Oh to be a parent in bygone days

[Whoateallthesoddingbiscuits]

Imagine the scene. You’re a parent of primary aged children. They bring home their PE kit once a week. Books and stationary are provided by school. They can take a non-specified pencil case if they want. Heck, they can even wear a yellow pony tail if they want instead of a navy one.

Homework might be a project on animals or transport over a term. Obviously, you’d still do things like reading, spelling, times tables. You can do maths or English with them if you want, without being told that there is only one way to skin a cat. If they know a great way to skin a cat, you accept it, rather than
confusing/boring the wits out of them by teaching them another ten ways.

There is no Google classrooms.
There is no email.
There is no WhatsApp.
There aren’t several additional messaging apps to check.
Instead, every couple of weeks there is a letter in their bag.

THERE IS HARDLY ANY ADMIN AND NO LAST MINUTE AD HOC REQUESTS

We had no uniform and no homework at primary school. I was also allowed to walk to my nanas down the road every lunchtime for home dinners.

I went to school in the 90s/00s. My parents were “good middle class” parents (who think they were excellent parents in their own opinion). They never read to me, I maybe got a bedtime story 1-2 x a week of that, only club was brownies x 1 week, no sports, occasional play date after school to facilitate me going to brownies, no involvement with school, no homework until year 6. No nativity costumes or book day etc.

they had family help daily but refuse to help us. They honestly have no fucking idea.

I remember being given a little booklet with pictures of physically handicapped children and we were asked to raise money for them.

I don't have school age children but agree that parental participation is a lot. Fundraising days ,dress up days etc.

They are not. There are various ranking systems. British school top none.

I'm sure the Sunny Smiles were well-intentioned, but they really missed the mark with today's eyes.

It's great to publicise the cause and the need for funding/donations; but nobody seemed to think to protect the children's privacy at all. Nowadays, we take extra privacy precautions for looked-after children; but then they went out of their way to advertise that their were underprivileged children - and as for actually symbolically selling the children for a few pennies... Horrific.

It really is too much. I need three apps on my phone just for school. One app to book school lunches and after school clubs, another where homework is set and a third app for messaging and booking parents evening slots. Plus the weekly newsletter and constant emails. Not to mention class WhatsApp groups for parents. It's madness when you're also trying to deal with work and everything else you have going on. There is so much headspace taken up.

Case in point....they only went back to school yesterday. Lunch app not working so they had sent an email out saying to book school lunch with the teacher at the door in the morning. Then apparently it started working at 7.30am and another email sent out saying now available to book but the booking slots close at 8am. Funnily enough I wasn't waiting by my phone for that 30 minute slot to come available as I was busy trying to get DDs fed, washed and dressed for the day. It's just unnecessary stress.

We'd also been told no PE for the first week back then yesterday afternoon get another email requesting they come to school in PE kits in the morning as they're going to do it after all. So we needed to get PE kit washed and ready all of a sudden.

It's bullshit but you're forced to engage with it if you don't want your children turning up in the wrong clothes, missing homework or to have a school dinner!

Pretty much my experience, my kids are early twenties. It was a slightly quirky Catholic private school though, very traditional.

When I went (I am now 60), we had speech and deportment lessons, and learnt to write italics. PE was done in Airtex shirts and brown knickers. Fab!

Are you sure?

I need five apps on my phone for my kids in two different schools. One school is very vocal in its expectation that parents log into and check the child’s progress on the app every day, and it records how often the parent logs in. Every class the DC attends is logged, every positive or negative interaction with a teacher gets a notification. It doesn’t keep you logged in, you have to go through two factor authentication, check your email, type in the code.

My primary DC needed five different pairs of shoes bought for them just to start back.

I have an email address just for school stuff and it’s got over 12,000 emails in it and lots of those are unread.

One day into term and I already have two requests for money, both or which require me to log into one of the apps, with bank card at the ready and type in the 16 digits and confirm with my banking app etc etc.

Thats without the homework and expectation of regular parental physical attendance at school evenings and events.

Here, books and stationary are provided by school, as well as pencil cases (temu ones, end up with holes from the scissors after first couple of weeks).
They’re very lax on uniform. Pupils wear pe kits on pe days, which means I can buy only two pairs of grey trousers and two pairs of joggers. Homework, if any, is often some worksheet off Twinkl (on paper!).

We’ve got email and arbor but the messages are sparse. We still haven’t had a ‘welcome back to school’. Fortnightly newsletter describing how lovely all is going when my child tells me they’ve all been told off in assembly yet again.
We do have the WhatsApp for the mums who struggle to remember the pe days. Plus the mum who is worried that there’s an attack planned on English school children by Pakistani asylum seekers and it is imminent…

We don’t do any special events. Non uniform is unspecified ie football kits/ black hoodies, book day is pyjamas… Christmas play is some ancient star costumes provided by school.

We have the teacher who asks your child if they’re are ‘autistic or something’ in front of the whole class, and tells them because of child x you’ll all miss lunch - blame her/him, as part of her behaviour management strategy…

May be you just need to downgrade your children’s school and you’ll be magically transported back in time.

Are you serious?
Finland is very well known and revered precisely for their education system.
They are a deeply cultivated and resourceful people who have preserved their language and own culture, even being under constant threat from major foreign powers (hello, Russia, formerly known as the Soviet Union: not precisely friendly neighbours). Their well educated people are their strength.

Every class the DC attends is logged, every positive or negative interaction with a teacher gets a notification. It doesn’t keep you logged in, you have to go through two factor authentication, check your email, type in the code.

The app we have logs every class attended, and keeps track of ones missed and automatically sends a message if a certain amount are missed. Most teachers will also log a lesson note (for DD they have pretty much all been green 'well done' notes but they also log grey notes for issues or forgotten equipment, and other colours for other stuff) but I only seen to get a notification when its a negative note so don't get notified too often (and DS's teacher doesn't log any notes at all, otherwise I might expect a few more notifications...) but the app keeps you logged in, no need to mess about with 2 step identification or annoying things like that. I would lose my mind at your school!

So, about 10 years ago then.

Hmmm... it looks like school in the olden days in the UK was a bliss.
In my country of birth, we did go to school alone from the age of 7 with very heavy bags with all the books (which had to be bought new every year), notebooks, penbox and art&craft stuff + PE kit on some days. This was 8 kg some days (and still is today!). Lessons were very stressful with ad hoc tests and questioning by the teacher at the blackboard (knowledge from the last 3 lessons - you always had to be prepared). Homework was daily and from 3 different subjects. You were luckly if there was any spare time to have fun in the evening. We couldn't wait for the holidays and dredded the school and some teachers. BUT you could be off sick for up to 30% of the year and nobody made any problems as long as the parents signed the sick note...

I started primary school in 1989 and uniforms weren't a thing!
I remember school jumpers being introduced during my time, but they were by no means compulsory and just "a nice thing to have if you wanted one." They came in either red or blue. I have a very vague recollection of maybe having a blue one at some point in time, but I don't know for sure.

I remember in infant school taking my reading book and reading record back and forth in a plastic A4 zippy wallet. PE bags came back and forth once a half term! I never had any other sort of school bag and nor did anyone else. We never had our own water bottles. Cups of water were provided at lunch, and otherwise there were water fountains dotted around the school. I don't remember ever feeling dehydrated but I suppose we were. I had school dinners almost my entire primary school career. It used to cost £5.50 a week, and I'd hand in my money to my teacher every Monday morning. I liked school dinners!

There was never any homework, but there was an expectation that we'd practice our reading, spellings and times tables. Once in a blue moon in upper primary we were given a small "project". I distinctly remember drawing a comic strip to show how pollination worked and being very proud of it.

I have loads of fond memories of my school days, but some of the things we did and saw wouldn't fly nowadays! Things like boys and girls changing in the same room when we were year 6. I remember one little boy in reception getting pulled off the carpet and getting his bum smacked by our teacher. Corporal punishment had been banned a few years by that point, but I suspect it was a slower fade than that with some older teachers. My reception teacher was probably in her mid-40s. I was never hit in school, but teachers did occasionally tell stories of "the good old days", especially in secondary school. A couple of the older teachers remembered giving the cane to students themselves. My old maths teacher once caned Boy George! Random fact for you!

I started primary school in 1989 and uniforms weren't a thing!
I was at Primary 1983-1990. 4 different ones across the country as we moved a lot in that period. All standard state ones. All had full uniform including ties and one had blazers.

I'm always amazed by how many didn't in the same time period. I really had no idea till I was on MN that uniform wasn't totally standard in that period.

Finnish education system has slipped down the rankings in the last few years.

Bound to happen when for the past decade or more Finnish education experts have been doing for free on international travel to share their methods. (Pasi Sahlberg was a phenomenally cheap deal at £500).

@MumbleJumble123 the uniform thing is the other way round for me. When I was at primary (80s-90s) everything was branded (even ties for the girls). At DCs' school there's no requirement for any branded uniform.

The comms drive me mad though. They are sent indiscriminately by multiple members of staff with no coordination or thought over how many have already been received that day. And many of them contain mistakes that either generate follow up emails or result in the parents' WhatsApp lighting up as everyone tries to work out what it means.

@zingally , uniforms may not have been a thing at your school but that wasn't the case everywhere. I started primary in 1967 and have photos of me in my full school uniform.

Thanks, this is more what I meant. There are pros and cons between school now and when I was a kid. It’s more that I find the admin and requests really overwhelming at times. Other times it really impinges on family time, especially when you’re trying to carve out one to one time. Holiday projects needing parental involvement, cash and time to multiple shops/amazon pisses me off too.

Despite the bombardment of communications, some stuff is still verbally told to kids and mine will sometimes casually raise it at the last bloody minute - Are you sure you need to dress up as one of Henry VIII wives tomorrow (as I frantically look through all the comms and send a desperate message out on WhatsApp to see how fucked my night is going to be and no, I don’t have any doilies or whatever lying about). What do you mean the cakes we’ve just baked together had to be vegan (cue searching on YouTube and driving round on Sunday evening to petrol stations to find bloody cans of chickpeas). I’ll try to be more organised - e.g. Goldilocks outfit sorted for world book day…except, no. That year school decided kids dress up as a concept from a book. Last minute changes for timings/locations for school trips - especially tricky when have more than one child. The requests for funds are endless - I sometimes wish they’d ask for a lump sum you could direct debit over the year. Who can sponsor some of these books? We are desperately short of tissues, soap, craft materials. Cake sales, guess the number, sponsored whatevers, donation to watch play/assembly, multiple raffles, win an Easter egg, donate Easter eggs, donate gifts to Tombola, put an estate agent board in garden, donate food/drinks to sell at events etc etc. The amount of ink some of the worksheets use too.

On top of that someone in the house is often trying to fight off the latest bug from school - I don’t remember this level of continual viruses at school - kids breaking things, chickenpox, the odd cold etc, but not so many kids, parents and teachers spluttering for weeks on end. Maybe I have rose-tinted specs on.

I get some of it - it’s awful how little money schools have. As costs increase, money goes even less far in schools and people have less of it to give too.

I also think being so accessible on email etc must be hell for teachers. There are a few on one of the parent’s WhatsApp groups that would need fifty messages on how to make toast. I dread to think how often they must email the teacher.

School uniform was a thing when I was a kid too 80/90s and I think (for me, comparatively), it’s cheaper now, with fewer branded items and greater access to non branded items. I went to school in London - not sure if there were regional differences.

I like all the tech, I hated it when my DCs were at primary school and everything came home on paper letters which could get lost, screwed up etc, you had to find the right amount of cash every week for school dinners, write cheques for photos, I'm sure there were many who struggled with all that, just as some probably struggle with the tech now.

Rewinding to my primary school days in the 70s, no thanks. Bitterly cold classrooms, lukewarm milk, horrific school dinners that you weren't allowed to leave (had to show your plate to the dinner ladies before scraping it into a bucket and get sent back if you hadn't eaten enough, gristly meat, lumpy mash, processed peas). The cane for boys, the slipper for girls. A teacher that used to pull us over his knee to smack our bums and threw blackboard dusters at the boys. Swimming in a freezing cold outside pool full of dead flies.

I agree with much of this. I find school to be a huge emotional logistical burden - and I only have one child! And to be honest, I’m not sure they come out with any better an education that we got in the 80s.

…and I doubt that I took my PE bag home as frequently as once a week, but didn’t want to seem gross. If kids forgot a PE kit, it wasn’t a major deal - they just grabbed one from lost property. The lesson was the deal.