Things you did at school you wouldn’t be allowed to do now.

[TwillTrousers]

I’ve only just remembered this. At primary we played ‘basketball’. 2 kids would stand at either ends of the hall standing on a chair holding a wicker bin to catch the balls in (all wearing pants and vest). In fact I can remember standing on chairs a lot, now banned of course.
I can also remember going to sing at the hospital sitting in the boot of a teachers reliant Robin in secondary.

Gosh we did this too! I’d forgotten all about it! 😬

Standing on desks to staple gun your work to the display boards in primary school.
Bulldog and red rover on the concrete playground at primary school, the later was banned (again) when 2 children from my class broke their wrists within 20 minutes of each other.
The PE teacher trying to pull your towel off you to check you hadn't kept your underwear on whilst showering.
Being sent to play contact rugby with the boys because you messed about in the girls PE lesson.

We had an absolute doozy once, the time before, the head mistress had bollocked everyone (in her incredibly posh voice) for not taking it seriously and taking to long to line up and the hockey pitch and chatting etc.

So the next time when we saw smoke, we actually thought she'd hired a smoke machine to make us do better. No, the junior cloakroom was actually on fire.

Someone's boyfriend did phone in a hoax bomb once, afternoon off, there's lovely.

Being forced to shower naked in front of teachers and other students twice a week at secondary.

At primary there were no changing rooms so changing for PE was done in the classroom in front of your desk and your clothes were folded neatly on your desk whilst you went out to the lesson. So all changing together boys and girls in front of big open windows with just whoever passing. Until the end of year 6.

Walking to and from school on my own from the start of year 1. I used to be allowed to collect younger siblings and walk them home when I was in year 3.

Everyone knew that the music teacher assaulted girls regularly and it was on us to make sure we guarded against it.

😮

Secondary School - 6th formers could smoke in their common room.
Middle school French trip (age 10) we were all taken to the local town and dropped off in groups of four. Each group had to find a different place by asking random passers-by in French, then draw it and report back to the teachers who presumably spent the afternoon in the bar

Ours was very strict on uniform in the nineties. Ridiculous wrap-around kilt (state school, we were the only ones with a stupid uniform) that was one big sheet of fabric and could only be purchased at vast expense from a single local outfitter. It would flap open in the wind or if you were riding a bike to school, displaying knickers. Skirt pins or anything else designed to prevent the skirt flapping open were forbidden and a detention-worthy offence.

We also had to wear a contraption known as a purse belt, but only in year 7 for some reason. It was essentially a very small, unsightly bum bag with such tiny zip compartments that it was a struggle to fit your lunch money inside. Any other method of carrying money, like a normal purse in your backpack, was also FORBIDDEN. Until you were in year 8 and then it was fine. Purse belt had to be worn whether you were bringing in lunch money or not, and, being fat, mine was always uncomfortably tight.

My mother had to save up ration coupons to do the O-level cookery practical - and the food was the family dinner that night.

However my own kids attended school in Sweden and did stuff that would never be allowed in the UK - especially "isvak" - a type of safety training - where the kids jump through a hole in a frozen lake and have to get themselves out.

Had a Stanley knife permanently in the bottom of my bag. It was mandatory art kit.

Just remembered the time in Biology where we were looking at where taste buds were on your tongue. This involved being in pairs and using pipettes to squirt a sweet solution, salty, acid and another one I've forgotten. The acid was hydrochloric. Our biology teacher was a bit mad though and spent every lunchtime in the pub with his buddies, my Latin teacher and one of the French teachers.

In 4th year juniors (y6 in current terms) my friend and I used to go out every lunch time to the shop up the road to bank the tuck shop takings and buy the teacher a ham barm and 20 silk cut.

All through juniors I used to walk home (15 minutes) and let myself in to an empty house.

Late 80s/early 90s, I attended a private school so everyone lived in different areas. Our biology teacher lived in my neck of the woods, so would sometimes give lifts to my friend and I after school.

I can remember coming home and telling my parents Mr X gave us a lift home. And my parents would say ‘oh how nice of him’. Can you imagine the uproar if that happened today?!

(Mr X was a lovely man and is still is. I’m friend with him on FB like most of my former classmates. No inappropriate behaviour.)

My DD goes to a Scottish school in Yorkshire (yes it’s as odd as it sounds and I don’t get it) and she has to wear a kilt like this! No purse but the kilt has the buckles and it’s an absolute bastard to wash as the pleats un-pleat and I have to iron them damp back into place otherwise they disappear and the kilt sticks outwards

In y11 we got to do different types of sport in PE. Once we went went swimming and another time we went to a local hotel to play squash. On both occasions we were instructed to get the bus there and meet our teacher, who had driven. That seems crazy now (mid 90s).

We also had a shower register with p when you were on your period. You could get away with a couple of extra days. I do remember one of my friends having to get a note from the GP as she had a period that went on for weeks and the teacher didn’t believe her.

Eat trifle every day Mo-Fr...was always on offer as one of the school dinner desserts.

Primary school - just walked out the door at lunch time if you wanted to go home for lunch.

You didn’t tell anyone. 80s, so doors weren’t locked and there were no gates around the school.

If some children’s parents weren’t at home in the day, they would wander the village. This was from age 5. Madness!

My mum was at home, I’d take a packed lunch, but sometimes decide to come home for an hour. I’d just walk in the back door and she’d make me beans on toast. I lived across the road from school, I’d hear the bell ring for end of lunch and off I’d go.

I had a large pen knife in my pocket most of the time as I often wore my riding coat to school in winter. It cropped up the other day when I was talking to my stepdaughters and they were shocked I had a knife in school 😂

My primary school had Mr S's wall, aka the wall of shame, where you were sent to stand for the first half hour of lunch if you had been bad. It was 0ff the main corridor to the assembly/dinner room. I never went there, for yes, I was a swot, but I believe (as my youngest niece has recently left and the legend has been passed down) that my sister, now 44 ,still holds the record for being sent there the most times. It was embarrassing going to lunch and seeing her there again. It felt like it was at least once a week in the 3 years we overlapped.

It's a short hop from there to the stocks.

Proper snowball fights and sliding about on ice in the playground. We were also able to leave the school at lunchtime whenever we wanted from age 10 and could basically do anything. Cross country through the edge of town and along the beach, the teachers didn't check on anyone and we would walk off and nobody noticed as long as you turned up again at the end.

Running round the playing fields wearing an aertex T-shirt and navy knickers when at Secondary School.
I always wondered why so many middle aged men in rain coats where walking their dogs at the same time......

It was exactly the same at my secondary school in the early 70s. We all used to dread the showers and the PE teachers used to stand at the end of the showers to make sure we all got wet.

I also remember science teachers passing round tubes of mercury, which fascinated us and we all used to play with it.

Small rural primary in the early-late 2000s in New Zealand. Cross country training involved running on a gravel farm road as a teacher drove up behind us in their car.

To maintain the school swimming pool the teachers just chucked some chlorine in, nothing else. My blonde hair went green.

Our school boarded a horse paddock, the teachers turned a blind eye to us electrocuting ourselves on the electric fence.

There was a power cut once so the teachers sent us all home without ringing the parents. I was about 8 and ended up at a mates house because dad was playing golf and mum was at work. Neither had mobiles.

Smoke in the woods with our teachers in the Late 1990s

Our (mostly overweight) sadist PE teachers used to have a fag whilst watching us do cross country! Never remember them once doing any exercise. Unless you count bullying the small or unathletic people as exercise, shouting that they needed to do better

also teachers going to the pub at lunchtime
When we were allowed to leave school grounds for lunch in Year 10 I remember seeing them through the pub window across the road