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?

My teacher sending love notes to the teacher downstairs that my friend and I had to deliver. We enjoyed reading them!

Well you can tell this is AI as no one enjoyed the milk as it was warm

Same here - my grandma became a teacher in the early 30s and remained one all her life, as a married mother of two (grandad was also a teacher - they met at teacher training college).

We had outdoor toilets and scratchy, shiny loo paper.
I remember the rolling blackboards. We didn’t wear uniform until secondary and that’s when I remember wallpapering my books!

One of our teachers had the occasional ciggy and if someone farted she would try and identify the culprit by walking around the room and having a sniff.

Everyone walked or cycled to school in those days and often without parents. I can’t imagine that now especially as for kids this meant walking a mile or more.

Our teacher used to put the milk on the radiator on a cold day. The food was pretty awful but probably quite healthy - homemade in the school kitchen and nothing processed or fried.

I also remember the class pencil sharpener with a handle. I think that the school provided pretty much everything in terms of books, pencils, paper etc.

Naughty kids would be hit with a slipper on the bum. Can you imagine that now?!

Sometimes we would watch something called something like “Music and Movement” and do that instead of PE. Also Country Dancing which was like a Ceilidh or something - and no, not in Scotland or Ireland .

I was terrified of both the Head and Deputy Head who has v v loud voices but I didn’t ever actually get into trouble with either of them.

I think we were the first year to have Biff, Chip and Kipper, in 1987 - and I have gathered from Mumsnet that they still haunt classrooms now! Our teacher told us that the boy was called Kipper because he couldn’t say his own name, “Christopher”.

Happy memories of waiting for the TV programme to start!

Were they teachers in the 50s?

I remember being puzzled when we learned about Hallowe’en: and we were taught to spell it with the apostrophe, because it meant “Hallowevening”. What i didn’t understand (aged 6) was how it appeared to be a serious subject, which we had to write about, because I thought things like witches and ghosts were made up. (In fact, as a child, I thought that if things appeared in stories, they were pretend, and I was surprised when some story things were real, such as rainbows.)

My grandma was! See my post above. Qualified in the 30s, taught through to retirement in the late 60s married with two kids. Including the war (my Dad was born just before it) while my Grandad was overseas and throughout the 50s (Uncle was a post war baby).

This was in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Ok sorry, maybe it was discouraged but I remember a young female teacher who stopped working because she got married, one is not everyone, my mistake

We still had these in secondary in the 90s!

Being extremely excited if the PE class involved the ‘apparatus’ the big square thing with ropes that rolled out in the main hall and you could attach wooden benches to it and climb up ropes.
building snowmen at lunch if it was heavy snow.
being allowed to go to the store cupboard to collect things like bolser wood for projects.
lots of glue.
they got the glitter out for a Christmas crafts.
there being special silver and gold pencils used only for specific Christmassy crafts.
Harvest festival and bringing a tin of something.
hymns on the projector every morning.
collecting moss and leaves, we were smaller and closer to the ground, ai don’t notice moss and leaves so much anymore.
A tv show on the big telly on wheels about a boy with a racing pigeon.
this was the 80s.

How awful for you. My primary 7 teacher was hugely respected in the school and wider community. It was considered the icing on the cake to get her for the last year at primary. Even today, on my town's Facebook page people wax lyrical about how amazing she was.

And she was generally - only not to me.

I was the top student in the class and actually when we went to secondary, I pretty much left the others behind.

So here I was, the top student in the class, and she was SO jealous of me. She had been a secretary and got into teaching through some scheme to get unqualified people into teaching in the 60s, when there was a huge shortage. She hadn't gone to uni. She could see how I could have a very different sort of life from her (and tbh my mother was exactly the same).

I didn't find out until later that she always picked on the top student. And shecwas allowed to get away with it, year after year. She was seen as untouchable I guess. She poured so much into the other kids.....meanwhile she would ignore me if I tried to answer a question (even if I was the only one with my hand up). She never once chose me to do any tasks - I remember the head asked her to send him some girls with nice hand writing to write out place cards and he kept asking for more students and by the end she was sending girls who could barely write and I was still sitting there. I won a poetry competition and she wouldn't tell us who won - the other class winner had been announced but she wouldn't say my name.

She caused me so many problems which I have had therapy for. I can't believe I was put through this. Teachers in those days had way too much power.

Oh the famous Izal 'medicated' toilet paper that slid off your bum and doubled as tracing paper! I learned a few weeks ago that the made it in Sheffield and only stopped in 1981! As a student in 1977 I cleaned in a hospital and they had this in the staff toilets! Unbelievable!

My mother became a teacher in the early 50s. She got married in 1953 and had to give up her permanent job as only single women were allowed to be in permanent posts.

I bought it in 1990s in a shop for a seventies party.

That's brilliant! 🤣

We had those reading books. I think my sister must have got really fed up with them. One day, my mum was listening to her read when she stopped and said "I wish the big red lorry would run out of petrol"

70’s here. My most vivid memory of primary school is a keep fit class to the music of Abba - Waterloo. Loved the milk, black boards, playing concentration the clapping game at break time, Wendy house in the corner of the classroom, mint custard and chocolate cake after school dinners, the teachers all seeming ancient though they probably weren’t, Bangers and Mash and Meg and Mog books, the teacher melting crayons to make candles for Christmas displays and us using quality street coloured wrappers to make paper lanterns. Swimming lessons at a local outdoor pool come rain or shine, thinking there was a vampire down some steps with an old bolted door in the old schools playground. No uniforms, lots of hymns in assembly, awful shiny tracing paper loo roll, p.e in the summer was always rounders which I loved, ice cream scoops of mashed potato, the excitement of asking for a holiday form, pencil sharpeners on the teachers desk, the tv on wheels being rolled in meant for a great lesson, story time before the end of the school day. I loved it all, I have very fond memories of primary school ☺️

It probably differed between schools as well as regions. Reading everyone's experiences on here shows how, without a national curriculum, or Ofsted etc, each school was pretty much its own little fiefdom with its own rules and traditions.

Also my Gran was notoriously tiny but fierce. 😅When my grandparents bought their first house some time in the late 50s/early 60s she successfully insisted her income was taken into account for the mortgage, which was by no means the norm!!

We had no school trips until the very end of primary 7, when we had a day at the seaside. No one ever came in to talk to us either - the only outside school experience we got was going to church at Christmas and at Easter. As we didn't know about trips or speakers, we didn't mind. We also didn't have after school or lunchtime clubs and there was no on site childcare.

Late 70s here.

The non refrigerated milk.

No choices at lunch and only water to drink other than the mid morning milk.

Scratchy toilet paper that you could use for tracing as well.

No computers. Some BBC educational programmes which weren't that great.

A child dying of polio and watching class teacher rule a red line through his name on due attendance register.

From age 7 I got the bus to school alone and had to cross a busy road with lorries and wait for ages at an unattended stop about 400 yards down the road. It was very unsafe looking back.

I was in primary in the 70s. I went to an ordinary infants and an RC juniors.

We still had milk though Thatcher had stopped it.... I assume certain LAs funded it themselves. The dinners were rank. I have hated cabbage since then.

The head teacher in my juniors was brutal, despite (or because) being a nun. I remember her slapping me once, for the crime of being in the loos during a wet playtime. I wasn't the only one, but was nearest the door. She also shouted at me and made me cry because my mum was collecting me at lunchtime for a hospital appointment. My 4th year (6th in new money) teacher had favourites, usually those who was good at needlework. I was crap so she didnt like me. My mum kept our reports which we found in her loft after she died. My report said I was immature and over sensitive. For some reason both loved my younger sister and she has different memories to me.

Boys did football, girls did netball and needlework.

I liked infants though. I loved reading and excelled in it, as did my best friend Tamsin Greig (yes that one! We sat next to each other and went to each others houses for birthday parties.

‘School Journey’ - year 6 residential. We went to York from our London primary school. Fond memories of exploring York, Castle Howard, York Minster, Filey and Flamborough Head.