First day at school

I don’t remember the exact first day, but I started at nursery school when I was 3, in the middle of the war (WW2). My mother said I was lonely when my elder brother started proper school. It was a small private nursery school, and my chief delights were the shiny black paper umbrellas we stuck on the weather chart when it was raining. I was also totally fascinated when the teacher who demonstrated nose-blowing lifted up her skirt and took her handkerchief out of a pocket in her knickers.

I loved that little school, and also the girls’ junior school I went to later. I didn’t go to school with boys after the age of 7. No loss, in my view.

I remember my first day like it was yesterday. I didn't cry but sat wondering why on earth a lot of the other children were. It was an old victorian building, painted brick interior walls, top half cream, bottom half pale blue/green. The windows were high up towards the high ceiling so we couldn't see out. We were given slates and chalk when learning the alphabet. Our teacher was just the nicest, most gentle, kindest person I've ever known, the most beautiful smile. Miss Eccles. When I wet my knickers she took me to her cupboard where she she had a bag of clean, dry knickers and sorted me out and told me not to worry. (Sorry "Kate49" you didn't have the same experience). Everything went down hill from the next class onwards throughout my school days.

I started in the January and I was very keen to go to school wearing my kilt and hand knitted jumper. My vivid memory is of a girl called Janet wearing zip up slippers. I was given a little tin of plasticine and my towel had a blue lamb embroidered on it. Luckily I had lunch at home as I wouldn't go to the toilet at school. Happy days. Sadly I was not so happy at grammar school.

Oh yes, I remember it well. I had a massive screaming tantrum (when I realised I was trapped) and tried my best to punch and kick the big green door down. I wanted to get out and go home. I hated noise, people touching me or getting close, so was inconsolable.

That awful milk, yuk, (my autism and lactose intolerance simply weren't recognised back then) the being sick, day after day. I'd sneak it to my friend and she'd give me her empty bottle. I spent most of my time in the nurse's room. At least she was nice, so I'd read to her.

I just couldn't understand why I had to go to school. My mother was always (pretending to be) ill, so I felt I should be at home, looking after her and my baby brother. I could already read, write and do my sums etc. very well - so found it all so pointless. I was hopping mad and so traumatised by it all.

I loved it, I’d had the Ladybird book Going to School for Christmas before I started, and I had friends from my street already there - and new shoes which I was keen to show off as I wasn’t allowed to wear them until I started school. I ran in without a glance back at my mum. My only bad memory on my first day was the milk at playtime, which I thought was disgusting, it had bits of ice in it, I can still remember the shock.

I hated everything about school. My parents weren't very sociable so I hadn't really had any contact with other children so being in a classroom full of them was traumatic to say the least. At the end of my first day I turned to the girl sitting next to me and asked if we were best friends now. Her answer was a very cold "No" I used to wet my self most days because I was so shocked by the whole experience that I didn't even know I was doing it, but no one ever talked about it or did anything about it. One girl cried for the entire day on her first day, but I couldn't even do that. Fortunately we had a GP who would diagnose an illness for me once a term. He used to tell my mother I had had as much school as I could cope with without a break. I was about 12 before I really settled into a school and made friends.

Not quite on my first day of school. I hated the girl I was sat next to, Sharon M. She stabbed me in the palm of my right hand with a lead pencil which broke off. 62 years later I can still see the broken bit of lead buried within.

I remember being left and told to stay with the teacher. I did just that. I followed her every move and I remember standing at the front of the class and putting my arms up to her to be picked up. She told me that’s not what my mum meant. It was the 69’s - I can remember that she had a short skirt and boots on. I remember the name Mrs Thower. Isn’t it funny how some things are just indelibly printed on your mind?

60’s - not 69’s 🤣

I was 4 years old, they started young in those days! I remember all standing in a hall and the girl next to me wet her pants and it went all over the floor. Poor little girl. We were very regimented and had to stand in straight lines. Post war baby boomers so there were a lot of us.

I have no memory of going in at all. Obviously wasn't traumatised but there was a little girl stood by the pegs crying her eyes out. She cried so much she was sick. This seemed to happen every day for weeks but I'm hoping it wasn't that long.

All my life I've never really thought about whether I like something or hate it. As with everything else, I just went to school and got on with it. My mother sent me because she was fed up with me continually bothering her with books and asking "What does this say?". I would plonk a book on top of the ironing on the ironing board and point, which must have been very annoying!

I started in September 1959, two months before my 5th birthday. I don't remember the first day. We must have walked in to school, my mother pushing my sister in the pushchair. I remember rows of Wellingtons with our names on, held together with wooden clothes pegs also with our names on.

We learnt our numbers and early arithmetic with little wooden shapes. "1" was a white cube, and the other numbers were all different colours. We had exercise books with squares the same size as the sticks and we could draw round them to do the sums - stick 2 and stick 3 when put together in a line were the same size and shape as stick 5.

I could already read, and was happy singing along with "Time and Tune" on the radio, for which we had the little books. I've still got a couple. We also had sewing lessons and Prayers at the beginning and the end of the school day. We sang hymns from Songs of Praise - All things Bright and Beautiful and Morning has Broken, the latter was, I think, No 30.

At the. Christmas concert, I remember having to clash the cymbals in the chorus of "Hark the herald angels sing". At the end of the school year we did a little play - something about flowers. I was a daisy - my mother made me a little white dress and a hair band decorated with marguerites. "I am a daisy, white as snow/To my queen I'm glad to go".

The school got a swimming pool and we had to learn a song for the day it was officially opened, based on Cliff Richard's "The Young Ones" with words written specially.

My mother (born 1919) always remembered that on her first day of school the headmistress inspected all their hands and told her off for having dirty fingernails.

I feel so sad for those of you with bad experiences. While I don't remember exactly the first day, I have snippets of memory of the first week or so.

I remember one girl crying and I wondered why, because I was so looking forward to school, and excited to be there. Another boy couldn't count the beads on what looked like an abacus, where most of us could count to 10.

We had a separate entrance, and a little reception cloak/bathroom area just for the kindergarten kids. I was so proud of my little plaid lunchbox, and worried when I left it at school one day.

We had to take a bus, and one day I think I was in the wrong line and got on the wrong bus. Imagine how my poor Mum felt when the bus went by and I didn't get off! She spent a frantic hour or so phoning the school, when I was kindly dropped off by the bus driver. I had indeed been on the wrong bus, and had a tour of the other side of town. I remember the driver asking me where my home was when I was the only child left on the bus, and I was clever enough to know the street, and so directed him to my house.

I loved school, especially the younger years. I don't remember any unkind teachers. I started in 1966.

We only had one bully of a teacher that I can remember and she used to make us learn chunks of the bible off by heart and then shout and spit if we got it wrong. Wonder any of us found God after that! We had to sit according to our test results so those doing badly would sit right at the back ( ridiculous!) and if you did well you sat at the front. I was 7 years old. Everyone could read fairly fluently by then- you had to with her as a teacher, we were terrified of her. Grudgingly,I would say we were very advanced in knowledge that she deemed acceptable, though.

I was another traumatised by school milk. I now know that I am mildly lactose intolerant.

I became very good at taking my bottle of milk with the others and then quietly wandering off somewhere else and pouring it away.

I started school after Easter in 1951, they used to have three intakes a year in those days.
I can still picture the playhouse in the corner of the classroom and the big rocking horse, I had never seen one before.
We sat around tables with tiny chairs, writing materials were slates and chalk. The teacher wore a floral overall over her dress.
Toilets down the playground.
I don't recall being taken to school after the first day even though I had to cross a very busy main road.

Kate1949, how awful, poor you. Sounds like something out of Jane Eyre!

At well over 5 I was dying to go to school, and do remember it - another new girl with a Dutch name (Dutch parents) instantly became my best friend.
I also remember our teacher telling us very clearly that we didn’t have to ask to go to the loo - we could just go.

harrigran, my father took me that first day - after that, my sister, just 16 months older than me (so 6) was in charge. It was a long walk, about a mile, crossing a green/meadow and a main road - where cars would often stop to wave you across. It seems crazy now, but was normal, back in the 1950s!

Yes indeed Witzend.

JackyB...yes the wooden bricks for counting were called Cuisenaire rods.We bought some for youngest grandson at Christmas.Thats how I bacame quick at counting,especially my pocket money.

I remember hiding behind my mother’s flouncy skirt which was one of those with loads of petticoats
And crying because there were camp beds laid out for us to have a nap, I always hated that afternoon nap, where the teacher would come around patting your back to get you to sleep.
They would always give up on me and tell me to go and play

I couldn't wait to start school. Rushed in and couldn't wait for my (weeping) mother to leave. School was a 20 minute walk to the bus and then another 5 min walk to school but I didn't mind. Later, after 2 bus journeys across Bradford, the 20 min walk home in the cold and dark with a heavy Grammar School satchel wasn't so good. I can remember crying as I trudged on in the freezing rain.

I can't remember my first day but I do remember being scared of the nuns who floated about in their black robes and I thought they had no feet! And the ghastly near-lifesize (to a 5 year old) stations of the cross in bas relief round the walls of the chapel - terrifying.

My OH's first day was spent reading the paper in which his plimsolls were wrapped - the teacher was very impressed that he could read!

My Dad took me, I can remember wearing a red pinafore dress and he said I was brave because I was the only one not crying. I was fine until milk time and as I hated milk I didn't want it but was told to drink it anyway. It was disgusting and warm (always kept near the radiator for some reason!) so I had a tantrum and spilt it all down my pinafore dress!

Winter 1948 in Edinburgh and it was so, so cold. I was wrapped up with liberty bodice, jumper, cardigan and dad’s big army scarf wrapped around me and pinned at the back.

The toilets were outside and mostly frozen. I was too scared to go out there on my own and, like Kate1949 wet my pants. I don’t remember the teacher being cross about that, but I do remember her having a ‘strop’, a leather strap fringed at one end. It was used on the palms of our hands if we were naughty, I did get it several times during my time in that class for talking. I just can’t imagine that happening to a 4 year old now!