How did you work around school rules without getting detention?

[Oscillating]

How did you "bend the rules" at your school? I worked out demerit system to the max.

We had a stupid rule at our school saying if you were more than 5 minutes late you got a demerit so I was just under 5m late to every lesson, except the ones after break, because they also had a demerit rule that if you got more than 5 demerits in a week, you got detention. And they reset the demerits each week.... so I limited myself to 5 demerits every week, and achieved this by walking in 10-15 minutes late for the lesson after first break 😂

I never did get detention for being late to lessons 😂😂😂

Denim jackets were banned at our school, so I bought a long one (like a trench coat) and then argued with every teacher that pulled me up that it was a denim coat not denim jacket and so was outhwith the rule 🤣🤣🤣 I was such a twat!

I despised standing out on concrete in the pissing rain, sleet and snow for a total of 1h 20m a day because we weren't allowed in the school buildings during break or lunch.

Once I found out you were kept in at break and received a same day lunchtime detention if you failed to hand in your homework on time, somehow I always forgot to hand in the homework due in for my P2 lessons.

Two months of lovely, warm, civilised breaktimes and lunches sat next to a radiator where I'd read a book (as my missing homework was strangely found in the bottom of my bag, meaning I could hand it in at the end of lunch and avoid an after school detention) followed.

Nice 😃

Did it work?

I joined the orchestra, various classes missed for music lessons, no form due to practice, lunch had in the music rooms… 😊

Oh, I almost forgot how my music lessons always happened to be during PE...

I was so very shy and quiet. Whe I got to about year 10 I realised that I could get away with a lot as no teachers ever picked me up.on anything.

Full marks to neverdrop for something actively useful there.

Not quite sure what being late for every lesson achieved, apart from pissing everyone else off?

Honestly, the most useful thing I ever did was get put sitting next to the most feared, violent girl in the school in remedial maths. (I was clever, but practically innumerate.) She decided I was ok, after I told her some (probably wrong) answers after she set off a fire alarm during an exam, which meant no one could touch me without exciting her ire, so I got to spend the rest of my schooldays being visibly clever without getting any crap for it — it was the kind of school where getting good marks did you no favours with teachers or pupils.

Looking back from 35 years on, her home life was almost certainly appallingly neglected and violent. She died young, after a prison sentence. I still think of her.

I think mostly they decided they couldn't be arsed with the argument 🤣 I thought I was soooo clever 🙈

I was a swot so most of the teachers liked me. On the few occasions I was given a detention I just didn't turn up. No one seemed to notice. When asked why I told the teacher that I had to go straight home from school to let my small sister in (latch key kid) otherwise I would get a beating from my dad. This was back in the 1950s.

Not a detention but the maths teacher hated me for some reason and often picked on me. I wasnlt bottom of the class. Just about the middle. One day I was in the stock room and he touched me on the chest and said "Your a big girl Gingercat" I knocked his hand away and said "You shouldn't have done that sir. If you ever pick on me again Ill tell." He never spoke another word to me after that and the following year I dropped maths. The result was that I never took GCE maths but when later asked what subjects I passed in I just blagged and included maths. No one ever asked me for a certificate.

My friendship group was generally well-behaved, so rarely under suspicion. Our school had 4 'colour' sittings for lunch - so we peeled our cardboard lunch passes in half and relaminated them until we each had all four colours and were miraculously on first sitting (pick of the lunch) every day. We were caught eventually, but the tyrannical teacher who terrorised the lunch queue was remarkably lenient to us. The power of flying under the radar!

Went to a catholic school, was a metal head. Only religious jewellery was allowed. Wore a fuck off big silver hoop with a cross on it… tremendously similar to Lemny’s… but it was RELIGIOUS… the nuns could do nothing 😀

I would just truant! I can’t remember how I got away with it. Perhaps the teachers didn’t take the register properly or didn’t follow up on non-suspicious absences (I would truant one day every few weeks or so). I would go to the city centre, get changed out of school uniform into normal clothes, then sit in coffee shops reading. I loved it!

I hated being a teenager and could not WAIT to be an adult. Truanting was my way of pretending I was already there. God it was exhilarating.

I was a massive goody goody, shy, bookish, terrified of life, school, big kids etc, but I unwittingly found myself in the middle of a rule breaking battle.

I used to have a paper round before school. Some of the year this meant getting dressed in the dark, and one day I put on socks that were different shades of blue. Nobody noticed, or at least cared, until halfway through the morning. I got a detention for not wearing uniform. Except my solicitor dad wouldn’t sign the detention slip because the uniform list said “blue, grey or white socks”. It did not specify that both socks had to be the same colour, or the same shade of that colour, and I got caught in a battle of alpha male wills that went on for about a fortnight. I would have happily stayed back for 30 mins after school to make it all go away, but I ended up not having to do it.

I didn’t, I was the goodiest of two shoes the whole time. Looking back, I don’t really know why. Not sure I gained very much from it.

I was not a teenager that was sporty and I hated cross country with a passion.
The route the school used took us down past the back of some old people’s bungalows and over an old airfield, the route back brought us around the front of the bungalows.
my nan lived in one of these bungalows….

Every time I’d slowly jog at the back, dart in Nan’s back door, have a drink and a snack and then rejoin the class as they ran past the front forty minutes later. Never did get caught 😂

I mean this is genuine rule breaking really but I was a very shy goody two shoes in class, as was my best friend so when we couldn't be bothered to go to class it was never picked up on. I think the teachers believed we must have been somewhere else legitimately.

Not me, but my aunt loathed PE & when she broke her arm she kept forging notes from her mum for a long time after it was actually better. I think it worked for a couple of months.

The being late thing just sounds daft though.

One term in fifth form I had a free double period last thing on a Thursday but none of my friends did. We weren’t allowed to leave the school building, but I snuck out the back and went to sit in the park.
Coming back at the end of the school day, I realised that the strictest PE teacher was teaching netball on the court at back. I was sure I would be in trouble, but thought it would look better if I walked past the court confidently and calmly like I’d been to an approved appointment rather than looking guilty.

Did it every Thursday for a term and didn’t get into trouble!

Always forgot to get my mum to sign my homework diary which meant a detention if it wasn’t done. Learnt to forge her signature rather quickly

Same! I also joined choir because they rehearsed during the second half of lunch so choir members got early lunch passes and thus the full choice of freshly cooked foods, as opposed to the scraps that remained in the second half of lunch.

I was one of the good kids so if my friends and I decided we didn’t want to go to class-we’d go to the chapel.
if a teacher came in- i’d turn on the water works and the others would pretend to comfort me.
got away with that too many times.

Yes, you get away with a lot when people think you’re law-abiding. I used to go AWOL from PE about 75% of the time.

I was made a prefect (incredibly poor decision making by SLT) in year 10 or 11, and I volunteered for smoking patrol. I'd catch the younger students smoking behind the garages and confiscate their fags, passing them onto my friend who would then do a lap selling them back to them for 50p each 😂 I also smoked but had a legitimate reason for hanging round the garages every break and stinking of smoke so I never got detention.