What do you recall from your first day at school?

Being vegetarian in the 60s was more unusual than it is now. My mother had told the school but I was served meat on my first day. Because I had never eaten it I had no idea how to cut it up and cried when I was told off. I wouldn't eat it and was told off again for being ungrateful when there were children starving in Africa.

After that I had a packed lunch or went home.

We moved about quite a bit until I was 8, and ended up attending 5 primary schools in 4 years, with a spell of six months where I never attended school due to moving to three different places. Luckily we settled in one town in 1976 and I spent three happy years in a junior school where I did quite well.
I spent two years at my first secondary school, where the teachers reckoned I was university material as I was good at most subjects except art and design, and then went to a semi selective school when I was 13. This was better academically, but to be popular, I messed about quite a bit and had I not knuckled down in my final year after some poor mock O level results, I'd have been out of education at 16.

I started at a small Mission School run by unkind nuns. I don’t remember anything about the first day but it helped that my two brothers were there too.
I changed schools nine times and hated being always the new girl, knowing nobody. At each school they did things differently so some learning got missed out and others things were repeated over and over. I was seven before I could read. With such constant change it’s surprising that we all got to grammar school then to university.

I can only very vaguely remembering the school had outside toilets and it had a clock tower and the teacher had dark hair. I was 4 and it was 52 years ago, so memories will be vague.
Remember my first day at " big school" quite well as I was really nervous as we'd moved to a new part of town when I was 11 and knew hardly anyone in the school. Took me a couple of months to settle in, but like most kids, you make new friends.

School milk in glass bottles. It made me feel sick but I was made to drink it.

I remember starting infants age 3 and used to go home for lunch as we lived near the school, when I went back after lunch they had all these little foldable beds laid out and I remember hiding behind my mother crying because I didn’t want to go to bed.

I quite happily skipped to school on my first day but was really puzzled by a boy we passed who was crying and screaming, refusing to budge for his mum.

Being an introvert I happily played by myself with some wonderful Russian dolls for as long as they'd let me.

I suppose that I had got broken in by going to nursery school.
One memory of NS was when the photographer came. Before everyone's photo was taken they had to build a little item with wooden bricks then knock it down. Picture was then taken with the strewn bricks.
I was so cross having to knock it down, I wanted my masterpiece in my photo!

Mallin Your education sounds dreadful. I was fortunate, I kept changing schools until my second secondary school, so never got bored.

I was not happy at my boarding grammar school, and got an unjustified reputation for being academically lazy. My written work was poor, mainly because I had dreadful handwriting, although I did very well in exams.

I just hunkered down and concentrated on what mattered to me. I knew I was clever, I knew I was good at exams and I knew that the road to freedom meant getting good O and A level results. So that was what I did.

We had a dreadful latin teacher who did not like me, so in my O level year I got Teach Yourself Latin out of the public library and renewed it constantly for a whole school year. I passed my latin O level wiith the highest mark in the class.

To the fury of several of my teachers, I passed all my O levels, with no failures. One of the few pupils in my year to achieve that. In the blink of an eye I went from 'that stupid lazy Monica* to that 'Clever Monica, we alway knew you would do it'

I now know that I have both dyspraxia and ADHD and both these contributed to my problems at school, at a time when these problems were not known about or only within limited academic psychological circles.

On my first day the teacher pointed at the letters and numbers around the blackboard saying that by this time next year we would know them all.
I wondered if she was really a teacher as I had the idea in my head that teachers knew everything. I could already read and write and had been in a nursery school attached to a boys “ pre- prep. School”. I’d been put in with boys of 8 & 9 as I was considered bored in the nursery class. I hated infants school. The other children were all noisy and nasty and I never actually learnt anything except how to stay quiet and make sure I sat where the teacher could see if anyone hit me, not that anyone ever did but I somehow thought noisy children hit you. Junior School was better but it was still boring. If the teacher asked a question then even though I had my hand up, I’d only be asked if the others had been wrong. So I stopped putting my hand up to answer. I took the 11plus and was the only girl to pass on to the Grammar School. I later found out that girls had to get much higher points in the 11plus to get into Grammar Schools than boys.
I was unlucky in my Grammar School.
It was rather old fashioned and still had Latin as a standard subject. I loved Latin classes and the Latin teacher gave me the following years books as she said I might as well study something I enjoyed. Other classes were ok but I didn’t enjoy them. The 2nd year the Latin teacher didn’t re appear and Latin was taken off the curriculum.
I French teacher who appeared was a horrible woman. Who read magazines in class and set us homework we didn’t know how to pronounce as she never spoke to us in French. So I didn’t attend French classes and no one said anything! even if they noticed. I only stopped as in the first test given to the whole class, we were all given Bplus. Even me. Even the girl whose first language was French.
By the time I was 13, I’d decided that I disliked school and hardly went.

The opposite - I had to fight for 2 years to stop having long hair yanked into pigtails each morning and they gave in in top juniors and I had a pretty cut. I thin as the eldest I had to pave the way to be allowed to grow up.

My mom had given me a "pixie haircut" which I'm not sure what the point of that was, but there I was in my boy haircut, wearing my little skirt and leather buckled shoes and a boy walked up to me and asked, "Are you a BOY or a GIRL ???" I was 5 years old. I didn't quite understand the question. Hadn't given it a lot of thought. I was just Macadia and didn't know that I was supposed to "fit in a box". It made me sad but I got over it.

I don't remember my first day at school. I told my mother my teacher must be old as she had the same shoes as my mother. Meeting her many years later at our GS reunion I discovered she was actually younger than my mother and in her first job.
The one thing I remember was having to have Horlicks tablets instead of milk after the radiation leak at Sellafield when all milk in NW had to be poured away, I have never liked Horlicks

I hated leaving my mum but I was lucky having a twin we went through infant and juniors in the same class so always had an ally. I remember the little bottles of milk always warm yuk and doing p e outside in vest and knickers was so cold and embarrassing

*smell.

Granjeanne- i too remember the smell of the paint, it was bright coloured powder paints, and had a distinct 'powdery' smell to it- we had to mix it with water, or dip in a wetted paintbrush to use it- i can also remember the small of the bars of soap at the sinks- it was like buttermilk. And i loved the rice pudding after dinners as it was creamy and served with a lovely big coconutty biscuit.😋

I remember being let out into the playground at break time and, thinking it was time to go home, I crossed a busy main road on my own and set off home until someone came to retrieve me. I remember having to draw a cat on my first day and then cut it out with scissors. I cut its tail off by mistake and was devastated.

I started school in 1949.In those days you had to wait till your fifth birthday so there were children starting all through the first year.
I started the same day as a boy.When our mothers left us in the hall with the headteacher the boy started crying and made a dash for his mother.The headteacher grabbed him and smacked him across the legs.I must have looked if I was trying to make a run for it as well, I started crying when she grabbed me and threatened me with a smack if I made a move.I was terrified of that woman all the time I was in the Infants school.

Aged 5, (in 1968) i was told by a teacher to ''go home for lunch" on my first day- but my mum wasnt there waiting so i tried to remember my way home (luckily we lived 2 streets away) - i found my way but there was no one in (my mum & 16yr old sister had gone shopping, as it was first time they'd been able to without me) so our next-door neighbour, a good friend of my mums's, took me in for some tomato soup- when my mum came home when i'd had my soup, she took me back to school and stayed to tell headmistress i'd been sent home when i shouldnt have- and i was given a school dinner as well! A lot of the time at school i was let play in the wendy-house corner or to paint when the others did reading as i could already read very well.I remember my mum and my sister saying we would be able to have little naps on little beds but we never did.I suppose they must have changed that by then. 🫤

I can remember walking up the road to school holding my mother’s hand.
It must have been after lunch since I don’t recall having anything to eat and we only had one “ playtime”.

I made my mother promise she’d wait outside for me but I was very disappointed when I looked for her in the break but of course she wasn’t there.

On entering the classroom for the first time I was amazed to see everyone playing with toys and colouring. My teacher Miss Woods showed me the ropes She turned out to be a lovely, kind and patient teacher.

There was a little boy with a puddle under his chair who’d obviously wet himself which he did a few times a day.

I met my lifelong friend there we went through school and got our first job together.

I soon settled down to learning which I loved and was extremely proud when I had to take my reading book to Miss Pritchard the head teacher’s room to read to her.
I really enjoyed my time at the little school. I went through the Infant and junior school and left in 1968 to go to the secondary modern which wasn’t that much bigger. Which I also enjoyed. Those were the days.

I started primary in easter 65. I knew nearly everybody in the infants, there were only around 40 pupils & a lot were cousins (including two I started with) or second cousins. On the first day I remember the Lyons coffee tins with the crayons in, someone showing me how to draw a house, and another new starter wetting her pants. We had to go into the "big" classroom for assembly & some of the older girls seemed like grown women to me (they would've been 10-11).My auntie's dog used to jump into the playground regularly & I was the only one who could catch him.I hated school dinners (always sponge made with dehydrated egg & lumpy custard for pudding) but liked the headmaster's war stories & playing tag.

I remember the smell of paint! This was January 1963 and I was just about to turn 5. The school had a beautiful, child friendly room for the reception children, but I never got my "term" in there because it was being painted / renovated. There were little miniature loos, in cubicles with no doors, in case you couldn't work the locks! The floor had red and yellow tiles, in a checkerboard pattern, each with a small animal on it, in the opposite colour (red animals on yellow squares and vice versa). Just beautiful. The smell of gloss paint still transports me back there. Unfortunately, I had to go straight into an enormous class with children who had been there since the previous September and all knew the ropes. I knew some other children and my brother was in the juniors, but I still felt terrified. I was very small for my age and they didn't have a pair of plimsolls (these were provided) small enough for me! We had no uniform but girls weren't allowed to wear trousers. That was an arctic winter with snow on the ground until March! And this was in Essex (later London Borough of Redbridge). The school was a mile and a half away and was on a huge council estate. My parents had chosen it, on advice from a neighbour, because it was a relatively new school with good facilities and forward looking teachers. I have to say, it turned out to be a brilliant choice and eventually, I loved it. At 11, I passed the exam for a prestigious girls' grammar school and then went on to university in 1976, the first one in my family to do so. Happy days....

I started at 4 + 9 months and loved everything except the outside toilets and the metal shoe scrapers outside the doors!. I joined a group of children who waited near the main road for a taxi that took us to school and bought us home again. I think it was 6p a week. I could read and write so didn’t find it at all difficult. My teachers were a Miss Nash and a Miss Pawson who were friends and lived together. They were very kind and gentle ladies, and I thought they were very old. We did PE in our underwear and I remember asking my Mum if I could not wear Aertex knickers on those days as I thought everyone could see through the holes! I passed the 11+ and went on to the grammar school but I always credit the primary school for giving me a good basic education and a lifelong love of learning.

My first day? Nothing!
My second day, as soon as DM was out of sight, I turned and walked calmly back out of the gate. I'd been to school on the previous day, and in my five year old mind, that was enough!
I was scooped up by Mrs Gibson (she had twins in my class) and deposited back in the corridor!
My teacher was Mrs Harrop, she was lovely.
The following year we had Mrs Roscoe, she was horrible!

Hated it. I cried all day, didn’t like leaving my Mum. I’d never been away from home before. I was five!
Never really liked school and was glad when I left at 15.

I couldn't wait to start school! So got there aged 4 and 1 week. Thanks to my Mother I could already read as I had played 'school' for months before - where I would go out and sit on one of the stumps left where our gates had been removed for the 'war effort' (dumped in the Irish Sea it turned out) - and do homework my Mother would make up for me.
I was given the first book - the first page of which said 'Ann had a fan', the second 'The man came in the Van'..... exactly what had happened to me! My Uncle was in the Air Force and had been sent to India, from where he sent me a fan! Whack! down came the ruler, sharp end across my fingers... 'Don't turn the page until I say you can' screamed the well-named Miss Beattie... my Mother made it worse by coming in to complain about the wheals on my fingers, so I was a marked woman from then on!