What things do you remember from your schooldays that would have the MN police screeching for Ofsted/Social Services/the Police?

[frogs]

Prompted by a discussion with a group of old schoolmates which confirmed a memory so bizarre that I always thought I must have hallucinated it. But no, it turns out that in the early 80s, in a bog-standard Catholic comprehensive in provincial England we did in fact spend our history lessons learning to sing overtly pro-IRA rebel songs, such as The men behind the wire and Tiocfaidh ár lá. Bearing in mind that this was during the hunger strikes in the early Thatcher years, when Sinn Fein was considered so dangerous that Gerry Adams' voice was dubbed on the news (remember that?) it's only just dawned on me how seditious the whole thing was. Unbe-bloody-lievable. Can you imagine the hoo-hah if that happened today?

And on a very different note, another friend confirmed that when we went to boarding school aged 15, we were allowed one clean shirt per week which was worn from Monday to Saturday inclusive (we had a different one for Sundays). In a school full of teenage girls. And hair washing was by rota only, limited to once a week. Rank.

So what badness, madness or just plain weirdness did you take in your stride at school which would be unthinkable today?

have just read the thread through and it has reminded me of loads more

2 teachers - one in primary one in secondary - who uised to get girls to sit on their knees

'brown owl'
taking 8 brownies somewhere in her car
i had to sit on a cushion in the boot....

got to go out but have more

Headteacher at my primary school used to send us to the corner shop at lunchtime to buy his cigarettes. Ahh, them were the days

8 of us in the back of moms maxi on the school run would have people up in arms

nkf, I think you may have gone to my primary school - I remember doing nowt but watching Wimbledon for a fortnight every June.

I also remember my HE teacher, a fabulous 22 stone Polish woman who spent the lessons sitting at the end of the table, holding court. She educated us in the joys of sex, a particular favourite pastime, it seemed, and would explain exactly what our insults to one another meant, i.e (and I quote) "A nymphomaniac is a very sad creature of God's earth. She is a woman who is unable to achieve an orgasm"
My mother would have been thrilled at what we were being taught at our catholic girls' convent.

And in sixth form our common room bore two Kitkat vending machines, one that dispensed Mars Bars, Snickers and Twix and a coffee machine. I'm sure the food police would never allow that these days. And a girl in lower 6th slept with one of the games masters after the leaver's do (which she gatecrashed as it was for Upper 6th and she was still a year away from leaving). Still, it was common knowledge and the teacher lost his job. She was a 17 year old slapper, though.

All very familiar memories, but did it do us any harm? I loved school, despite the slipper for girls, cane for boys.

Standing under the school clock with your hands on your head all morning.

Hands slammed deliberately in double desks!

Having to wear your school bonnet all day if you were caught not wearing it to or from school - FFs they were blue serge like flying helmets and buttoned under your chin!

Being hauled up on stage if caught eating in town in school uniform

Buns at break 3d each and we used to eat 4!

Going to tea with lots of teachers, especially the male ones.

Teachers often going AWOL and leaving classes unsupervised for hours

Getting a lift home (20 miles) from school with a pervy clarinet teacher, who used to stroke my leg and ask if I'd like extra lessons - I was 11, but knew it wasn't right!

The creepy caretakers cupboard, dark and mysterious, smelling of smoke and beer!

Getting smacked
Having to take a hanky to school everyday at primary because the headmaster got a cold once, you were taken out of class and punished if you didn't have one and you had to wave them in the air for inspection!
My physics teacher at school used to do drawings for me in my exercise book and visit me at the cafe I worked at the weekends.
Having a relationship with a teacher at 6th form.

most of our sixth form male teachers were at it.

The head teacher when I arrived was also new, the one before having gently been 'let go' having lost the plot and tried to bring a horse up the stairs into chapel.

Prefects were allowed to give out punishments to other pupils, one of which was cleaning out the muck spreader by getting inside it with a broom.

Chapel was dominated by 10 foot high marble statue of naked christ called 'the radiant lover' - another punishment was to clean said statue with a toothbrush

We all smoked on the pitched roof of our dorm, 5 flights up, even in the snow.

what a remarkably unusual education you had, was it this century?

a ad in my cass had a fling with our english teacher (he was 15 at the time ) and went on to have a relationship with her for a few years after he eft school after doing gcses

Great thread

Primary
PE in vest and knickers (actually I thought I must have imagined it, but no I didn't).

Secondary (Comprehensive convent)
Evil sadistic cookery teacher - the kind that enjoys humiliating and terrorising children. I still go into a blind panic when cooking.
The reading of the marks - naming and shaming less able children in front of class.
Day trip to France - getting drunk in front of the teachers and them not caring.
Telling "social worker" type teachers that I had family problems when caught being naughty because it got me out of trouble every time.

dh's trip to France would have got him detained under terrorist legislation. He got hold of extra strength French bangers and combined several of these to make a bomb which they let off in Calais shattering the windows of nearby houses. Thankfully no one was injured and he only avoided expulsion because he was an A student.

Ipanemagirl, er, I was the head girl... he was only 21. Probably not the most professional of behavior but under any other circumstances no-one would have batted an eyelid, don't suppose that makes it right though does it? He should have been able to restrain himself and not come onto 6th formers. (Not that I was complaining, he was the 'hot' teacher)
Ultimately I don't think it did me any harm, we were both drunk and I didn't feel taken advantage of in any way.
However as a parent I would be apopleptic with rage if a teacher on any of my children's trips were drinking as much as he was!

Unfortunately so much stuff!

Primary school priest who used to put his hand up wee girls skirts and have a fumble around we were too scared to tell

Smelly female teacher who smelt like fishy BO

sadistically cruel teachers who hit us with any available object

Blatant favouritism to siblings of other teachers

Blatant favouritism to pupils from nice house "bought house" better than us scheme kids

Secondary school - pupil&teacher affairs,

sadistic cruel teachers who had penchant for throwing objects at pupils head

Teacher/teacher affairs

My friend cartwheeling across the playground accidentally kicked a teacher in the face. He grabbed her by the shoulders, started shaking her before finally slapping her across the face

Also pervy pe teacher who would teach gymnastics and 'help' girls do the splits by placing hands in leotards.

We had a teacher at primary school that made us kneel on her keys at the front of the class if we misbehaved.

A teacher at my primary school chain-smoked throughout lessons. The fog extended out of her room and down the corridor.

Oh the memories come flooding back... The top two from my schooldays are:-

• being changed over from left-handed to right-handed at primary and told that the word 'sinister' comes from the Latin and referred to left-handed children like me (I was 6). I had to hold my left hand behind me, and if I moved it, it was tied with a belt. So now I'm cag-handed with both hands instead of just one.

-being called 'You there boy!' for three years - I was the only girl in an all boys school and the PE teacher just couldn't accept that I was there, me and my uterus, so he just called me 'boy'.

'me and my uterus'

My dad is left-handed as well becster - he used to get rapped on the knuckles with a giant wooden ruler if he tried to use it. Made fuck all difference, he has beautiful copperplate lefty handwriting but is completely unable to use chopsticks as he claims they don't work for left-handed people

i know the feeling Thebecster i went to a coe primary and they were always trying to get me to be righthanded, as did my grandmother i had "the devil in me" apparently. (they were right

In secondary we used to have to have communal showers butt naked after games, one teacher stood at the entrance and marked off your name and another stood at the end and watched to check you were washing! Dirty pervs, we used to shout such grief at them, that was 18 or so yrs ago but god like you could get away with that now!

Having to sit on my male teachers lap, with a piece of chalk between my teeth, being jigged up and down, for talking at "story time" in infants.

Also being paid in black jacks and fruitsalads for washing the same teachers MG during lunch breaks.

A little boy in my class called "puh duh" , (his initials were PD) by all the teachers, he had SN.

Pervy PE teachers go without saying!

Pervy PE teachers, oh yes. Used to check your name was in your gym knickers while you were wearing them.

Right. At my boarding school we had to get up 3 hours before we went to bed, lick clean the heads study, polish the cadavers in the crypt all while being flogged by naked PE teachers and if we complained our heads were chopped off and served up for breakfast. But you tell the young people today and they dont believe you.....

One mad teacher didn't like the deputy who always used to come into her lessons so she had us do something each time, refuse to look at him, sit on the floor, sind the national anthem, quite bizarre. During many lessons we just had to copy what the teacher wrote on the blackboard, OFSTED would not be impressed today

Children with dinner tickets (free dinners) having to stand in a separate queue despite their being no obvious logistical reason for this - actually, being made to stand up in class if you were 'free dinners' when someone from P7 came round to take the numbers for school dinners...

Choice for school dinners was 'normal', 'free' (same as normal as far as I could see) and 'immigrant' (which was a slice of processed cheese in place of the meat portion).

Our teacher left halfway through P3 (age 7ish) so for the rest of the year we rehearsed and created props for a production of Peter Pan which we never performed

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