To think on hindsight this was a massive safeguarding breach?!

[Hindsights2020]

Namechanged for this but was thinking recently about something that happened when I was a kid and it's only now I'm an adult with children of my own that it feels really weird, but not sure if times have changed since then (late 90s)

My Y6 teacher (female) lived fairly locally but In a different village. I happened to be friends with an older child who lived nearby which I mentioned in passing to my teacher who said something along the lines of 'oh you'll have to pop round one day'. Being that age I took her at face value and I somehow ended up with her address and we did indeed go round one day after school. I'm not really sure why. She gave us a drink and a snack, we chatted for a bit in her front room then left. I don't think we ever told our parents where we'd been, I expect they thought we were at the village park.

Absolutely nothing bad happened and I don't for a second think that she is unsafe in any way, but aibu to think on hindsight this was over familiar, inappropriate and probably broke all sorts of school safeguarding rules, or were things different back then?!

YANBU - That was weird and inappropriate even then
YABU - things were different then and she was doing no harm

Was your friend called Lavender and the teachers name Miss Honey?

Why are you putting modern thinking now onto something totally different all those years ago..That's what's wrong.

At a safeguarding course I attended, we were told about an incident where school children had been taken on a walk around their local area. They happened to pass the house of one accompanying staff member who allowed some of the children to use their toilet. As a result the staff member ended up in big trouble.

My primary school did a trip every year where there weren't any loos but there was a family with children at the school who lived very close. It was arranged that we'd go there first, and leave our packed lunches in her fridge to be collected later.

We had to give Mrs Y a round of applause to thank her for looking after our sandwiches and letting us use her loo.

This arrangement went on for years, I don't know what they'd have done if the family had moved house!

I was driven home by my school violin teacher once, at his insistence. I was quite happy to get the two buses home. It was after school and I was the last lesson that week. I was wary because I had been warned of him by someone who was one of his private pupils who had turned up for a lesson and found him in the bath 😖but I couldn't get out of it.

He stayed for a cup of tea with my parents who were very impressed by him.

The school stopped the violin lessons after that so I didn't see him again.

When I sat my A levels one of the teachers went on maternity leave in the final year. She arranged with the class (only 5 students) to come to her house for revision during our study periods. I drove the class in my ancient car and she fed us lunch. It was a regular weekly thing.

Also recently I broke my ankle and couldn’t drive or walk, my dd’s primary school headteacher volunteered to pick her up in the mornings and take her to school if needed.

All the PC/safeguarding stuff (which I absolutely get) has taken away so much tat was just human kindness.

When I was at school in late 80's/early 90's, we had some very young teachers who were always getting in and out of relationships with each other, and occasionally with an older pupil. I went clubbing with one of them and got pissed at another (female) teacher's house.

It was otherwise a good school, and my parents were otherwise sensible parents, but that stuff is mad to look back on.

...also, to show the other side, the teachers set up a rota to take it in turns to drive me to the hospital to see my parent who was ill at the time. I'd just show up in the car park, one of them would wave at me and I'd get in the car.

Things were obviously very different in the 1960's for all sorts of reasons. My husband was brought up in a small Northern town, and whilst he was at Primary School his female teacher had him stay at her house overnight once, as his parents were going out somewhere. My mind still boggled a bit at the thought of it, but thinking about it now, probably everyone knew everyone, and had done for years, and the news wouldn't have been so full of news about paedophiles then, as it is now.

Hopefully there wasn't one living on practically every street then as there appears to be now. Also, I think the internet must have done so much damage in that way, as it not only lets people of like mind talk to each other and share pictures, but they probanly encourage each other to perform ever worse acts.

In primary I was driven home by different teachers twice when I was unwell. In secondary I used to walk my geography teachers dog along with my own after school. Sometimes she would come with me and we would go in her car to a forest a few miles away to walk them. In 6th year some of us went to a university open day in the school mini bus with a teacher driving it. We stopped at his parents house on the way for tea and biscuits and to use the toilet before continuing on our way. Changed days!

I don't remember the expression massive safeguarding breach" being used back then, people also fed children alcohol to help teething, did not use seatbelts, let children play out and roam the streets and let heaps of other things happen over the years a lot of people don't do now, sure we call say
'what happened to me 30 years ago would not happen now' but what is the point?

Fairly normal back then. Massive safeguarding now.

I remember when I was early teens (early 90's) we had a teacher who was leaving. He was very close to my friend and they wrote to each other for a few years after he left. He arranged for the rest of our class to be pen pals with his new class and we met up a few times . Seems weird now but at time everyone accepted it.

I also remember after our leavers disco we all went into town (age 16-18) The younger teachers came out too and a couple of them were snogging the year 13 girls

our form tutor took three of us for a day out doing a sport after a levels and then we called in the pub and had a drink after, and my brothers teacher took my brother and another boy from the class to an England football match at Wembley alone in his car. These were in the 80s and 90s. They were different times and they were just nice teachers doing nice things, I didn’t realise at the time but we were perhaps the more deprived kids in the class as were in a single parent family and on fsm and we didn’t get to to the things that some other kids did with their parents. I totally get the safeguarding thing as there would have been incidents going on that were not innocent but it also a shame that now nice teachers can’t just do nice things due to safeguarding

All these stories are describing a better world imo. I hate that we're forced to wrap chn in cotton wool under the guise of child protection. If anything, the internet has taken p'dos off the streets as they now get their fix on a computer. And most abusers are people known to a child, not a stranger.

I remember teaching my children to walk to the library by themselves aged 6 & 8 in the 2010s. They were avid readers and they would happily spend an hour or two in the local library, like I did at that age. So I taught them to get there by themselves, like I did at that age, and how to be safe, like I was at that age.

The amount of parents who condemned me for it as they weren't safe and "you don't know who's out there".

As a society we now over protect and mollycoddle from a young age imo. When something a bit tricky comes along, or a problem needs solving, we've not allowed chn to develop the skills to get themselves out of the situation. Which I think has an impact on how their self esteem and contributes to some of the issues we see in teens and young adults today.

I remember missing my school bus when I was 14 and a male teacher drive me home, about ten miles. He let me choose the music and we had a nice chat. My parents were very grateful to him. No suggestion of anything untoward.

I don’t think it’s safer.
There may be more safeguarding but paedophiles still manage to get round it.

I love this. I'm so sad this wouldn't happen these days, despite having teachers who still would want to do it.

Where we live, most of my DS’s nursery school teachers live in the same village the nursery is. one of the young girls that works there still lives with her mum, who happens to go overboard with the decorations for Halloween/Christmas etc.

Halloween last year, they took the nursery children on a “Pumpkin walk” and the kids (with parents permission) went to this Girls house, looked at the decorations, chatted to her mum and had a snack in the garden. I thought it was cute.

I would have found it a bit weird if they went inside though

As it happens she’s also done a lot of babysitting for many of us when she was younger/before working at nursery so maybe that skews my view a bit

You have to relate things like this to the period of time when it happened. We once went on a school trip (there were only 4 of us going) in the male teachers car and no one thought anything of it. Nothing dodgy happened!

If nothing happened then there is nothing to worry about. Times were different back then (god, I feel ancient saying that!) and teachers weren’t on their guard or paranoid about any little slip up.

Our headteacher used to host a massive barbecue at her house for year six every summer (with parents) and the kids would stay for a sleepover afterwards.

Nobody batted an eyelid and it was a great end of school tradition that everyone always looked forward to.

Loads of teachers do private tuition and music lessons in their own home and nobody bats an eyelid. Children go to friends houses. childminders and babysitters. It isn’t exactly the same but the risks probably much the same.

Our deputy head formed a walking group where those that were interested could go on a hike somewhere with her and her husband. There wasn't many of us in the group and one Sunday afternoon we'd been for a walk and they took us back to their house and she made some non-alcoholic punch for us all. I can't remember how we got home from her house but it wouldn't surprise me if she dropped us all off.

This was early-mid 90s.

If it's the person currently in the news for inappropriate relations with male teenagers, I did the same and went to his house regularly (in a group).

Our German teacher also used to hold parties at his house for sixth formers where alcohol was served. Nothing untoward happened, he was just trying to be cool but I look back and think WTF.