What do you recall from your first day at school?

When I started school in the '40s, there were two intakes each year, one in August (this was Scotland) and a second one in February. As my birthday was in November, I went in February. By that time, I could read and do simple sums. Most of the children I knew were in the class six months ahead. I was allowed to advance into their class eventually and held my own pretty well. My first teacher was Miss Ross who seemed to be very, very old and wore a hair net.

My youngest daughter was born right at the end of august and started a few days after she was 4 however my son was born at the very start of September and was always the oldest in the class I felt he was more at a disadvantage than his sister My eldest was born in the middle doddle so no advantage or disadvantage

I also remember wearing navy kickers!! Also a horrible gaberdine mac. My mum always bought clothes much to big for me to grow in too and I was quite small and dainty so never really grew into them very quickly😂

I was 5 in August 1960 and started school in the September that year having never been to nursery school. I was painfully shy but knew two other girls. However a few months later a new primary school opened and it was realised I was in the wrong year class as were 3 others who I wasn’t friendly with and we were pushed up a year suddenly and missed out on a lot of early grounding work being expected to keep us with those some nearly a year older in the new class. I struggled to make friends. I could read and write but slow with maths and scared to get things wrong. I dreaded having to do partner work as I had no friends in this new class. Eventually I made friends and to this day meet up with my old bestie from school. She was a September birthday so just about a year older than me. I didn’t really enjoy school and didn’t find my confidence until I went to a secretarial college. I feel even now those born in August are at a disadvantage as they are only just 4 when starting school. You do catch up eventually tho but tough to start off with. My first daughter was born in December and my second was an August baby.

My 1st day at infant school, September 1964, when I was 5 - the teacher was Miss Robinson, very tall (or so it seemed), with dark hair and red lipstick. I was wearing a pleated dress or skirt that had slit pockets, and my biscuit (or lunch?) money was in it.

I loved my school from the moment I started at 41/2 in 1949 I don’t remember anything about the first day just that I know I was excited and happy to be going
I do remember there being a big piebald rocking horse in the corner of the classroom, a reading corner and a frieze going round the walls of the room with the alphabet on A is for apple etc etc and every morning we used to recite it as a group
I remember more as I got older playing two ball at the wall and what’s the time mr wolf, hopscotch and leapfrog and I remember most of the teachers

I remember at the end of the first day sitting on the mat for story time with the rest of the class. I sat next to a little boy who also started that day. His birthday was the same day as mine and I remember that he smelt of wee. For many years I thought all boys were like that!

We did games in navy blue bloomer type knickers at junior school (7-11).

I was reading a thread on kids arriving at school in nappies and not potty trained. That really shocked me.

From the sound of things here most of us could read and write to some extent. And those of us who decided to run back home could obviously find our way around the area and cross roads without help!

I remember siren suits!

And who else’s uniform included navy school knickers?

Siren suit similar to snow suits

I remember the teacher a Miss Watson wore a black sticky out skirt with yellow umbrellas on it.I met her some years later and she laughed when I said I remembered it but said it was her favourite skirt .The Italian boy from the end of our street asked my young sister to sit beside him,he thought I was the youngest ,I was very small for my age and my mum had put a siren siensuit over my school clothes as the snow was heavy.I started school in the January before my 5th birthday ,there were 2 intakes in 1959 Strangely I decided to leave school the January before my 16th birthday and left before school went back on the 6th

I don't have many memories of infant school. I remember my mum walking me there on my first day and showing me my peg. I was confused by it all. I was the eldest and had only known my younger siblings and my older cousins.

On day two mum saw me across the road outside home and told me to follow the other children and mummies. I was to make sure I crossed the roads with them. I was the only child walking alone and felt very frightened. I try now to make sense of things by understanding that mum had younger children to care for and probably wasn't in a good place herself.

I didn't enjoy that school at all. Fortunately I did have a lovely kind teacher in my first year at the junior school who helped me learn to read. I started to enjoy school.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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!

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 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!!

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.