Go on, who had the strictest School Uniform ???

I was the only girl in my school with a hat instead of a beret. Does anyone remember the guy with the sticky out ears who was on Opportunity Knocks? Well, I've got sticky out ears and I looked just like him. Was so embarrassed.

Nanapug OMG! I was at Billingshurst (1960 -1965). When they made the old place into flats I was very keen to buy one, particularly the one which had 'my' dorm in it, as our Southern base - but too expensive

These memories are so familiar. I was a boarder and then a weekly boarder. On sundays we had to wear our 'Sunday' dress which was made of a very itchy material - not a clue what it was - but had a detachable white collar which had to be washed on mondays. It was a lovely design, but oh so itchy. We had to wear white (nylon) gloves in summer and short white socks along with the panama. When I went home on fridays, I put on a pair of tights and stuck the socks over the top until I was on the bus and then off they came and some local people were so nosey that they used to 'report' we convent girls if we weren't dressed properly. In winter it was a pleated navy skirt, pale blue blouse and V-jumper. Used to turn over the waistband of the skirt about 5 times to shorten it (for the bus trip!) but we had to kneel on the floor and if the skirt didn't touch it, we were in Big T. As for boarding - there were 3 bathrooms for about 40 boarders and we were allocated a bathtime slot ONCE a week and the water could only be 4 inches deep. We slept on feather mattresses on iron bedsteads which I am sure pre-dated the 1914/18 War!
The nuns were unbelievably naive. Sex education consisted of telling us that if you put a mummy bicycle and a daddy bicycle in a shed you didn't get tricycles, but if you put a mummy rabbit and a daddy rabbit in a shed, then you got lots of little bunny rabbits.............. did they think we were stupid??
Despite emerging with not much education, at that point - things did improve later - I think on the whole I enjoyed my time there and keep in touch with quite a number of ex-pupils even after 46 years.

our winter hats had tassles on top in the colour of our houses, and the thick winter overcoats which at the time seem to reach your ankles and brown lace up shoes ...pure torture.

I went to a strict grammar school. We had to wear grey felt boaters and grey raincoats grey gloves and a red and grey scarf in the winter and boaters and white gloves in the summer. We had to wear them outside school and if you took them off on the bus home and a prefect saw you she took your name and you were sent to see the headmistress next day.

Gally that is a great coincidence. Have messaged you. Where did you live by the way? I was in Broadbridge Heath.

Ah, the knickers; the green Grecian gymslips; no patent shoes lest your knickers were reflected; no skirts till the third year as young gals had no hips and a long talk about heaven knows what, which tuned out to be about pornography being found in school. It took us ages to work it out. Those were the days: story/hymn and prayer each day.

At my horrible convent we had an incredibly strict uniform code, boaters and white gloves in the summer. Regulation shoes, not very robust, so you had to buy several pairs a year. Allegedly the nuns who ran the school received commission for every pair purchased, so of course it was in their interests that they didn't last very long. These shoes had to be purchased from a very expensive shoe shop in my home town. It no longer exists but very similar to Russell and Bromley, particularly in price. No patent shoes under any circumstances because your knickers could be seen in their reflection and woe betide anyone seen eating chips in their school uniform!

Sounds as though those of us educated by Nuns are scarred for life !!!!!!!

We had a Nun who taught us 'o' level Maths (she was useless). Just as the exams started she gave us tons of extra homework but as we had our geography exam the next day we made a pact not to do it.
As we waited to go for our exam she glided along the corridor and was furious when we hadn't done the homework.

''I hope you all fail your Maths exam ...and please God you do'' some of the girls were really upset but I thought it rather funny.
Anyway ...in August the results came out and I was the only pupil who passed the 'o' level !!!!
As I was the only 'non- catholic ' in the class some of the girls thought this was the reason I passed (her curse musn't have applied to me!!!)
But ..I knew the truth ...she was totally unqualified to be teaching Maths and was going to my boyfriend's father for lessons to keep one step ahead of us !!! However ...I was also having private lessons from Phil's dad ( he was head of Maths at the Tech College) ..and I was one step ahead of her !!!!!!
He was to become my father in law and told me years later that she was absolutely useless and should never have been teaching....he didn't like saying anything while I was still at school !!

HI Grumpyoldwoman, I'm not trying to top your story on the nastiness of nuns, but do remember, the non catholics at my mainly catholic convent did not have to attend any of the obligatory masses on the numerous saints days. Once they had filed out of the class and were safely out of earshot one of the kind sisters would say something along the lines of "now lets say a prayer for their protestant souls so they don't end up in eternal damnation".

Yep! BaNANA (love the name !!)
I used to go to mass with the rest of the school...but I was once in a class and was mentioned in prayers ''for non-catholics''.
On a school trip to Stratford we were told we could visit the church where Shakespeares tomb is ...as long as we didn't say any prayers !!!

As a child I went to a Church of England Church, a Methodist Sunday School and a Catholic School !!!.. ( I now go to Church of Scotland) !!
No wonder I'm confused !!!!

I was a non-Catholic but still had to go to every mass/benediction/whatever that was going until I got out of a dormitory with the obligatory nun behind the curtain (yes, they actually slept in the same room!) and into a room for 4 where we all managed to sleep through the bell in the mornings on numerous occasions. The nun who was supposed to oversee us turned a blind eye; the bliss of lying in bed for an extra 40 minutes - our souls being damned for eternity no doubt - while the others were praying away for us down below in the chapel. We had to wear white floppy net veils in chapel and mine was always 'lost' - another excuse, as you weren't allowed in without it. There was one particular nun who made my life fairly miserable, but as I became older and wiser I managed to stand up to her. She was a convert and they were always the worst - so devoted and unbending. I'm probably now older than she was and I just remember her as a sad, lonely, misguided loser. After the school closed in the mid 80's the few nuns who were left lived in a house in Worthing until, I assume, they all went on their merry way to live with their Maker!
(*Nanapug - I lived in London and then Horsham which was when I became a weekly boarder)

Hello again Grumpyoldwoman (I feel very rude addressing you as that) and Gally both your experiences at your respective schools resonate with me. It's all coming back to me now, one of the things I remember the most was the extremely biased way we were taught history, although of course I didn't realise it at the time. Catholic schools in my day seem to be fixated with Henry V111 and the Reformation. Over and over the same old ground we would go, the divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, honestly we never seemed to do anything else. According to my teachers Mary Tudor was the best monarch England ever had and they skirted over the whole Bloody Mary issue although I do remember one nun opening the lesson with "she did burn a few protestants at the stake" and then adding, very much under her breath, "but it's no more than they deserved" before quickly moving on to, turn to page whatever before anyone could say "I don't believe you just said that" although of course you were never encouraged to contradict in those days. Subliminally they kept the whole them and us thing going as far as Catholics and non Catholics were concerned. Moving on to Elizabeth 1, she of course was portrayed as a thoroughly wicked woman and no mention was ever made of what a great reign she had, I only realised this when my son was doing the same period many years later and was taught practically the reverse of everything I had learnt. My husband is a great fan of the Shardlake books by C J Sansom and is always urging me to read them but I always say I'm all Tudored out because of school and would much prefer to read about other periods of history as a consequence.

I went to a mission school abroad run by sadistic nuns who taught us nothing. Back in England for a while, aged 5, the convent school nuns were kind and gentle and we had - wait for this - TOYS in the classroom!
My grammar school was run on concentration camp lines. No wonder we were all
protest-marching rebels .

apricot how I wish that I hadn't won a scholarship to a convent school. Did not meet a compassionate nun!

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Becky I don't think there's anything wrong in having rules about school uniforms or, in fact having school uniforms, although the 3 day exclusion for not having the top button done up does seem a little extreme! I think the problem with the world these days is lack of rules - or following them up and young people need parameters. All having to wear the same uniform in a reasonable fashion is part of growing up and preparing for the future. I didn't particularly like mine but it posed no problem (apart from the itchy sunday dress) and my 3 daughters all wore uniform (scruffily I have to add) and when they got to the 6th form they could wear what they wanted so long as it was in school colours. They all said they would have preferred to stay in uniform as it was easier to cope with and they found all the girls competing to wear the latest fashion and the most expensive 'labelled' clothes. I really don't think you can decide on your education or school on the basis of uniform

Reading this thread takes me back 55 years. Even in the sixth form the uniform rules were v. strict. The only way we could express defiance was through the way we treated our uniform. My best friend Mary and I always wore our grey felt pudding basin hats with the brims turned down all round. We wore laddered tights and very sloppy ballerina pumps instead of sensible shoes. So in due course we were sent to the Head Mistress. 'You look like a couple of trollopes' she said, and set us a passage from the bible to learn by heart. We went home and told our parents. Mary's mum was incensed and rang the Head to tell her her daughter didn't know the meaning of the word 'trollope'. My mum just laughed.
I kept in touch with our Head Mistress over the decades and shortly before she died she told me, 'I always liked the naughty girls best.' which bears out what you say, Joan.

I am loving these posts, really made me smile today. I went to a Convent school too and had all the usual uniform horrors. The worst was the hat, a bottle green 'skull-cap' with a yellow tassel, a cross between the pope and tommy cooper, needless to say, the boys from the school down the road took great delight in pulling the tassels off the hats. Also, we had to have a briefcase, no satchels allowed, a cookery basket and our own hockey stick. One year it was cookery and PE on Monday so the spectacle of going to school with skull-cap, hockey stick, cookery basket and all the weekend homework in the briefcase was quite something. In the winter, we had a special hat, the skull=cap had ear-flaps and a peaked front ! Some how mine got lost.

I am loving these posts too, takes me back 50 years! i still have my old school tie and the cookery apron that we had to make in the first year before we started "housecraft" lessons in the second year. I passed my 11 plus and went to Grammar School (very posh!) My parents werent well off and I now realise how much a struggle it must have been to buy the long list of uniform they were given but they managed it somehow.

Our school uniform was purple - years before I could wear the colour as an adult.

Woody, your post could refer to me entirely! And Allule - I feel the same about brown - to this day, 50 years on!!

Nanapug. I am amazed too at how many of us went to convents. So much of the above is familiar to me. The talk of 'non catholics' is just one example. As a catholic I remember being told that I must never go into a 'non catholic church' and on a Monday morning being asked to put our hands up if we had been to mass on Sunday. As if we would have dared to declare we hadn't, for that would have been a sin. And should we be knocked down by a bus on the way home from school with a sin on our soul then hell would have been our destination. And I belived it all! Oh, and by the way, school uniform was strict as well!

I went to a Grammar School in North London.The Summer before I started my Mum tried everywhere to get the right gymslip with a V-neck.As I was very skinny and small we could only order one and for my first day of term had to wear one with a square neck.The head of year came in to inspect us and I was made to stand up in front of the year group to explain why I wasn't in the proper uniform.As a shy and nervous little 11yr old I never forgot this.Would it happen with my grandchildren today? I certainly hope not.

Our school uniforms were not too bad. My big problem was big feet (for a school girl - they shot up to a size 7 early but thankfully never got bigger). The choice in the local Clarks for sensible school shoes was dire, that coupled with a rather Victorian father who thought that anything that was not flat, black and laced up was somehow tarty, has left me with a real shoe love/hate problem. As soon as I was able to buy my own they had heels that made me 6 foot! To which my mother used to make comments along the lines that they would lead me to having problems getting a boy friend! Is it any wonder I am a little strange?

For an interesting take on 21st century school uniforms NZ takes the biccy. The girls schools have spectacularly hideous uniforms (lets get into a room and dream one up, starting with an enormous, three quarter length kilt) and the big boys wear grey flannel knee length shorts with shirts and ties... Strangely they do not seem to mind.
In "my school" in the UK the kids recently voted for a more formal school uniform, upgrading from polo shirts to shirts, ties and v necks. All the girls wear trousers.
When i went to grammar school in the 1960s we particularly hated our berets, which we were supposed to wear all the way home...