew but somehow in school it was different.

That in the sixth form , you could wear your own clothes , but you had to wear a skirt . In a top girls grammar school , where we were repeatedly told you could be anything as long as you worked for it , that being female was no barrier to a career . As long as you wore a skirt . So of course my year pushed it to the nth degree - and in our last year it was changed . Ridiculous.

Having to wear a school hat on founder's day. We didn't have to wear the school hats any other day of the year.

Having to drink school milk before going out at playtime. This was 70s. As my birthday fell in summer holidays I had to have milk for an extra term. Foul warm stuff that had been stored unrefrigerated. I was pleased when Margaret Thatcher- milk snatcher put an end to free school milk.

I grew up in the 70s too and our teacher used to put the crate of little milk bottles on the radiator to warm them up so "They wouldn't be cold for our little tummies". Utterly vile, disgusting stuff. I actually caught salmonella aged 6 as did a few other kids at our school and it was thought it could have been down to the milk.

Having to have homework signed by a parent or it would be rejected and punished.

I didn't have parents!

So punished every single day despite being a straight A gifted student who was excelling academically.

Same for me!
and you had to wear it at break time and between classes, only allowed to take it off in class with permission. I ducking hate rules for the sake of it like this.

Yes autocorrect I wanted to say fucking not ducking.

@TheGhostofLoganRoy surely you had a guardian though? Why didn't they sign it?

Not being allowed to leave the school grounds without permission when I was almost 19 - I willingly accepted detection but I insisted the Vice Principal attend the detention if it was so badly needed to teach me a lesson as he had chosen to give it to me - despite me being an adult. After much discussion where I refused to back down, he eventually gave way - I didn't get the detention.
My grammar school was known for being strict but years later the comp my kids attended was much more excessive on rules - the rules were so excessive they became a joke to be endured, after taking my kids through school, I generally no longer give default respect to teaching as a profession.

I didn't have a guardian.

@TheGhostofLoganRoy sorry I know this is just me being nosy and not really relevant to the thread but what do you mean you didn't have a guardian? Who did you live with? You must have had an adult who was responsible for you.