Primary School in the seventies (or sixties)

[YellowCardiganNavyJoggers]

If you were at primary school in the seventies what are things that today's children would probably be shocked at.

Here's a few of mine.

Teacher kept 'words on paper scraps' in a tobacco tin. You got called out and you had to read the words of the paper. I still remember the green flat tobacco tin.

When someone wet themselves (puddle on floor) and nobody would own up to it the teacher would take each child into the toilet and pretty much feel between their legs to see if they were wet. Can you imagine them being allowed to do that now.

Teacher was bad tempered and strict. Kids were pretty well behaved and quiet. I was quite scared of my teacher and jealous of the other Primary 1 kids who seemed to have nicer, younger teachers.

School 'jotters' - you know the books you got to write in.

Your dad covering things with old wallpaper. I can't remember what it was exactly - was it books or folders? Or was this high school and I am getting mixed up

The highlight of my day was the milk crate. Oh my god I used to get quite excited to get a whole bottle of milk (and straw) to myself. I was always hungry. Typical seventies child living in cold council house with basic and scarce diet. That bottle of milk was looked forward to each day so much. To this day I still love drinking milk and always have pints and pints of it in the fridge.

Desks with the little pull out drawer underneath. We also sometimes had drawers in a sort of unit with each persons name on a drawer.

Coat hooks outside the classroom with your name beside it and a picture on it. Do they still do this?

Play area in the corner of the room with little cooker etc. I used to love to play on it as we didn't have many toys at home.

Going up to the teachers desk to use 'the big sharpener' on the teachers desk. It was sort of attached to the desk and you stuck your pencil in and turned a handle.

If you were at primary in the seventies (or sixties) what do you remember?

Farm bairn here - the milk tanker driver used to give us a lift down the farm road to the bus stop in the 70s/80s!

Also, our high school gym teacher sending us off unaccompanied for cross country (off school grounds no less) so she could sit and have a fag.

rip roaring hymns in assembly such as give me oil in my lamp, he’s got the whole world in his hands and lord of the dance which still come to mind decades later.

a wild life area with pond and frogs to roam free in.

dangerous unsupervised play equipment

staff rooms full of tobacco smoke

cold tall Victorian toilets with chain flushes and ceramic handles with wooden seats

toilet paper like tracing paper

Sixties/seventies child. All but one of my teachers at primary was kind.

If you were taken I'll at school, another child walked you home to your house, or if your mum worked, whoever was your emergency contact. Few people had a telephone so there was no way to phone your mum. If you had no one, you went to sit in the secretary's office until home time.

The nit nurse would visit and check everyone's hair for nits. If you had nits you were given a letter and could not come back to school until they were treated.

The belt was legal and used on unruly kids.

At lunchtime we could walk home if we wanted for lunch. No one checked to see if you were collected, you were just trusted to stay at school if you were having lunch at school.

Five year olds walking to and from school was normal.

You had to cover your textbooks from school in wallpaper to keep the cover clean.

PE in infants was done in plimsolls, vest and knickers. In fairness the knickers were proper ones, not scanty ones like kids wear today.

There was no subsidising school trips. If your parents didn't or couldn't pay, you just didn't go.

If you didn't have your school dinner money, you didn't get school dinner.

No breakfast club.

Free milk though.

Kids were well behaved though and I went to a very deprived school.

Tv on wheels.

Sand /water tray in the play corner.
Huge tubs of PVA glue which peeled off our hands in sheets.

Outdoor loos.
PE black plimsoles, country dancing, creative movement.

Percussion instruments xylophone, glockenspiel, tambourines, maracas - very jarring if you mistimed the triangle.

School meals came in aluminium vats and boxes, mashed potatoes doled out from an ice cream scoop.
mashed swede and carrots.

Puddings were squares of chocolate or vanilla sponge with pink, brown or yellow custard or my favourite Gypsy tart.

Big jugs of water on the tables.

I absolutely loved those lunches coming from a no sugar crunchy background.

And the dinner ladies would give me seconds.

Any leftovers we scraped into a bucket to be sent to the pigs.

Horrible warm milk in summer that was frequently spilled on the wooden tables meaning they stank as they heated up in the sunshine.

Playing British Bulldog or hopscotch in the playground and having to fold our arms and lay our heads on the smelly desks for what seemed like ages after lunch to restore calm following particularly raucous games.

Good times 1973-1980.

Our village had an Infant and a Junior school. The infant school was a 1930s building with big windows and there were ladder like steps that attached to the outer sills so that our route to the grassy lawn that was the playground was through the window. The school had a nursery - pre school - my brother had been there but I was too young in year to be eligible. Worse than being refused the nursery, I was young in year so only did one term in reception. Pupil numbers were very high in my year and I can still remember the disappointment of having to wait.

School lunches for both schools were at the infant school but most of us had mums that didn't work so we went home for lunch.

The Junior school was Victorian with added portacabiins. The green space was one if the little village greens and we played shinty in what's now years 5 and 6. We had sports days there but played netball in the main playground. We did Scottish dancing and we got paired reverse alphabetically. My partner wasn't very good but had a sister who shared my unusual first name, literally the only other one I met throughout my education. It kinda broke the ice a bit with the dancing.

The best bit about the village Junior school was Christmas and Easter at the church. During our time there they found some ancient drawings in the church dating parts of the interior much older than the exterior and making a connection to the castle ruins nearby.. The ruins became part of the grounds of a swanky development but are still there, the church is still lovely, the infant school is now a primary, the junior school was rebuilt and the houses that replaced it were named 'Primary Close'. Both our village greens disappeared, one is a tiny playground/rec the other was restructured by the encroachment of the town. But it still has character and local waterways preserve a little separateness. The huge rectory and the former house of the local landowner are still single occupation dwellings and the former infant school has a kind of village school atmosphere.

Milk was a thing and daytime naps too at the infant school.

The tuck shop was brilliant..
James left a poo 💩 at the doorway to our P2 class. I can still remember the teacher taking a paper towel and picking it up 🤣😳
Friday sweetie in P1.
Horrific don't play on the railway programmes.
How we used to live.
Kiss cuddle or torture in the playground
And in the village there was a fair with a beauty queen and her maid on the float🤔

Yes! I couldn’t remember what it was called. It would have been 1976 I started school

Yes to all of these!

Fletcher Maths books had a textured red or blue cover. Lots of tables where you had to draw a table in your exercise book and fill in the missing numbers. Queuing up at the teacher’s table when you were ‘stuck’.

I mostly liked school milk. It came with thin blue straws that would pierce the foil lid.

Schools TV - we watched The Boy from Space (Look and Read). Year 5 and 6 we watched Middle English, Science Workshop and How we used to live.

Stationery - all the girls were mad about Beautiful Sunday pencil cases with the magnetic closure compartments. And Hello Kitty. And smelly pencils.

No National Curriculum, teachers taught what they liked. In year 5 we learnt about the Sargasso Sea, Tristan da Cuhna and dams. Random stuff! I was in Year 5 in 1982 during the Falklands war. Our teacher’s idea of education’ about this was basically a rant to us 10 year olds about the government! I remember him in total dispair.

Primary in the sixty’s. Learned to read very early via the medium of phonics, and was sent to the headmistress room to read for her among with a few others. She made us feel very proud.
I remember listening to a big wooden radio and did some dancing to the music in our underwear,
then we’d have a nap.

Our classrooms had huge fireplaces in them surrounded by heavy iron guards. The room was always toasty in winter when they were lit.

The teachers in our first and second class were lovely. Extremely kind and patient but not so the one in year three. Impatient old bag who rapped us on the knuckles and back of the legs with a wooden ruler if we looked at her the wrong way.

In the first year of junior school we went into her daughter’s class who was the total opposite of her. She was one of the nicest teachers in the school.

I loved school dinners, brown stew being one of my favourites as was the minced beef pie, of course I wasn’t vegan way back then. I loved the trifle, also chocolate cake and white sauce.

I hated the milk, except for it being almost frozen in the winter it always seemed to be warm and cheesy most of the time. 🤢 you can probably guess that I don’t drink milk today.

Every afternoon our teacher would read us a story about ten minutes before home time , except for Fridays when we would have the time after last playtime for arts and crafts.

I have really fond memories of my time in primary school and quite good ones from high school. If only we could go back in time as they really were some of the best days of my life.

I started primary school in 1958 and was 5 years and 4 months old . I remember our infants classroom had a Wendy house in the corner and I never got to go inside it even once because I was too shy to ask if I could .
I remember the free milk but wouldn’t drink as it was kept on a warm corridor and I can’t stand warm milk to this day . The only other thing I really remember was doing and passing the 11+ .

Started school in 1971, at my infant school boys had to wear shorts trousers all year round & girls weren't allowed to wear trousers. You had to stay for school dinner's for a term before you were allowed to bring packed lunches. Anyone misbehaving got the slipper. Staff on playground duty would patrol with a cup of coffee in one hand & a cigarette in the other. My mum would take me to school in a morning, collect me at lunchtime, take me back to school & then pick me up at home time.

I always hated the milk I never liked milk much anyway

I had one teacher who would hit us across the back of the hand with a ruler for holding our pencils wrong

I liked school but I was afraid. I think I disassociated a lot

I started infants school in January 1963, I’d just turned 5. I’m still friends with a girl who started the same day as me and in the same class.
I could actually read and write fluently when I started school so was put into a higher year. Then stayed with my peers but was given harder work to do.
We were the first year to not go up to senior school at 11, our school became a junior high so we were the top year for 3 years, we then went to senior school the year we turned 13 so was only there for 3 years.
In junior and junior high school we sat at desks according to where we came in class

i.e. 1st, 2nd etc after we did termly tests. I always came 1st and during my final year my form teacher announced our results and said “ Well first is, we all know who comes first so second is …..” and completely blanked me! I felt so upset, I wasn’t a swot or a teacher’s pet and had lots of friends (still in contact with many of them) and felt that I’d somehow been in the wrong all those years and I shouldn’t have tried so hard.
It affected me so much that when I went to senior school I just gave up. I didn’t revise for any of my O Levels or CSEs and came out with less than satisfactory grades (except for English Language and English Literature where I got top grades). Luckily back in 1974 when I left school there were plenty of jobs around and I’d already been interviewed and offered a job in a bank before I even sat my school exams.
After I had my children I started working in education and realised what an awful teacher that woman had been. Chatting about her with my old school friends we realise now she was a frustrated lesbian who took great delight in putting girls over her lap, lifting their skirts and spanking them! Outrageous now but we didn’t bat an eyelid at the time.
I did have some lovely teachers though, I loved school dinners although I once slipped on some mashed potato whilst carrying a tray with a metal tin containing a sponge for all the pupils on my table along with a metal jug of custard, I ended up partly under the table covered in the pudding and custard!

We were always thirsty, no water bottles then. At lunchtime there were metal jugs of water and green and blue plastic beakers. When it was gone, it was gone, no one ever thought to ask for more water even on hot days.

After outdoor PE in the summer the class would queue up at the water fountain. When it was your turn your classmates would count loudly to 10 at which point your turn was over.

I started primary school in 1986 and we used to keep our crayons in Golden Virginia tobacco tins. Cannot imagine that happening today!

I remember my primary school days vividly, and mostly fondly.

One use for the tobacco tins was “shop sums” - we had a tin labelled “10p”, which contained ten cardboard pennies, and instructions such as “buy one crochet hook”. We had to consult a list to find out how much the hooks were, and work out how much change we would get. The list was headed “Haberdashery”, but it was never explained what this long word meant. Looking back, it was a great way to expand our vocabulary.

Once I fell in the playground and hit my head - blood everywhere. It was just before the school day started, and a teacher took me (and the adult who took me to school) to the nearby hospital in her car. I wonder if that could happen now?

The “maths adventure” books, where we were told to ignore half pennies, which sometimes meant the sums didn’t work. “Jill saved a whole pound for her birthday party” - when a pound was a lot of money.

The local police visiting the school, demonstrating handcuffing the teacher, and using the police dog to catch a robber. We also visited the police station.

Creative punishments. Two boys who laughed whey they were told off were then made to laugh in a mirror; and when another two messed about assembly, the headmistress asked a teacher to fetch a pushchair, and then cheerfully asked the boys if they would like to sit in it, as they were behaving like babies - they solemnly shook their heads.

Lots of science experiments, such as using blotting paper to find out what colours make black. Another experiment involved testing our directional hearing, and had to point at someone clapping. When it was my turn to be blindfolded, the teacher asked “can you see?”. I asked why I couldn’t see the flowers on the scarf over my eyes - my teacher didn’t have an answer for that!

Another one of school bureaucracy: I was ill at school, so the dinner lady on first aid duty looked up my emergency contact details, and noted that under “mother’s contact details”, it said “with great difficulty” (she was a secondary school teacher). Even I knew that my dad was much easier to contact, but she flatly refused to “disturb him at work”, so I had to stay in school all day. My dad wrote in the following day, explaining carefully that he was much more contactable, and much nearer as well. He showed me the letter he sent - I learned a lot about formal letters when my parents did this.

The headmistress ranting about how the reading books we had were full of boys out having a good time, and girls at home helping Mother. She used to make us swap the boys’ and girls’ names, so we could see the difference. She was very middle aged, but ahead of her time.

She also had a sense of humour. When we learned about Victorian household objects, she herself demonstrated a flat iron which had to be heated on the stove; she wore a maid’s outfit, and spat on the iron to check it was hot enough.

In infants, classrooms were always locked when we were not in them, perhaps because they contained dangerous things like real pointed scissors (not the safety ones children use now), and an electric oven (used for demonstrating the flat iron above). This locking of the doors meant a complicated routine of lining up inside the classroom, being counted in twos through the door, and lining up again in the corridor while the door was locked. If children dawdled, the teacher would say “hurry up, or you’ll be locked in”, and once, she actually did, to make a point (for thirty seconds). The corridor to the assembly hall had several fire doors which had to be held open, so it was quite an exercise in crowd control moving us around the school: lots of lining up in silence, with threats of missed playtime for children who fidgeted, or touched the walls. (My aunt was a teacher at a really posh secondary school, and she used to say that her time was 80% crowd control!)

A big YES to the jotter and books covered with wallpaper taken from catalogues donated by a local DIY shop! Brown anaglypta anyone?!!😂
We took it in turns to be milk monitor - those cool little dumpy bottles were so darn cute and the neediest kids got extra. There was no sniffiness about the kids worse off than you in my school days (70s) and it was a C of E village school and everyone rallied round.
Coat Hooks, desk mounted pencil sharpener yes and does anyone recall the machine used to make multiple copies of things - not even an old fashioned photosopier as no eelectrusty was needed - teacher put something on a roller to copy and some ink and miraculously copies were made - magical to a young child!

Ooh and the GUILLOTINE only the tacher could use to cut paper....! Great memories and far removed from what our kids these days will remember about THEIR schooldays!

My daughter starts first year tomorrow and is SO EXCITED!!😁

I was at primary school on a large council estate in 1960s. We had 43 in our class, and every week we were tested and had to change desks according to our scores. Best score sat back left of the room, and worst score front right. I usually ended up around 5th or 6th place, and was mortified the week after I'd been off with chicken pox and I scored nil, so was front right desk for the following week.
My other lasting memory is the dinner ladies having rolls of the shiny Izal toilet paper on a string around their necks in the playground, and you had to ask to be issued some to take to the toilet with you !

50s We didn’t have fountain pens, maybe they were not mass produced so too expensive. We were given nibs on oranges/brown sticks and had to dip them in an inkwell which was inserted at the top right hand of the desk. Used them with blotting paper. Ink got over the fingers and got told off for having ink blots on books,

50s. The female teachers were very old, as women were not allowed to work after they married, and the men were returning ones that had served in the war.

The headteacher patrolling the school smoking his pipe. The deputy headteacher using a plastic golf club instead of a cane. Having to be ready for the weekly music lesson on the radio (live broadcast). Doing my cycling proficiency on a chopper bike.

My mother must have missed that no work after marriage memo, as did both of my grandmothers.

We had the ITA reading system at my first primary school. It didn’t bother me, but DM was horrified when she saw the little spelling cards with strange letters in my tobacco tin!

Enjoying reading this thread, so many familiar memories.

One of the the clapping games I remember went something like - O moni moni ma, ecademi fisa fa…. Don’t know what all that was about!

One day we were allowed to make our own lunch - from memory there were 5 of us in a group and we had 60p between us (school lunch was 12p a day). We went to the local shop and somehow managed to buy enough to eat (frozen peas, fish fingers I think). That was around 1971 or 72, just after decimalisation.

We had the big colour coded cards in a box, which you could work on independently - SRA cards.

One year at the school fete there was a pet show - we brought our cat along and he got a Highly Commended rosette - treasured that for years!

Loved PE, Music and Movement, Country Dancing, gymnastics.