How do you remember primary school?

[Hsshjabq]

The more I think about it I realise I was mostly unhappy. I was fortunate that I was smart and top of the class for maths and was liked by the teachers. But I've been remembering the bullying I've experienced. There was teasing, name calling and the general being excluded from playing with others the playground or in the classroom. This was from multiple people who simply didn't want me to play with them.

I also got beat up multiple times. I was hit with a cricket bat and my worst memory is being beaten up by a classmate in the playground. This classmate would then go out of their way to annoy me by constantly following me around, sitting with me and being a general nuisance. He also used to enjoy reminding me that he beat me up.

And FFS the stress of the 11+ ruined my mental health. (I thankfully got into a grammar school)

For everyone here who had a bad experience.

I had a mixed experience. It was OK most of the time. I remember having friends and playing easily with others. I do think the staff should have picked up on the fact I had a highly abusive background, and was living in a very violent, dangerous situation.

My year 6 teacher was horrid and shouty. She once shouted at me so much, I wet myself in fear. This was in the mid 90s, so not the dark ages.

Nice nuns, majestic building, scratchy toilet paper, playing tree house and tag outside, dictation, mental arithmetic, warm sour EU free milk.

I enjoyed it (1980s). No pressure at all re 11 plus, we had I think two or three lessons at school where we did past papers ("He is to man, as she is to..." "Ra", answered most of the class.) Then we did the test itself at our own school, during school time. Three of us passed, I think.

I certainly enjoyed it more than my kids did, and most of that is down to the curriculum, we mostly did projects where you could stretch yourself if you were a bright child, and "cards" in maths and English, again you could do the hard ones. The whole experience felt much more relaxed than it is now.

Weirdly I and two other girls skipped the third year juniors (year 5) and went straight from second year to fourth year...then had to do fourth year all over again, except with some added French and reading comprehension.

Generally liked primary school. 1980s, I don't really remember any bullying but maybe I just kept to myself and wasn't aware of stuff. In year 6 I started to stand out a bit as not really being sociable so had a few moments but it didn't cloud my overall memories. Glitter and plays at Christmas, having lollies outside in the hot weather, lunches outside, school dinners where the dinner lady gave me a whole bowl of mashed carrot and swede, tuck shop, doing handstands and cartwheels, lots of stuff with clay. Massive telly that they had to wheel in on wet lunches. Hymns in assembly in the projector. Happy days.

I remember some really lovely teachers and friends in primary school and I was generally pretty happy. It all went wrong as I hit puberty plus there was some family stuff going on which was making life difficult for me.

I was unhappy at primary school, through 3 different schools. I never got attacked but I was bullied and I think I mostly had a poor relationship with teachers despite being quite good at most things (maybe because of it, as friction was sometimes caused by the teacher being factually wrong about something but insisting they were right).

I eventually found my people around age 15.

I am so very happy that we are blessed with a school for DS8 where he is happy and has fun.

So sorry for all of you with awful memories of Primary School - I was lucky to go to a lovely village school with its own outdoor swimming pool. Absolutely freezing though! The school dinners were superb. I remember going up for thirds for “ tealeaves & dripping” which was fudge tart with chocolate sauce! We had mainly nice staff & lovely dinner ladies. The only teacher I didn’t really like was a male teacher who was a bit full of himself.
I was at another school in a different area until I was about 8 & I have mainly good memories of that too. I wrote to one of my teachers there for quite some years after we moved house. We had a crazy French teacher who used to pretend she was a witch ( not scary). I remember the Head being really kind on my first day in Reception as I was crying & didn’t want DM to leave. His DD was the same age as me & a little cow!

Hated primary school. I never had a best friend, and tended to bounce between different groups. I would constantly worry about who I could tag along with at lunch so I wasn't on my own.

Mine was a seriously academic, all-girls, private, RC convent primary where formal manners were expected, and it came as a shock to me when I learned that the teachers had first names. They seemed so remote.

Happy times all the same, but I was bright. There were a few girls in my class who, looking back, clearly had dyslexia or ADHD - not recognised of course (1970s).

I went to 3 different primary schools. Very happy at 2, hated the third to the point where I constantly fantasised about burning it to the ground with everyone in it.

I went to a primary school that 'didn't have bullying'. When I told the head that I was being bullied I was told I couldn't be as we didn't have bullying in our school. My distrust of teachers was still apparent when my own children were at school.

I will add that although I could be a thorn in their side, I always strived to work with my children's teachers and did a lot of work with them and the PTA. I think the mistrust made me want to do my bit and I was very close with one of their primary school heads.

This made me smile. DS has just gone from a happy-clappy, uniformless Educate Together where the teachers were all addressed by their first names and he had blue hair for a year, to a formal, uniformed, much more trad secondary. He’s mildly shocked the teachers have surnames. 😀

Nuns. Milk in small bottles. Cabbage. The smell of vomit mixed with sawdust. It's all very random.

I remember trying really hard with all my work, but I was supposedly struggling, need extra support and still never got a decent mark. I'm now convinced they got it wrong, within a year of being in secondary, I'd moved up from set 7 (bottom) to set 1 in English and Maths and by end of that school I was literally top of the maths set.

Also, everyone had to have hot dinners, I absolutely hated them and would go all day without eating. The choice is much better these days, so lunchtimes would have been a happier event these days.

For me secondary was much better than primary.

I loved primary school. I was an army brat and with one exception the schools I attended were great. So much so that I became a primary teacher.
Secondary school not so much. I didn't hate it but neither do I remember it with great fondness.

1979-80 - Bullied for a year in infant school - two girls in the year above used to spend the whole of every break pinching me and banging my head on the wall. Finally plucked up courage to tell a teacher ... and was sent away with a flea in my ear for 'telling tales'.

• I want to amend my post to replace "bright" with "academically inclined and NT".

Apologies to anyone I offended by contrasting "bright" with "dyslexic/ADHD".

Loved it. We had a great class. Nobody got bullied except as I heard lately at a reunion one boy, but not by us. By the teacher. He had dyslexia. It was the 70s. He got a really good grade for geography and the teacher had said: such a good grade, that's nothing for you, cause you're dumb.

Ireland 1970s or 80s?

I wasn't very happy in primary school either.
It's hard to say why really because I had friends and wasn't bullied as such just occasional being "picked on".
I think it was more the style of teaching then being a lot less flexible and not really play based.
Also teachers were really mean I think compared to teachers my DC have had.
Started primary school mid 80s

I enjoyed secondary school more - apart from the occasional phase of teenage girl fallings out!

Primary school was great, it was moving up to the comp that was not such fun.

I remember our first full day (after a couple of half days) and one girl running out of school and all the way home thinking lessons always finished at midday, the small milk bottles with a straw, metal water jugs on the dining tables, sitting cross-legged on the floor for a story at the end of the day, outdoor swimming pool where I learnt to swim, lining up for a dental checkup where the tools were just popped into a glass of disinfectant before being reused (again & again), having to stand at the front of the dinning hall for a spare space if a teacher sat at your designated spot, the metal bucket of sawdust used when someone didn't quite make it to the loo, lessons outside under the trees on a hot day, one of my classmates getting belted in the nose by a rounders ball (the blood, the blood!), first school trip out (was a wildlife park if I remember), the first time I was allowed to walk home alone.......🤗

I am sure there some not so happy times but they have faded from my memory.

I loved primary school. First I went to a private mixed Montessori school (age 3-8) then that closed down and I went to the local national school (state school in Ireland) which was an all girls Catholic school run by the Sisters of Mercy.

Both schools were just lovely, the teaching was solid if unexceptional, the pupils and staff were friendly, and although it was more basic than schools now, we had a lot of fun. Both schools had one class for each year (or sometimes shared classes).

Secondary school came as a shock (big, rowdy, different school from primary friends) and although I got through okay, it was the first time I got that Sunday night feeling. I was glad to go to university - I remember heaving a sigh of relief on my first day to find people so friendly and positive about being there.

I was in primary late 80s- early 90s and I loved it. I remember the Christmas plays, what felt like warm summer terms playing outside, best friends ever. I remember that every half term had a topic and most of the subjects used to stem from that. Things like Aztecs, Romans etc. I loved every second of primary. Liked secondary as well, I was a geek and was bullied but loved the classes, had a solid group of equally geeky friends who I'm still friends with. Don't think I'd have changed much of it.

Very many more positive memories of primary school than negative. I was youngest in my year though and do remember feeling quite emotional and overwhelmed in Reception, probably due to just being less emotionally developed than the others. Lots of tears, but a very kind teacher and I remember she hugged me on her knee a lot and it was all very nurturing.

I just seem to remember long hot summer days playing in the big playgrounds, and lots of games / crafts / projects. I was bright and did fine. I liked the assemblies, and the dinners. Had a good group of friends and my class was full of decent kids.

I was going through a bit of a tough time at home at the time, so I think I used to find school a positive escape and somewhere I loved to be.