First day at school

I waited with my mum in a long line of other mums with their daughters for our turn to meet the class teacher,Mrs Hanbury. (The boys were in the other half of the school) Eventually it was our turn and then mum sat me down at a table with a slate and chalks and said goodbye. I remember being very scared but don’t think I cried.

I remember I was only just 4 yrs old and we had to line up girls in 1 line boys in another and i recognised a boy as he used to go the Sunday masses and think i said Hi or his name and suddenly this arm flew at me and yanked me out of the line and told me to Be Quiet and i burst into tears and remember everyone staring at me and couldn't wait to go home..I was always told off for talking...but learnt to read quite quickly as we had many books at home and were encouraged to read ..A nice memory was in Class 1 after Reception -always getting a toffee from the teacher when I could read the Janet and John books .but hated the school milk as the bottles always seemed to be covered in black mud...and never drank a lot of milk at home always preferred water...

I went to the local Council school, and remember walking there on my own across a busy road. At 8 I was considered old enough to go on the bus to the nearest Catholic school. I think I was quite happy there. Catholic grammar school after that was horrid and I couldn't wait to leave. The nuns were strict and sometimes quite nasty, and the gym mistress was a sadist.

I was terrified!! Mum promised she would wait in the playground until lunchtime- I believed her and was asking my teacher, Mrs Baines, to please get my mummy! I sat next to a little boy who was so kind, he cuddled me and told me not to cry, I still remember his name, he was so kind. I was 4 years old and had never left my mum before. I felt so abandoned 😢

When my Mum brought me home for lunch on my first day at school I said despairingly, "I still can't read!"

I couldn't wait to get to school... My mother made me a pretend school bag and I used to go out and sit on one of the stumps where our metal gates had been sawn off and taken for the War Effort pretending to be at school and doing some exercises my Mother had made for me. I could read when I arrived for the wonderful first day and was given a new reading book. The first line was 'Ann had a fan, the man came in the van'... my uncle had sent me a fan from somewhere he was posted in the war - so very happily I turned the page to see what happened... Whack! came down the cane on my fingers - 'You aren't to turn the page until everyone can read it!' I had red swollen wheals on my fingers all day. The teacher was rather fittingly called Miss Beattie....

I was completely traumatised never been away from mum and had only played with my sister because we were so close in age mum brought us up like twins but of course she couldnt come to school for another year sadly i never liked school when i went to secondary it got a bit better because i really loved all the housewifery subjects

Yes.
I have been hanging over the back of the sofa watching all the kids go to school and asking when it was my turn. I was four.
My first day came - 1971 I believe. I was five. I was made to wear a green duffle coat with big horrible tusk things for buttons. I hated it and I cried all the way to school. I cried and cried that I made myself sick. So being sick meant you were allowed in the classroom early with the teacher. Bonus.
Turns out that almost every kid was wearing the same duffle coat. The next wasnt so bad. I didnt cry at all.

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!

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!

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!

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 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

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.

Yes indeed Witzend.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

60’s - not 69’s 🤣