Things that happened in the past that wouldn't happen now

[Fakeplastictrees55]

I did my A Levels in 2007-2009. I went on to study one of the subjects at uni, even though I was rather weak at it at A Level. I needed a high grade and it wasn't certain I was going to make it. I remember my teachers and I were at school one night until around 7pm, my 2 subject teachers were practically doing the coursework for me as the deadline was the next day and they knew I needed the grade.
Then one of the teachers dropped me off home in her car after finally finishing it. Unsurprisingly I got an A.

I studied a language and we had a native speaker language assistant, a lady in her 60s. She was a lovely lady, and at one point she invited me and the other students to her house to complete our coursework. We went during the weekend, it was all above board, she made us croissants and we completed the coursework at her house.

Just looking back now this sort of stuff would be safeguarding risks now and would probably never happen. Has anybody else got things like that they think of?

It was discovered that a teacher was having an affair with a sixth former.

All that happened was he was asked to leave at the end of the year.

i guess the biggest difference between then and now is that everyone walked to school, no parents/adults, from starting school at age 5.
ok i guess some were shown where the school was on first day, but after that, you were on your own.
i suppose some walked in groups or with siblings, but only if they felt like it.

no notion of safety concerns at all.
by the way, when did the word siblings arrive in general parlance; never heard it spoken til i was about 40.

5th year to me is in primary school. The year
below 6th form would be year 11’s. With teachers giving lifts, when my dad forgot to pick me up from cross country, an English teacher that was there took me home. She picked her greyhound up from the vets on the way home. She put the dog in the back of the car with me and said it was ok to stroke her but don’t touch her stitches (a good foot long wound down her rib cage). When the bus didn’t turn up on my DD’s sats day 2 years ago a teacher pulled up and said ‘I’d drive her in but I’m not allowed’. She was 20 minutes late for her first exam and wasn’t allowed to make the time up.

I self harmed as a teen in sixth form (mid/late 90s). Teachers and head of 6th form were aware... what was the course of action? They kicked me out. They admitted they did not know what to do with me. I was made to sit exams in the head of 6th form's office, all by myself with him watching.

Previous to that, in general secondary school... lining up naked to have a shower after PE. We had to put our towels on hooks, and line up to go into the shower. Also, having to have a register of when girls were on periods, so the teacher could tell when we were taking the piss and just not wanting to shower (and who could blame us when we had to stand naked in the changing room).

i never went to a school that had showers.
so i was spared that !

When I was in 6th form and we had trips to the theatre in the evenings I had tea with my (female) English teacher in her flat beforehand - she lived opposite the school.

Does it have to be school related?

Because . . . . .

White dog poo.

Ha where to start!

At my convent primary we had one really angry teacher who taught year 3 age, she used to hit the kids really hard on the knuckles with a wooden ruler, so hard she would often break the rulers.

Was at a private girls school age 10-13, part of the uniform was to wear regulation school knickers (that you’d be able to survive a nuclear blast in, they were hideous). We used to have regular ‘knicker checks’ where we’d have to lift up our skirt to prove we were wearing the right ones.

At the same school we had a female PE teacher who used to get a chair and put it at the end of the communal showers and watch us all take a shower.

At my next school I was head girl and got on really well with the male head teacher. He used to get me to come into his study at night (boarding school) to sit and chat with him and play the piano to him, he said I reminded him of his daughter.

Our PE teacher at that school used to chain smoke superkings, all around the school, during lessons etc. I’m not sure that was ok even in the mid 90s 😂.

On a year 11 school trip to France (I was 15), me and my friend stowed away our boyfriends who were both 19 on the ferry. The one teacher who had taken us on the trip clocked them on the boat and said we’d have to stay with him and his wife for the whole time in france. I can only imagine he’d got it in the neck from his wife about that because upon disembarking, he said we could go off on our own as long as we didn’t meet up with our boyfriends. Of course we promptly headed to the nearest bar with our boyfriends <safeguarding klaxon> 😂

Yes, not seen white dog poo for years!
Also, just letting your dog out to do whatever all day, and it comes home in time for dinner and bed.

Yeah, we had to leave our towels on our hooks too. It was because we used to go to the showers in pairs and hold each other's towels up to spare our blushes. The PE teacher didn't like that so made up the hook law. Then she would supervise, rocking back and forth with an upright hockey stick pressing against her fanny.

Apparently it's down to less calcium being present in dog food nowadays.

And yes to people just sending their pooch out for the day before coming home for dinner and bed. Same with kids in the school holidays!

Infant monitors in school.

In my last year of primary school I was head infant monitor. Four of my classmates were out in the playground supervising the four infant classes (P1, P1/2, P2 & P3).

I was in the cloakroom area with one other. We supervised the toilets and dealt with any fall outs, falls or issues.

As the senior one I had a first aid box (gloves, cotton wool and dettol) and was trusted to deal with scraped knees and bumped heads (usually by way of a cold compress made of wet paper towels) to know when to send an injured child to the office.

Same with any issues in the playground - trusted to deal with it (could tell a child come inside if they were causing trouble), to know when to tell the teacher at the end of the break and when to send for help from an adult instantly.

It was pre-Dunblane and the most regular thing we had to get adult help with was a loose dog in the playground as numerous people a day used the playgrounds as a cut through.

Not only would parents of the younger children not be happy now, but in hindsight we missed every break all year. Plus we missed 30 mins teaching a day before lunch as we were sent for an early lunch as that’s when the infants went. We also missed a good few minutes either side of playtime.

Teachers routinely belting pupils, or throwing chalk / board rubbers.

Teachers smoking, we had one who would come to smoker's corner and instead of telling us off, ask, "Morning, who's got one spare for me?"

He also used to slope off twice every lesson, to "get supplies," till one wag said, "It's alright Sir, just smoke out the window - we don't mind!"

My lovely teacher when I was 5 had a birthday party for herself and invited our class to her house. She gave us all party bags (my first and last I think) and had a piñata, which I had never seen before and which was completely magical.

My teachers at conservatoire used to come to parties and come to our houses after concerts- was wonderful.

As a teenager going to school, girls always got wolf whistled and stopped to talk to men on the way to school. Bin men or workers in uniform it was constant. But always kids in uniform. We hated it but accepted it as normal. Now it's weird as hell

We often got spanked in public by our parents, mostly in the 90s. Probably wouldn’t happen now without ‘a few’ eyelids being raised

Was never a worry for humans in 'the past' either.

Wow! What age is 5th year?

Back in the day the majority of pupils would begin 5th year at 15 years old and be 16 by the end of it, with a few of the older ones starting at 16 and finishing 5th year at 17 years old. Some pupils would opt to stay on for 6th year and they'd be a mix of 17 & 18 by the time they finished secondary school.

I was one of the ones who began 5th year at 15, left school to go to university after it, and spent the first couple of months of 1st year uni getting blind drunk at 16 years old. I'd like to think that doesn't happen any more, but mostly because the majority of modern students I've met appear to be vegan tee-totallers.

I'd like to nominate fathers routinely driving while intoxicated. Every single person I know of my vintage had a father who would leave them in the car with a bag of crisps and can of cola while they 'ran a message' that usually involved disappearing around a corner suspiciously close to their known regular haunt. My own jumped out of his skin the time I walked in and asked him if I could use the loo. I'd like to think it was in shock at being caught in the act, but in reality I think it was because he was concerned I had left the car door unlocked 😆

Wonder if we went to the same school 🤔

Mind you in the case at our school they're still together 30 odd years later

I'm staggered regarding the responses on year 11 vs 5th year.

Surely some of you have read the Harry Potter books? They were written around 1997 to 2007 give or take a year.

1st to 3rd years are the 1st to 3rd years of secondary school.

4th and 5th years study their GCSEs. (In HP it's called the OWLs)

In the 6th year, which is conviently called sixth form (!) they study A levels (In HP it's called the NEWTs).

The 1st years (year 11 or 12 year olds) being referred to as year 7 in the 1990s is an Americanism that made its way over here. The same goes with "proms" (instead of balls) and "baby showers" (which was never previously a thing).

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

I'd like to nominate fathers routinely driving while intoxicated.

Our parents went to the pub at ten till two, every Sunday. It was semi rural. If it was dry, we'd be out in the car park, or the pub garden and if raining, in the car / van, with lemonade and crisps.

Doing a home ec practical exam in 4th year (age 15-16ish), my teacher knew I could not set up a sewing machine at all (dyspraxia) and would have wasted the entire two hours trying to get it done. Silently sat down at my machine at the start of the exam, set up the machine, did an initial two rows of stitching and then walked off - all without saying a word. I only passed that exam because she did that, I’d have spent the entire time faffing about with the machine otherwise!

‘Activity days’ in 2nd year (age 13) - used to be given about 50
options for activities ranging from eg 10 pin bowling all the way through to 3 nights in Belgium . I was a bit of a sad case as had no friends, mum had no money - council would pay up to £15 if you were eligible but that meant you had to do the one of the 3 cheapest activities and the way school was, everyone who was bullying me was also doing the 3 cheapest activities. So I’d have spent the entire two days being bullied - as had happened the year before. So lovely guidance (pastoral care) teacher took me and one other boy out for the day instead, went for a 6 mile walk and then had a gorgeous lunch in a garden centre and looked round the flowers. Still remember it now as being one of the best days out I had at that age. Dropped me off at home at the end too. No way would she be allowed to do that alone now.

Between 1985 and 1989 we were forced to shower after PE and were not allowed to take our towels through to the area where the row of 5 or 6 showers were - we had to hang them on the pegs know the way into that area. Perhaps even more disturbing, our (female) PE teacher used to shower in there too and then get dried and dressed with us!!

Except it happened in Scotland, not hogwarts. So no.

In Scotland you start (free) nursery around your third birthday, you start primary 1 the August that you turn 5, and stay there for 7 school years (primary 1-7)

You then start S1 at 11-12 (so broadly like Harry Potter, If you like) and you do all the subjects across the school for S1 and 2.

You choose your subjects for the start of S3, and do those for s3 and 4. At the end of s4, you sit the Scottish equivalent of GCSEs (they were called standard grades in my day; nationals now) - once you have done these you are generally free to leave school, some who aren’t quite 16 yet need to do puddly little tick box college courses but you are by and large done with compulsory schooling.

s5 comes next and is equivalent to a levels, we call them highers. s6 is also optional and you can either do more highers, or some advanced highers. Few people actually do advanced highers and they are kind of falling out of favour.

Apart from the dropping off bit, we could still do that! I’ve taken very small groups of kids away myself - usually on foot or public transport though!

When I was in primary school aged 7 or 8 I forgot to bring my cycling bike for a cycling safety lesson.

My male teacher quickly drove me home, in his car, just us, and helped me climb over my 6 foot fence to retrieve my bike from my garden. He drove back to school and I arrived on my bike 15 mins later.

Early 90s!