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!

We just called them 'The Bars'... and I can only remember them being out once, took ages, and neither we nor the PE teacher seemed to have any idea of what to do next...

And benches were called 'forms'... they had big sort of rubber snake fangs under the ends so you could hook them over The Bars... to what end, I cannot remember or fathom...

Wasn't there a line in Shirley Conran's Lace about girls going into an inappropriate trance on the ropes and the teachers yelling at them to come down? 🤔

Not enough! Although I think it was maybe once a month or two on average. Loved it when we got everything out and did circuits.
I was amazed when I went on holiday and my mum sent me to school on holiday(!) and they had the apparatus out in the hall the whole time I was there and we could go on it at playtime when it was my class's turn.

DS's school gets it out once a term but its out for the whole week and used at playtimes too.

Secondary school it was permanently out but only used occasionally, usually when the weather was truly so bad you couldn’t be outside and I think one half term per year was “gym”

In infant school very rarely (it was like that picture, but all blue, literally wouldn’t have remembered that without this thread!) but in junior school it came out a lot (and looked exactly like that). It was very exciting whenever it was announced to be an “apparatus PE lesson”! 😂

Same.

Weirdly we were just talking about this a few days ago when my DD mentioned it was brought out at PE like it was a special occasion! Older DD reckons it was out about once a year when she was at primary school. I remember it being very rare when I was at school.

Have I imagined that we also had a similar system of rotating blackboards so work could be saved for later?

We had it out at least once a week for PE. Happy days!

we had it in primary in the assembly hall cum gym was no hall at the junior it was the canteen then yes at my first secondary school. i dreaded it as we were always made to get to top of the bars at infant had to stay on there until we got to the top same with the ropes.
i remember it was wheeled out then locked in holes in the floor useful piece of equipment

I just remembered in secondary we were supposed to run, jump on the spring board, put our hands on the horse and swing our legs over to land on the mat on our feet.

Instead I ran, jumped on the springboard and used the horse to propel myself head first into the mats on the other side. Not my finest moment.

Hardly ever! Usually PE was playing with a big parachute and listening to Bowie?!

I remember once they brought it out, it was ancient and rusty.
The rope was horrible and impossible to climb.

I was kind of scared of the apparatus.

I forgot it was even called that til now!

We had this pommel horse kind of thing that we used a bit more frequently which wasn't too scary.

1970s primary, it came out a few times a year and was one of the few PE things I liked! Much better than boring rounders or brutal dodgeball.

For indoor PE we had the apparatus. There were a couple of gym 'horses' too.

And ropes which I never could climb.

Usually all did indoor PE in vest and pants too.

Schools were so weird then.

The ones where you had to just about dislocate your shoulder to get them to turn?

https://www.magpies-vintage.co.uk/vintage-home/Vintage-School-Blackboard-Revolving-Chalk-Menu-Board-p349160042

Yes thanks! And desks you could store your stuff in- I’d forgotten those.
Sorry to derail the thread!

We had those blackboards at secondary, (in primary we just had fixed boards which got a fresh coat of black paint over the holidays).

Who on EARTH would spend £495 to put one in their home?

We had those big blue crash mats in our gym, during lunch we’d put them on top of each other then climb up the frame and jump on to them. Dinner lady (that’s what we called them in the 80’s) always found us, always bollocked us and sent us out. During pe classes they were always out.

Isn't it funny that, despite all the threads we have about differences in regional dialect, it seems pretty universal that we all used the phrase 'The Apparatus' and that phrase isn't used to describe equipment of any other kind.

Rarely thank god as i hated it!

My sons school was only built 10 years ago and they have apparatus. He says he’s never used it though. He didn’t even know what it was until I showed him the photo in my OP and he was amazed it’s actually a ‘thing’ and not just a weird set of bars clamped to the wall for seemingly no reason.