What were you like at school........?

Well, when I was hit at school, usually a couple of whacks on the palm of the hand with a ruler, far from learning not to do it again it just made me more trucculent and determined to show the teachers that I couldnt be beaten into submission. On the other hand unexciting punishments like writing lines or copying out pages of textbooks was so tedious and boring I usually decided the crime wasnt worth the punishment and desisted.

Mind you my 'crimes' were very minor. My main problem was that I thought that both sides of any disagreement should get a fair hearing, teachers and pupils, while the school felt only the teachers side counted so I was always either in trouble for answering back or alternatively 'dumb insolence', when I didn't answer back but just stood there not saying a word.

It would only teach them not to get caught again!

To me it's been a bit crazy not keeping the school canes ( on hands ).
You can say some schools have had about 200Yrs. no problem .
If pupils are caught smoking , young , what's wrong without them getting 6 strokes of the cane , to teach them not to, again??????

JessM Yes, my sister went to the same school as Blunkett, but he was a bit older. The school at Chorleywood was a posh boarding school; she didn't like the prevailing superior attitudes, but the teaching was generally pretty good, and she enjoyed the horse riding.

Artygran There was a bully like that for me: she went to a different junior school from me, but it was on the same walking route so she would wait to attack me. There were a few different routes, which I varied, but she would still sometimes catch me. Older and bigger than me, I was hopeless at fighting back, though I tried.

After we all grew up, she went on to become a prostitute, a thief and did time in jail. Her brothers, who were in the military, refused to come home on leave if she was there. (My Dad got to know her Dad after we were grown up, hence I found out what happened.) Ah the Schadenfreude!

I was always in the A stream at my sec mod and never seemed to be without friends in spite of being what my grandmother called a scruffy tom boy! I was rather loud, a bit of a clown and hopeless at games - couldn't throw or catch a ball, run very fast, jump or swim well. I was bullied for a period by a girl I went to enormous lengths to avoid outside school, but who seemed to make it her mission in life to find me! About twenty years ago, I saw her again. We didn't speak - just stood there and stared at each other; it was like High Noon. Then she walked away. I don't know what I would have said if she'd spoken to me! "Hello, what are you up to these days? Still putting cigarette burns on people's arms? No? Well, that's good isn't it?" I did get caned when I was at school. We had a geography master who used to throw the board rubber at us. I was egged on to take it and hide it in my desk - what I should have done was hidden it in someone else's bloody desk, but I was a bit of a clot! I owned up when the whole class was faced with detentions from here to Christmas. He had a selection of canes ranging in thicknesses. I got the thin one - always the most painful. More flex, you see.... I was a heroine for about five minutes.

It's true there were I think more than a few boroughs where there were more grammar school places for boys.
I was talking to a man recently who was amazed when I said there were no sports fields in my grammar school. Girls grammar in Wales, housed in wooden shacks... But still in some ways a very priviledged edn. Even if I cant spell that word...
But some incredibly boring teaching that would not be tolerated these days. Endless dictation in History for instance.

Yes Jess and the reverse is true. Having passed the 11+ I felt quite superior to the others who didn't, there was so much fuss made about it and so much depended on it. I always felt self confident or full of self esteem as they say today. It marked you for life.
My best friend failed for some unknown reason but later studied the hard way at nightschool and became a teacher. Then years later my boyfriend told me he had also failed, but teachers in the secondary modern school noticed and recommended he be given another chance at 13 years of age. He moved over into a grammar school. OK good for him but nobody noticed my friend. Girls were just not as important as boys.

Is that the same school David Blunkett went to Joan.
One of the sad things about the grammar school system is the number of children that felt like failures and rejects at the age of 11.

Joan that's a moving story about your sister.
My childhood was similar to that of Roy Hattersley, who lived not far away from me in Sheffield and went through the same system. He maintained in his autobiography 'A Yorkshire Boyhood' that Sheffield had only grammar school places for 10% of its children. He is older than me but till it was my turn nothing much had improved.

Expatmaggie this is really sad about your old school:
(You said: The last time I saw it whilst in Sheffield in 2007, it was shabby, windows dirty and the tennis courts overgrown with the nets hanging down. It was made into a comprehensive of course.)

My old GS at Heckomondwike is still a GS, and kids sit an entrance exam for the 150 places at age 11. It is still free. It is nice to know some things never change. About 700 kids sit the 11+ equivalent exam for those 150 places, which means places are available for 21% of children who take the exam. It doesn't sound a lot, but out of the 28 kids who took their 11+ with me back in 1956, only 2 passed, which was even worse at 7%.

My little sister went to school in Sheffield: she is blind, so she went to Sheffield school for Blind Children and boarded Monday to Friday. She then got a scholarship to Chorleywood College and hated it. She refused to go back to do her A levels so I persuaded Mum to ask the headmaster at Heckmondwike GS to take her. It was unheard of back them for handicapped kids to go to a regular school, but he agreed, and she did really well there.

Did any of you go to the Friary school Lichfield?

I left school at about 15 miles an hour and didn't stop till I got home!!!! Glad to see the back of it, never to return.

I hated school and I don't think it liked me much.

Looking back, it is how you left school which is important. I left with a working knowledge of physics and chemistry, could write English fluently, had a head for Maths and a passable French.
I could swim and play tennis.

I don't have children in the UK sytem, but is this still the case? I think not. We had the best of it. My grammar school was newly built in extensive grounds and of course you had to pass the 11+ to get there.

The last time I saw it whilst in Sheffield in 2007, it was shabby, windows dirty and the tennis courts overgrown with the nets hanging down. It was made into a comprehensive of course.

Well Annobel seems we came close to meeting all those years ago! If only your probationary years had been at Harris! I was there 1960-66!

Some of you have had some awful experiences, so I'm grateful that Heckmondwike Grammar School in West Yorkshire was so good. I was there from 1956-61. I wanted to take my A levels but Mum wouldn't let me. Apart from escaping PE lessons with the sadistic bitch from hell, I was heartbroken to leave.

There was no bullying by other students, no corporal punishment, and best of all, we were taught to think and question and research. However, I was not popular with some of the teachers, apart from Latin and biology, and failed 5 of my 8 mock O levels, which were marked by teachers. I passed all 8 actual GCEs well, even gaining the French prize for my year, which goes to show I was no teacher's pet.

I was bolshie, and refused to accept any instructions from prefects, deeming them not fit. The headmaster put me in detention for this, but there I met all the really naughty kids and loved it! We had to polish the school silver, which was quite a congenial occupation.

(Later in life I went to university and gained a BAHons)

I went to boarding school from the age of 10 and loved it. It was right for me and just like one long sleep-over. I didn't learn much though - the academic standard was appalling, we were taught to be "young ladies" and the thinking in those days was that girls didn't need the qualifications as they would get married very soon.
I was also very lazy, having the idea that education should be a process of osmosis and because I was in the class room I should just absorb the knowledge without any input from me. It didn't work unfortunately, but I look back on school days with happy memories and still keep in touch with several of my year.

I was a difficult girl to handle in my all girls grammar school. I was cheeky and rude and downright cruel to old-maid-like teachers. I'm ashamed when I think about it.
At one parent's evening the form mistress told my mother all about my sins and Mum replied. I can't do anything with her either!

I loved to dance and in the break we practiced dancing in a row like chorus girls in the musicals we loved and I had the idea for us to enter the classroom all in a row high-kicking. The lesson was to be afternoon Maths and the young inexperienced teacher was already quite miserable with me in the class.

When she was in the classroom, we girls, five or six of us, who had been waiting outside entered. One, two, three, high kicking and singing, but instead of cheers there was a deathly silence. I saw the headmistress at the back of the classroom. We froze. She stood up . 'Just go out this minute and come in again properly.' We all did of course and stayed in everyday after school in detention, for a whole week.
I improved after that and finished my schooling without being expelled.

I hated school. I was very shy and not disruptive at all. I seldom felt that any of the teachers liked me. My mother told me it was because she and my father were divorced and, as everyone knew back in the 60s and 70s, children from broken homes turned into juvenile delinquents!
But I did ok and made it to university, which I loved, despite my schooling.

At school, my claim to fame was yet another detention and being told to write a hundred lines which I did. It was a one liner, "A hundred lines". No further punishment ensued so perhaps the teachers saw the funny side of it or had done the same thing themselves at some stage.

Can't say that I particularly enjoyed school except French in which I later gained a degree. I was a bit of a naughty girl in primary school particularly because I was ahead of the class at times and was bored. One of my grandsons has overcome this problem and been moved up a grade by sitting at the back of the class, twiddling his thumbs and repeatedly saying "I'm bored". He told me this himself but I am not sure that his mother knows.

When it came to further education, I was in my element and even went to French and Spanish evening classes, after my daughter was born, which were so enjoyable and I even achieved more qualifications despite suffering from 'examinitis'.

I think I was mislead at school as to my career path and had never considered teaching at further education/degree level which I regret.

Oh sad. Bullying is foul. I was an outsider in junior school cos I could never do skipping, ball games , hopskotch etc. Bookish. But not bullied.
I remember one xmas dinner where there was a competitive "do you know what my mother sent me to school in" interchange.
My DS1 offered an orange jumper (everyone else in dark green) [shame]
My offering was a string vest - remember them, mainly holes, when i was 11 and going to new grammar school. My mother was convinced that due to it being in sheds i would freeze to death
But my mate Richard trumped us both with "liberty bodices handed on from big sisters" . Poor chap.

Ninathenanna , I was the same, lonely and bullied. My sister and I went to school in Edinburgh,I was younger and smaller than her, but my mother dressed me in her hand me downs which swamped me and made me look like Dopey out of Snow White. this combined with the fact that I was painfully shy, made me a figure of fun for all. It all changed in the Sixth form when I found that I could make them laugh,and suddenly they were all my friends, and the strange thing is that I was so grateful for friendship I had never had before that I let the little witches get away with it ,I never referred to the past.

Hello Freda which school in Co Durham ? I live in the NE and friends went to boarding schools in the area.
I hope you enjoy Gransnet.

Thanks, Annobel & Ariadne!