Please can I have a reality check from people who were 6th formers in the 70s/early 80s?

[GrimmaTheNome]

I'm trying to work out if my perceptions about something in the past are accurate.

When I was a 6th former, I'm sure it was not considered particularly unusual for 6th form girls to be going out with a teacher. There were certainly a few cases in my school, and no-one seemed to make a big deal of it. Perhaps because these were less promiscuous times when 'going out' didn't necessarily mean 'staying in'. The girls were old enough not to be schoolgirls, so why not? Perhaps if the young men in question were actually their A level teachers there might be issues, but as it happened they were either at other schools or PE.

Does this tally with your experience or was this unusual at that time (late 70s) ?

Those Germans, eh? Our German assistant was quite hot, though he had terrible hair ... we all disapproved of the relationship but I couldn't swear there was no in that!

Um mid late '80s early eighties (when in then called '4ht year') - a teacher got sacked as in love with a girl in the 2nd year (is that 13-14 years old( while his daughter was in mjy year 3rd year. IN same school - girl in my class married pe teacher soon after o-levels.

erm - thought at the time the girls were bonkers 0 nevrer really thought about the teachesr.

In 1980, when "Don't Stand so Close to Me" was No. 1, one of the male teachers at my all girls' school was having an affair with a fifth former - and it had started when she was 14/15 and in the fourth year. By the sixth form, they were pretty open about it too....unfortunately for her, girls used to sing the song when ever she walked past.

When I started uni there were two girls whose boyfriends who came to visit were teachers from school.

Whilst i am sure the heads wouldn't have liked, it it doesn't seem to have carried the implications of child abuse and abuse of position that it does now.

When I was in sixth form in the very early nineties I (briefly) dated my A level maths teacher ? he was straight from uni and only 3 1/2 years older than me.
The Head had ?words? and it stopped very quickly! He wasn?t sacked though and we stayed friends for a few years after?

Hmm. I was going to say it certainly didn't happen at my school - for one thing there were only about 4 male teachers and most of them were yucky. However I do remember rumours about one teacher socialising a lot with the 6th form girls a year or two ahead of me, but I don't recall the rumours implying that there was any shagging going on.

There was certainly some in my school (mid 80s), and not all the teachers who dated students waited until the students were 16. Illegal, probably sackable even after 16, but no-one did anything about it.

(I never got the impression that there was anything coercive about it - not that I agree that it should happen . But more than a few of the kids at our school had been shagging since about 12, so they weren't exactly naive.)

Thanks all - interesting spread of views. I guess in those days it wasn't explicitly prohibited in the way it now so the reaction would not be kneejerk but depend more on the individuals involved(the girls I knew were all 17+, pretty strong assertive types not subjects of coercion)

I remember this being rumoured (1970s) ...in fact now i think about it I remember finding a letter from a music teacher to a girl in the sixth form (we were 5th form at the time) very romantic it was, we were rather impressed, now I think what kind of idiot leaves stuff like that lying around?
anyway I think there was not a knee jerk response but OTOH there was an illicit thrill about it.
Now, I'm afraid I do have a kneejerk response and I think it's completely unacceptable and an abuse of power.

Having spent the last two years supporting a young girl in my family who was groomed by a very charismatic teacher to be the latest in his list of beautiful and emotionally vulnerable conquests I know a different and very dark side of these relationships.

This was exploitation of the worst kind and has robbed a young woman of her self belief and trust in people. I accept that this is different from a relationship that deveops when both teacher and pupil are of an age and is not hidden from family and friends.

I was asixth former in the early 80's and it would have been considered pretty shocking then for one of us to be dating a teacher.But our teachers were all women.

i was in the 6th form mid 80's and one of the girls at school was going out eith one of the male pe teachers. everyone knew about it, and it wasn't particularly frowned upon or even discussed much at the time. they are still together today, married with kids.