If you were born mid 80s, did your school do these things?

[Nostalgic80s]

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3?

Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now)

Have swimming lessons at school

Have a school residential trip at the end of primary.

Have a school trip to France in secondary school

Have squash and biscuits for break time

Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money

Do SATS tests at school

I know it’s a bit random but him or me please 🙏

Nursery - yes

Reception - No, think I was 5

Swimming - Yes. My school had its own pool

residential trip - yes

France - no

Squash and biscuits - no

Money pot - no

SATS - yes

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3? No, too many kids not enough places. Suspect having English 'incomer' parents put me to the bottom of the list.

Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now)
August after I turned 4, we start a few weeks earlier in Scotland.

Have swimming lessons at school
Yes, hated them as i was swimming by 4 year old anyway.

Have a school residential trip at the end of primary.
No, wasn't a thing.

Have a school trip to France in secondary school
Yes, also Orkney, Greece, Belgium, Italy were offered at various points.

Have squash and biscuits for break time
No

Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money
In my pocket for break time, not a pot. Dinner money was collected put in a Golden Virginia Tobacco tin and teachers pet would take it to the office 😂.

Do SATS tests at school
No, presume that wasnt a Scottish thing?

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3? Yes, once I was 3 (but my mum worked there).
Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now) No - think it was Jan I started.
Have swimming lessons at school - Yes
Have a school residential trip at the end of primary - Yes, but this was to France!
Have a school trip to France in secondary school - yes, in truth, France, Spain and Germany.
Have squash and biscuits for break time - I think so.
Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money - not a pot but I had money.
Do SATS tests at school. No; 11+

I was born late 70s and went to primary school in the early 80s in the north of England.

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3?
No — went to a “playschool” three mornings a week, volunteer staffed. This was quite common before nurseries/preschools became more standardised as a preschool setting.

Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now)
Yes

Have swimming lessons at school
Yes - both primary and secondary (taken to local municipal pools)

Have a school residential trip at the end of primary.
No — wasn’t a thing!

Have a school trip to France in secondary school
Yes but quite late, age 16

Have squash and biscuits for break time
Biscuits at one primary school; apples at another

Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money
I had a little purse!

Do SATS tests at school
No - we took a few pencil and paper tests before leaving primary school, but were never given the results.

I was born in and went to school in New Zealand. We started the day we turned five and did swimming every day in summer, as well as residential school camps. No international travel aside from a choir trip to Fiji (no appreciation at the time!).

No SATs and no school lunches - we had to bring morning tea and lunch, but could ‘order lunch’ on special occasions (usually a pie and cookie).

No squash - water only!

x

This isn't a mid-80s thing; I was born in 1978 and did all of this in a large city.

I was five when I left nursery and joined infant school (mine was a combined infant and junior school). Our morning break was called "lunch" and we all had flasks of cold drinks brought in from home. The school sold biscuits in packs, I can't recall them all but we had Bourbons, shortbread, and round chocolate coated biscuits in a foil wrapper, same as Viscount but cheaper.

When I went into juniors we had milk in little bottles that we collected from the serving hatch of the kitchen in the school hall. The dinnerladies also served milkshakes using a brightly coloured concentrate from a glass bottle. Towards the end of my time there they started serving Maxpax soup and hot chocolate too.

We used to walk to the swimming baths once a week, about a mile away, until such time the headteacher commissioned a coach service which we had to pay for. We went swimming in every class year throughout infants and juniors.

My secondary school was right by the baths. We walked there and back. We had lessons once per week for the first year, but after that it really tailed off until years 10 & 11.

SATS came in shortly before I left secondary school. I think until then they were just called mocks.

I was born in 76,

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3? - yes mornings for play-school they had an actual indoor slide! and age 4 I went to nursery school in the afternoons after play-school in the mornings.

Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now)
no - it might have been the Scottish system at work and me being a summer baby but I didn't go to reception at all and joined year 1 of infants the week after I turned 5.

Have swimming lessons at school - yes in juniors

Have a school residential trip at the end of primary - yes to a remote scottish place.

Have a school trip to France in secondary school - two trips to Germany

Have squash and biscuits for break time - I don't remember

Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money - nope, lunch was always packed lunch, I do remember there was a tuck shop selling penny sweets so I must have had a few coins.

Do SATS tests at school - no but did do the 11+

You didn't ask but yes we had the horrible tracing paper toilet roll

it might have been the Scottish system at work and me being a summer baby but I didn't go to reception at all and joined year 1 of infants the week after I turned 5.

I'm in England, born in 1978, and this was exactly the same for me. It always puzzled me as to why there were already children in my first year class, and why more arrived after. I was recently told by a retired teacher (who went all misty-eyed as she waxed lyrical over my question as to why this was) that "back then" this was very much how the system worked and that your arrival in infant school was related to when you turned five. I don't recall how long after my fifth birthday it was that I joined infants, but I was born in January and I remember the afternoons being dark when I first started leaving class, so it wouldn't have been long after my birthday.

@Bonniethetiler it confused me well into adulthood that some children did 3 years at infants when i only did 2.

The only different in the 80s was the starting age was later and phased.

The older 4 year olds or nearly 5 years olds started in September. The ones born later in the year started a term later until the law changed about 2011? and we then had one intake. When daughters started in the late 90s they were nearly 5 and the class had 12 or 13 students until the January term When the next intake started. They did two terms of free nursery 5 mornings and then swapping to 5 afternoons.

When I started school there was no Reception Classes. Everyone started in year 1 when you turned 5 whenever your birthday fell. You could not start without being able to write your name.

Never known any school have biscuits we provided milk. Don't know anyone who went to nursery. No naps. Had our own swimming pool.
Year 6 was not universal then and we had not adjusted to the American system. Year 6 would be classes 10,11 and 12. Never did SATs. We all sat the 11+. We had a pool. athletics grounds, football pitches, rounders pitch, gardens and several playgrounds, theatre, cinema, free music provision, 12 classes, library, music rooms, main hall and separate dining room and kitchens.
Which seemed the norm then but now I realise we were well catered for.

We went to Apley Park residential and there were lots of residential trips in secondary Schools each year. But only if you paid.

I started in 1983 in infants, in Birmingham. I was five and it would have been the early part of the year. Other children started later than that, so wouldn't have had much time in that first year.

What part of the year is your birthday? I'm wondering if your fifth birthday was around the summer and you went into 2nd year infants...I clearly recall we had three years of infant school, and four years of juniors. Apart from starting first year infants about 1/3 of the way through, I completed all the other years.

I'm 1982

Yes to pretty much everything in the op

We didnt do phonetics or grammar - just learnt the rules by reading, writing, composition

This was us too. Funnily enough, many years ago I knew someone who would be about 60 years old now, and he always attributed his inability to spell correctly to the fact that he'd been taught to spell phonetically and that he'd never been able to do anything but. I have no idea if this method of teaching was to blame for his problem, but I was sufficiently interested enough to find out that this method of teaching had been discontinued by the time I started school.

The words I learnt were written on card, covered in see-through sticky plastic for durability, and sent home with us in a metal tobacco tin.

Him or me?
Is that humour me?

Yes should have said humour me.

I never even noticed!

Born in 1984 - yes to all of them (and I’m late summer born so only just turned 4 before starting in Sept), except for the squash and biscuits at break. We occasionally has squash and biscuits at special occasions though - before breaking up for Easter or Christmas for example.

The little pot for money was a camera film case.

I grew up in a big city, so not sure if that had to do with it.

We went to nursery just like how children do now. The year before you start reception you got 15 hours free and you did either mornings or afternoons.

Then the following year you’d start in reception. There might have been kids who started later, but I don’t remember there being. I was baffled that dh didn’t start school until year 1 🤣

Had swimming lessons in year 4.

School residential for 4 nights in year 6.

I remember doing the SATS, they were made a big deal of, you got a score in numbers. A 4 was average/expected and anything higher was above average.

We had the choice of the 11+ the school only encouraged it if you were exceptional.

Haha yes they were camera film cases.

I can’t believe hardly anything else had squash and biscuits.

I’d have loved milk. We got 2 of those nice biscuits and some really disgusting cheap squash. I don’t think I ever drank much of it. I can still taste it now 🤢

I’d forgot about the little glass bottle of milk that became cartons after a few years 😬utterly grim!! I refuse to drink milk even now!

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3? No.

Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now). Yes. I was an autumn baby though so turned 5 before Christmas. I think some of the younger ones started in the January.

Have swimming lessons at school. Yes

Have a school residential trip at the end of primary. We had a residential trip every year of Junior school. 2 nights in years 3 and 4, then 4 nights in years 5 and 6.

Have a school trip to France in secondary school. Yes but only got a few students (I didn't go).

Have squash and biscuits for break time. No

Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money. No. Didn't need money in Primary school for break or lunch.

Do SATS tests at school. Yes in year 6. We were one of the pilot groups before it was rolled out properly.

Exactly same as this. Only 'snack' was you were allowed to eat 1 piece of fruit from your lunchbox at break time. But fruit only, no snack bars/crisps/biscuits.
And this was the early 90's so everyone just had a banana, apple or satsuma no exciting berries or any of that.
However, a 2 finger kitkat /penguin/ club/wagon wheel in the lunchbox was perfectly acceptable and commonly found!
Did sats in both yr2 and yr6, remember doing them much as my kids have and they weren't especially traumatic tbh. And we got none of the treats yr6 get now when doing sats like biscuits after the papers, icecreams at the end of the week etc!

And yes, preschool was called 'playgroup', the one I went to you got left there parents didn't stay but it was usually just half a day and often in a local church hall/ sports club. No uniforms, no bookbags and they did much the same stuff kids do in preschool now - there was the weather board that was done as a group, a bit of ABC's and 123's, storytime, maybe singing simple nursery rhymes.

People like to think preschool /early years has changed loads but from what I saw my kids had an extremely similar experience 30 years later to what I did!

Born 1986

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3?
Yes
Did you start reception the September after you turned 4 (like children do now)
Yes
Have swimming lessons at school
yes, in the local pool
Have a school residential trip at the end of primary.
PGL was an option but we were poor
Have a school trip to France in secondary school
No, but we did do a music trip to italy.
Have squash and biscuits for break time
no, we brought our own snacks
Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money
At home? My mum put it on the mantlepiece. I got 20p a day.
Do SATS tests at school
Yes

Born 1980.

Did you go to nursery/pre school age 3? NO
Did you start reception the September after you turned 4. YES (but some children joined in Jan/April)
Have swimming lessons at school YES (my primary had a pool)
Have a school residential trip at the end of primary.YES
Have a school trip to France in secondary school YES
Have squash and biscuits for break time NO
Have a little money pot for your break/lunch money NO
Do SATS tests at school IN YEAR 9 (first year group to do them)