What do you recall from your first day at school?

I don’t remember my first day probably blanked it out because it was not good. I was four the school was a grim inner city building across quite a few busy main streets. The toilets were outside in a separate block I was scared of going on my own.
My most vivid memory was watching a boy standing in front of the class. He had a cone made out of newspaper with a big D on the front. The vile teacher informed us all he was a dunce and any child who misbehaved would be wearing one.

On my first day of school at 4 years old I was forced to eat gristly mince for lunch. I can still picture the nightmare I had that night about it, in which I was trying to escape school clutching the cushion I used to sit on at the table at home. This was beige with a design in the weave.
My extreme shyness made all my school days difficult.

I don't remember visual but l remember the smell of veg cooking, warm milk and feet. Some of the teachers smelt fusty.

We had nuns for teachers too Lucky. A very strict order. Most were horrible. I remember being fascinated to see them in Woolworths. I couldn't imagine why nuns would be in a shop. At my young age I saw them as supreme beings who had no need for worldly goods!

The school was actually very nice and so was the teacher -but I thought that it was just for one day !

I cried for my Grandmother , who took me on the bus day and day out .

I clung to the teacher , who was understanding and tolerant .

Eventually , I made friends with the girl , who sat at the next desk and ventured outside at break time .
After a few weeks , I began to travel to school by car with two brothers , who were equally introverted . I liked the older brother , who was in my class and it made all the difference .

Bewilderment I think. I remember vividly the teacher calling out names, and the children answering ‘present’…..but there were no presents! Had to ask my Mum about that.

Nothing from the first day although I'm told I cried. I had been assured I would see my elder brother at playtime and I didn't because girls and boys had separate playgrounds.

I do remember another day though. I took a wee car with me to school and was brumming it on the desk when the nun teacher said, "Who's making that dreadful noise?" Steep learning curve for me to find out that toy car brumming made a dreadful noise! My mum, who had two kids younger than me, and we had just moved house across country so she was probably just glad she could hear what big bro and I were up to while she dealt with the little ones.

1948. I remember the chalky, plasticine smell and a enormous rocking horse at the end of the classroom.It rained at playtime so we had a box of comics.

My teacher was lovely and was a red head, same as my mum. I went straight to the Wendy house and spent many happy hours playing there.

I felt abandoned in a room full of strange people. I was encouraged to play on a seesaw with another girl and that was fun. My most vivid memory was of my teacher reaching under her skirt and pulling a handkerchief from her bloomers. I found that very strange but she was a very kind lady.

Ah yes. taking the register. We had to put up our hands and say "Here Miss!"

I loved primary school! I have vague recollections of my first day with mum pushing my little brother in his pram. She was wearing a blue and white polkadot dress. My gran came too. My earliest memories were of a boy doing a poo in the playground and the teacher belting a girl because she couldn't pronounce four but could pronounce five. She probably thought she was 'at it.' The girl was a traveller and I'm sure there was a strong prejudice against her. I, too, could read before going to school.
Primary two was where I met my best friend. We had the same surname and I was told to look after her. We were best friends for 59 years until she died. We looked after each other all that time.

A young boy[who just happened to be the HeadMaster's son] said to my mum, that he would look after me! Great.

I couldn't wait to start school. Up early to get my uniform on. Mum and dad took me, we had to go into a room with the headmistress. It suddenly hit me it was real and I was having to stay so I crawled underneath the huge table. I couldn't be easily reached so the deputy headmistress tapped my backside with a ruler, as I lurched forward my dad grabbed me and pulled me out. After my first day I absolutely loved the school and cried my eyes out on my last day there.

I started just after the Easter holiday in 1956, having turned 5 in March. One other child, a boy, started at the same time. Other children in the class had been there since September or January, depending on when their birthdays fell.
I think it was a bit daunting for the two of us to be taken into the classroom by the headmistress and our mothers to see a room full of children all staring at us. Mum pointed out a girl who was the daughter of an old friend - she had already told me that I would be in her class and hoped that we would become friends. I remember her staring at me with an unsmiling face! However, we did become best friends and are still in touch.
The class was large, with about 45 children, but I loved it after a few days. The teacher was very kind.
A colleague who started school around the same time told me that on his first day he was caught staring out of the window. His teacher told him off sternly with the words “you’ll never pass your 11+ by looking out of the window.” He was only 5!!

My mother always gave me a snack for playtime. My snack was always stolen I found the culprit my teacher, who all of us adored, wasn’t impressed. The girl was hiding eating it in the playground.
Sadly it transpired this poor girl was from a family whose mother was pretty hopeless and the children were mostly taken away and placed in care. Not something I understood aged 4/5

I spent the Autumn I should have started school in my bed in the front room with a bad case of measles followed by a bad case of mumps, so I started on my own after Christmas. I remember being very interested, but totally bewildered, at what was going on. After dinner we all sat at rows of single desks in a hot, stuffy room and were told we’d to do a composition. I don’t remember the subject, but we all set to quietly, so must have been writing well even at that age. I was puzzled when we were then dismissed and could go home, as I thought the teacher had said competition, and would be giving out prizes.

A week or so later I was hit in the eye at playtime by a snowball with a stone in it, and spent the whole afternoon sitting next to the teacher in that room with an eye closed up by a lump the size of a tennis ball (according to my mother, who was furious that they didn’t send me home). A little girl at the front desk spent the whole afternoon crying about “the poor little girl” - she was more upset than I was!

I remember a boy kicking the teacher as she tried to pull him away from his mother. I was horrified at his naughtiness. The class was chaos. So many children crying for their mums. Within a week we had settled. I dont know how the teacher did it. There were about 45 in the class.

I started school at 4 and 3/4s, I remember feeling pretty lost. We had a very kind teacher who took us through infants, I recall my mother telling me she was from Yorkshire because of her accent, but that didn't really mean much to me back then, I only knew we lived in the county of Surrey. There was a lot of drawing and painting, our paintings were pegged on a line to dry, musical movements, which we did in our underwear and got to lie down and have a little sleep afterwards on scattered floor cushions. After a week or so we had to go up to our teacher's desk individually to read from a beginners reading book, she was really just assessing who had any knowledge of reading, I only knew the word "mother" and promptly burst into tears, I think I felt some sort of failure, but she reassured me and everyone else in the class not to worry because we were all going to learn to read with her and we did! probably in a matter of a few weeks we were reading around the class. Learning was methodical, alphabet, writing practice, times tables and a lot of reading. I'm not sure I'd formed friendship groups at that stage, all that came later, but there were games in the playground organised by the "big girls" who drew the younger ones in to such as "The Big Ship Sailed on the Ally Ally OO" for example and that could go on for the duration of playtime. Our school was quite lovely , it was an old Georgian house, and I remember big heavy shutters that were closed when the sun streamed in, although as I progressed through the juniors it started to be deemed unsafe, rumour had it that the ceilings could collapse and we started to be taught in newly constructed wooden annexes. As well as a playground, we had a huge field which we had our summertime play breaks in with an adjacent wood and pond for nature rambles, collecting frog spawn and leaves and other items for the nature table. Things I hated, endless learning of the catechism we had a horrible nun who took us for that and terrorised us if we weren't word perfect, school milk, I've always found milk on its own something that makes me gag, but children had to have the milk foisted on them back then, no ifs, no buts, personally I'd have welcomed "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher" in that context but this was the late 50s early 60s, long before she became a political presence.. I also dreaded some of the school dinners, in particular white matter with lumps in them most notably, mashed potato, rice pudding, tapioca the stuff of nightmares and like the milk there were no get outs.

Oh yes the register and on Mondays when your name was called up you went to the teacher's desk with 5 shillings, or was it ten, can't remember, in an envelope, dinner money for the dreaded dinners. yuk!

When we were old enough to read round the class - about six - I remember feeling frantic with impatience when the slow readers stumbled their way through a couple of paragraphs.. They were probably dyslexic, but people didn’t know about that then.

I liked school - I was another one who could read and write before I went to school. I had gone to a little kindergarten just a few doors down from my house, so I knew a few of the other children, and my Primary 1 teacher (who was a lovely lady) lived just a few doors along from us too. I was seen as a bit of a swot at school, as I was good at most subjects (apart from things like PE, art, music). I did have some friends both at primary and high school, but I was also a bit of a loner too. I never really fitted in, not that it bothered me.

My first day was quite fun. I apparently told my mum that I had drunk a whole bottle of milk. This would have been a third of a pint that all school children were given. I remember moving round the room in time to the music while Miss played the piano but not much else.
I was dyslexic, it was called being stupid in those days, so I couldn't read until I was nearly 8. One teacher told me I that my problem was that I didn't want to read and I was like a stubborn donkey so she didn't know whether to use a carrot or a stick. Happy days!

I cannot remember my first day at school, although I remember the school -I only attended it for three weeks before we moved away from the area.

I rmemeber that our cleaning lady's daughter took me to school. She was 10 and walked past the house on her way to the school, which was only about a hundred yards away.

I rmemeber sitting next to a boy in one of those double desks and wanting to move away from him.

I also rmember being very bored as I was already able to read and faced with the first book in the Beacon Reader series with about one short sentence per page. I could not wait to get home and get back to reading Millie Mollie Mandy.

But most of all I remember the loos, with a shudder, they were outside in wooden huts that had walls that ended about 9 inches above yard level They were smelly and dirty and the boys kept threatening to look under the walls and look at us when we were using them.

I recall meeting a little girl who became a lifelong friend. I loved my primary school and had an amazing time. All that changed when I moved to a secondary modern which was vast compared with the small intimate school I had come from. I felt completely out of my depth and did not enjoy it at all. It did not however take away my happy memories of the primary school that was so lovely.