Did your school have a climbing frame folded against the walls of the hall? Did you ever get to go on it?

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One of the DC mentioned earlier something about never getting to go on the big climbing frame in the school hall and it unlocked my own memory of never getting to go on the big climbing frame in the school hall 😂

I went to 3 different schools from 4-16 and between them my DC have been to at least 7, and now we've discussed it none of us ever remember anyone getting a go on the big climbing frame in the hall. Going to ask DP about his memories of this when he gets home!

My favourite! Our teachers just used to get a couple of kids to get it out and let us have at it. I’d spend ages hanging upside or spinning round the bars.
So much more independence in the 80’s, I have memories of standing on tables putting work up on display on the walls and firing the staple gun through my finger and being sent to the shop with cash and a note to get fags for the teachers, can’t imagine they’d let kids do that these days.

We have it at my school. I've been trained to set it up but I won't use it on my own with 30 kids so sadly they won't get to go on it. I'm not setting myself up to be found liable if someone falls.

Yep we did in our primary school and no we rarely got to go on it! this was mid eighties. We would always look longingly at it during PE, hoping against all hope that we would go into the gym hall and see it opened out, but no, lucky if we used a once a school year and only a handful of times my whole seven years at primary schools. Ours had ropes on it too, with big knots on the bottom that you could sit on and swing 😞

Yes!! It was called ‘the apparatus’ in our school too!

We had a whole rock climbing wall at my secondary school that was apparently donated by a parent of a child who died and was never used once. Apparently someone lost part of the safety equipment or there wasn’t a trained teacher or something. Anyway it was never used for the decade I knew the school (during siblings time too)

We had The Apparatus and used it. We also had an actual Maypole in primary and had to learn maypole dancing for the summer fête. I remember us very nearly strangling each other with Ribbons if we took a wrong turn.

Every week the climbing frame would be pulled out from the wall. The last week of term was always the best; the gym teachers would spend their lunch break getting the climbing frame, rope ladders, boxes, beams and all kinds of other equipment out ready for us to play Pirates. It was great fun, although I do remember twice a child falling off and breaking a limb.

Yes & I absolutely loved it. We used to climb up the swinging ladders and hang upside down. I remember climbing up the ropes then burning your hands sliding back down.

Yes, we had 2 that came off the wall and then 1 we had to self assemble. They'd put us in teams and each team assembled a different bit of apparatus, then when we were done we'd sit in a line in front and the teacher would come and check it. We'd then move around the various apparatus in our teams, 5 minutes on each of the 5 pieces.

Once a week for 7 years!

Yes and yes.
Used the ropes too. Was at primary school in the early 80's.

Yes and very rarely we were allowed to go on them. They actually swung out from the wall and could be bolted into the floor!

I still shiver when I remember this instrument of torture.
PE back in the 70/80s was basically open house for bullies and the PE teachers were frequently the biggest bully of all and encouraged and emboldened the others.

Yes to both! At secondary school we had to pull to out and lock it into holes in the floor. We also had a springboard as well as the horse. We used to pull up on the racks using the ropes too.

Yes, we had it when I was a child (2 different Primary schools)

Yes we used it

Yes my (now adult) dc all used it (23 different schools)

Yes, I used it when I was teaching (3 different schools).

The horse!

I don'f remember having it at school as a pupil.

As a teacher, our school won the Tesco tokens thing and our DHT spent the money on a wall bars climbing frame thing without consulting the staff.
It now sits there unused because nobody wanted it nor do they want the responsibility of supervising kids on it

Never. Never ever

The mysterious apparatus 🤣 we never did, I assumed it was ornamental

Oh wow, the smell of the dusty wood!

Yes. It was the only thing I could manage.

Never did manage to climb up a rope or jump over a horse.

ETA I'm 65.

Used to use the rope ladder as a swing when we were in infants I remember.

The Apparatus! Memory unlocked!

I can still smell the rubber mats and see the filth and grime in the ropes! We loved apparatus days so much.

Still, it was all pretty tame compared to outdoor playgrounds back then, with their high slides and concrete floors!

The ‘apparatus’ was used regularly in both my primary and secondary school.

Yes lots of promises about "the apparatus'but teachers could only be arsed to get it out once or twice a term. Invariably someone would scale the rope and get stuck. In my opinion, while the apparatus looked massive it couldn't take more than a few kids at a time so was really a bit useless for a class of 30.

I loved playing Pirates as a child but sometime during my teaching career it was banned on H&S grounds. Maybe just my county, I don't know.