How often did your school bring out… The Apparatus?

[AintNobodyHereButUsChickens]

My school very rarely opened it out. My primary school didn’t have a hall until I got to year 5 and in those last two years I spent at primary, they brought out the apparatus maybe once that I can recall. It was brand new, why didn’t they use it more?!

But my husband said they always used to have it out at his school!

Loved those sessions the best.
Especially climbing to the top of the rope, then controlling the descent so that you didn’t get rope burn on the tender insides of your legs.
liked the balance beam too, not do enthusiastic about the horse.
i enjoy now, even the memory of that hour, it went so fast, unlike the dreary history lessons that were all about memorising dates ugh

Yes and me! I never mastered it!

Maybe once. We used to turn the benches upside down and balance along those a lot..

It was a rare and special event. Much like when a dog got into the playground.
They’d more often have us lobbing bean bags into hula hoops. Safer and less effort I suppose.

Most weeks at primary school in the '60s. However, we didn't have rings.

I enjoyed climbing the wall bars, but my various primary teachers were in disbelief at my complete inability to shin up the ropes. (Coming down them was never a problem, since I never got up them in the first place.)

I was the apparatus monitor at my primary school in the early 70s…just saying. I got to climb the ropes at lunchtime, stash all the small equipment away and check everything was secure. Best role of my life actually…

We didn't have one.

We did have a pommel horse and springboard, though, and it was given regular airings. Odd in primary because it was an all girls school.

I think it depended entirely on the teacher. my P4 teacher brought it out all the time, I'm not sure my P3 teacher even noticed it existed.

I went to five different primary schools and in my last school they didn't have apparatus! I was actually quite outraged (in the way only kids that age can be) and I'm sure my classmates that I told about it probably now think I was some sort of mad child wondering where this mythical equipment was!

Not that often late 80s early 90s. But I was glad I hated it.

Fairly often, mostly for proper apparatus use (eg climbing, hanging off bits, rope work and what have you). But my absolute favourite days that would bring me most joy were when the teacher would declare we were playing PIRATES for gym. Everything wpuld be brought out for a good half hour/40 minutes of unbridled exhilaration at galloping about, climbing, sliding, jumping and swinging as you avoided sharks and naval officers. JOY.

But never in December. Because we would be doing Social Dancing then. You can't use The Apparatus in the Gay Gordon's.

Loads at infant school. Less frequently at junior. So exciting when we saw it out. I did not enjoy music and movement.

Loved it when the apparatus came out. There was something called a horse we had to jump over and we had a beam too. This was the 70’s at primary and the 80’s at secondary.

It is bonkers though, thinking of all these children doing vaults and pommel horse at PE for all these years yet we couldn't crack the Olympics gymnastics. What on earth were we training for?

I remember the springboard and trying to mount horses and boxes (and oooft, pain if you landed on them instead of clearing them) and having absolutely no notion of why we were doing it.

Was the government trying to create a crack team of tiny athletics soldiers? Were we on an SAS-lite training programme? Perhaps it was the national disgrace of not enough of us being able to climb roped that was our undoing?

Regardless, I am still chasing that thrill I got when the teacher started to wheel The Apparatus from the wall. Ah, the click of the mechanism as it unfolded... the snib of the bolt as it locked into place...

There’s a whole Reddit sub for ‘TheApparatus’ !

We didn’t get this till I was in year 6 because my school was a shithole! But once they got it they did get it out pretty frequently. End of term PE lesson, sometimes just randomly if the PE teacher was in a good mood. I remember feeling a deep sense of injustice that they didn’t get it till I was in year 6.

The one they have at DC’s school is soooo good! I actually asked on the tour how often they got it out because obviously that’s the most important thing when selecting a school for your offspring.

Probably once a year, gym was generally playing dodge ball with our witch of a teacher always taking out the kids she hated the most, leaving her favourites (the pretty blonde girls 🙄) until last!

How that violent bitch became a child protection officer bamboozles me to this day.

Loads in the infants, hardly ever in the juniors. Our year 6 teacher had a stupid rule that if more than 2 people forgot their kit, nobody could do indoor PE and we had to do spelling instead. Unfortunately outdoor pe was never cancelled.

We had a session on the equipment (in our knickers and vests) and then something called ‘country dancing’ which was absolutely bonkers - Friday afternoon all the juniors put on long dresses and learned weird dances. We were an inner city school and I would say 90% of the intake were from a massive council estate.

Every week with one teacher I had - but I think it was termly as I also remember doing loads of other activities for PE,(late 80s/90s) we had a big frame and our teacher would pick 3 or 4 children (can’t quite remember the actual figure) to stand at each lever, and she’d tell us when to pull it down and pull out the frame. I loved climbing the ropes. I also remember playing bench ball, and being in the girls football and Lacoste team.

It was a very rare occurrence

Regularly, I loved the Apparatus and could get up the ropes but regularly got rope burn on the way down. The gym cupboard was great and we used to hide in there on rainy days but we were often disturbed by lunch time gym club. We liked to sit in the gym horse and could fit 3 inside. ‘The Apparatus’ so reminds me of school days.

Most weeks at my school.
It came as a surprise to me that in other schools it was barely used.

Hardly ever at mine, I remember once it was out and a boy fell and broke his arm 😆, maybe that’s why it was rarely used. Mind you I don’t really remember much in the way of matting underneath them

I'd forgotten this phrase. My school got it out almost every week. There were just the gym mats underneath to break any fall.

Never. It was useful during school plays though as the "roll-away-stage" was put in front of it and props/backgrounds were tied onto it.