I used to be an ink monitor filling in the ink wells in the desks, without spilling any, also a milk monitor delivering cartons of milk to the class rooms, then a Prefect.
Some of the teachers had a pathological hatred of us children, one split the head of a kid open by hitting him with the 4 foot board ruler,by accident, and teacher never seen again- another teacher punched me from behind over the girl in front, screaming loudly i should pay attention in his boring maths class, another hit a lad on the head with a board ruler,female lesbian teacher hated lads and would ridicule us for anything, girls did marvelous,then we had the pervy teachers all male,who gave the more developed lads extra tuition,the disciplinarians, we arrived late one day the bus was late, he made us all line up against the wall of the main hall, and started shouting at us about being late, one lad said take it up with bus company, to which the teacher ran at him punched him he fell back and took us all down like a row of dominoes,not one teacher dared to laugh, a few years later after leaving school a fellow school child now adult tried to run over the headmaster,he went to prison,so many stories , so many names cant be named.
Your turn, no names and best no lacation of school.
I also seemed to have missed the lessons in punctation and spelin
Suffering from dyslexia and recieving very little support, I was often isolated or put in lower grade classes.
School was shit.
PE form teacher offered to rub Vicks into the chest of prettiest girl in class. She was 12.
I used to be an ink monitor filling in the ink wells in the desks,
did you got to school in 1847? 😆
Church of england school, very underfunded, no biros, for younger kids, teachers also thought pen and knib inspired better quality writing, got dragged to front of class one day to explain how i had trained a spider to form words on my pages , as no person could write that bad with pen and ink, i proved him wrong
Our Latin teacher could chuck a board rubber with precision - if you weren't paying attention he'd throw it at you and the clouds of chalk dust off it got everywhere. Even worse was if he chucked the chalk itself - less mass but way more velocity, legend has it he embedded a piece in the plaster at the back of the classroom. Oh and chanting "amo amas amat" in time with a ruler being smacked on the front desk. Happy days.
I went to an all boys school which had it's own swimming pool and in the lunch hour you could use it if you wanted a swim . If you had no trunks but wanted to swim you were allowed to swim naked . Usually some teachers were also swimming , quite often naked so you had naked 11 - 17 year olds and 30-60 year Old teachers swimming in the same pool at the same time . It seemed normal at the time but on reflection it was anything but . AFAIK there was never any impropriety .
Ex Pat school bouy here..
We had a constant flow of teachers from the Presbyterian Church fellowship doing the rounds, hard to remember any distinction between them TBH.. they all seemed very conservative and well mannered and quite repressed.
Mrs Stoor comes to mind, sexy as a sexy thing who would wear those low slung blouses favoured by Women in the late 70’s, jeans were banned so they used to wear pleated skirts with large open slits down one side held together with a massive safety pin, knee high socks (a requirement for all attendees, kids and teachers alike) and those single buckle sandals..
Anyway, a few lads (me included) had large crushes on her, by large I mean boners.. hey we were early teenagers and hormones were popular pass time entertainment during lessons.
My best mate Randy (his real name) had one large protrusion forming during a Math lesson.. we giggled and prodded with rulers and pencils, Mrs Stoor came over and noticed the “bump” and promptly hit it hard with a flick of her finger..
Laugh! Oh how we rolled about in fits for weeks after that incident.
She didn’t stay long, sadly. As the blouses got more flouncy and see through the more we couldn’t control or contain our “excitement”
She was lovely.
Another incident, this time with a right old stuffy stick in his religious ways type of fellow.. deputy head but not good enough ever to make head type.. Anyway he was caught watching the girls shower after a sports afternoon.. not watching per-se’ more having a quiet hand job in one of those large pummel horse contraptions..
He was sacked.
Schooling was very strict, prim and very proper. Once the news got out there was all sorts of uproar.
I do remember having a crush on the prettiest girl in the school, Lisa... Lordy she was beautiful. We became bouyfreind and girlfriend and we stayed together until I returned back here. Anyway, one day the school bully tried to lift her skirt up so I punched him square on the nose and broke it, he fell backwards onto the hardcore running track and knocked himself out (ok, that was me who probably did it) thing is I never got in trouble for it.. two teachers noticed what was going on and were on thier way to assist, just at the time I punched him.
I wasn’t even told off, one teacher did say “nice punch, don’t donit again” and that was it.
I think I really did love Lisa... I still think about her to this day 🤷♂️😜🥴
Oh forgot the school swimming gala where the lad who won loads of the races was a) wearing inappropriately pale budgy smugglers b) receiving the prizes from a female council official and c) sporting an increasingly unmissable semi during the whole prize giving.
School was shit.
Correct, here's a gold star.
One PE teacher we had was, I swear down, shagging a 15 yr old. Another 15 yr old lad got a 13yr old girl up the duff, me & 2 mates nicked some keys from the woodwork cupboard which we later found (after trying) were the actual keys to the school so we went back one night & nicked some stuff from the gym.
I was a prefect & chief chisel sharpener for Mr Patterson the woodwork teacher, who also once tried to get me to repeat what I'd said in the corridor which I declined to do.
I couldn't wait to leave.
I still think about her to this day 🤷♂️😜🥴
I knew a girl like that. Bumped into her 32 years later & still loved her, still do. Wer'e married!
Big 'AAHHH' please!
Lairy teachers seemed to know they didn't have long by the late 80s so seemed to crank it up a notch while they could.
Loads of tales about them, just the metalwork teacher for starters:
Decked me for using brasso in the technical area.
Decked me for spitting through a hole.
Pulled a mate's earring out for looking like a puff, tore the flesh open.
Trapped a lad's fingers in a vice then smacked him on the knuckles with a wire brush.
Liked liquid lunches til he crashed his car into a toyshop window on the way back to school.
I like to think we gave as good as we got though.
Violence against kids was rare to non-existent in my school. You’d hear rumours of games teachers taking the worst kids into their office for a ‘telling off’, a mate of mine claimed they tried it on him. He was 6ft2 at 17 and very fit and strong. He pushed him away and walked out.
There was one teacher I despised, I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire now. He was an egomaniac, I thought he was great at first, he’d swear in class and you felt like ‘one of the boys’ in class. He was an English teacher but he also taught a GCSE photography class. There was only 30 places in the class the minimum the school would allow, but as I found out only 16 ‘real’ places - the darkroom had 16 stations and more importantly the school minibus had room for 16 kids.
His MO was the systematicly harash kids into quitting to get the numbers down. He’d tell you all on day 1 “if it’s not for you, don’t worry you can hang out at the back of the class or the play ground during class”.
The girls, of the few who’d hadn’t heard the rumours and applied in the first place were first. He’d only ever refer to female students or staff as ‘Splitarses’. During his English class he’d show a 70s version of Romeo and Juliette very few months and pause / rewind at the point Juliette was topless for a second or two. He LOVED teenage girls, but not as students.
Then it would be the shy (me) and the weak, you’d turn up to class and the room would empty, he’d have told the more cocky lads to meet in the car park on the sly and they’d head off in the minibus.
If you didn’t take the hint he’d belittle you and encourage the chosen 16 to join in, by now they worshiped him and it would be a low-level bullying that carried on out of that class.
I lasted a year but it was pointless going any further, I couldn’t get into the darkroom so I couldn’t produce any coursework, also it was the last class of the day so I just headed home early. I took the exam and with some scraps of course work from year 1 I managed a grade, much to his displeasure. He argued I hadn’t been to class for months (it was actually a full school year) so my coursework wasn’t valid but by now being a bit more confident I learned that if I raised my voice to a level that a passer by might hear and moan I wasn’t allowed in the darkroom he’d cave in.
A year or two after I left school he started dating the sister of a bloke I knew, she was 16.
i loved school. it was just a great time with great mates. last thing on my mind was learning anything.
our school was in the middle of a big public park. it was so easy to bunk off any lesson the didnt like as you came out of one classroom to go the different part of the school for the next lesson.
we used to wonder off into the park, to either the playground, or to a huge old oak tree, which we would climb up and spend the lesson carving our names in the tree. it became known as the bunking tree.
i get the feeling that the teachers were not too fussed that us rowdier pupils used to skive their lessons, it would have been easier for them.
in my last year of high school, i got in trouble and got sent away to a youth detention center. the teachers here were a whole different kettle of fish.
but it did not stop us being stupid.
me and a lad from barnsley and a lad from hull broke into the kitchen one night and had a midnight scoff. a 12'' catering tin of spam between us. put me off spam for life.
lad from hull ended up becoming a bobby.
wish i had done better at school.
Far too many to share on here , but my school was strange . Middle class Surrey but the teaching was pretty poor.
Usual capers with alcohol, drugs , knives, fights, joyriding , theft ,firworks, air pistols, more alcohol, bomb making , bullying and full on vandalism.
A teacher could have been killed in one incident where a large rubber glove was filled with maybe 4kg of water and launched from the thiird floor window that had a 60/40 opening mechanism. It missed but was close.
Our Latin teacher could chuck a board rubber with precision
Our boardrubber thrower was our engineering drawing teacher. We were all puzzled as to why that was a thing to be teaching
Aside from throwing things he also ran a lunchtime ‘film club’
Either because of the throwing things or the 16mm pornographic films eventually he was quietly asked to leave.
Our Latin teacher could chuck a board rubber with precision – if you weren’t paying attention he’d throw it at you and the clouds of chalk dust off it got everywhere
That wasn't Speedy Bill Williams was it, or did all Latin teachers do that?
Glasgow Southside late 70s - catchment area was a mix of 'normal' housing and the local housing scheme. As it was the 'state' school it was predominantly protestant as all the catholic kids went to the RC school - except the ones that were expelled and ended up at ours. There were some proper psychos - one guy was expelled for hospitalising a teacher, others whose fathers were in Barlinnie. One funny anecdote - head of technical was a Mr Ben and "Ben ****s" could be found inscribed on most desks. One doddery old bat of a teacher decided she'd try and track down this graffiti artist and went around all the classes and checked all the registers to see if she could track him down - much merriment as we strained to keep straight-faces. A big group of friends used to go ice-skating at Crossmyloof on Saturdays - one of the popular girls was sexually assaulted/raped and took an overdose/suicide - completely split the group and it was proper shit.
we had the usual mix of great teachers, oddballs and frankly terrifying pervs.
4 stick in the mind...
The PE teacher (great) - was also captain of the local semi-pro football team (would be probably 2nd tier now, National League South type) so a very good player, and later went on to coach and manage them. He coached football properly, and where me and another lad were both decent keepers also recognised the need to set us out of general football sessions and give us proper stuff we could work on together. I later played (very low echelon) semi-pro myself and still didn't have specific coaching of the level I had at school, I had to devise my own sessions.
But it was a great day when he got sent off for fighting, and turned up at school on Monday with a proper shiner. The local rag never had circulation like it, everyone bought a copy to show him his story!
The art teacher - specifically pottery. It was an all boys school and she was a proper bohemian type specialising in pottery. Most of the teachers would be in jacket and tie (and elbow patches), she was in tie dye skirts that when she stood in front of the window you could see through. Often to be found lunchtimes in the pottery studio with sleeves rolled up, clay up her arms and cheekily smeared artfully on the face - filthy. We kept on having to go and see her to clarify what the homework was.
Billy B, the woodwork teacher. He cut the top off his thumb on a band saw a few years earlier and it was never found so was still somewhere in the woodwork room waiting to be found (according to the older boys). He was a cricket fanatic so i always got on with him but others used to mimic him mercilessly, including whole class shouts of 'Thumbs up for Billy!'. There was a huge stash of porn in one of the lockers that everyone knew was there and was almost like a library, you could borrow from it at will. I still don't know if he knew and ignored it.
Lastly - the school chaplain and RE teacher. He used to occasionally do a proper lesson but most of the time would show us videos on a massive VHS machine - sometimes moral or ethical discussion stuff, sometimes religious programming, mostly Star Wars which he seemed obsessed by. But his memorable skill was squash - despite being about 60 he could lace on a pair of green flash, take his jacket off, loosen his dog collar and thrash anyone. No matter where you hit the ball it always went straight back to him. I swear he had someone helping him.
Second worst school in Manchester, only Spurley Hey in Gorton had us beat. 🙂
Science teacher married one of his pupils just after her 16th birthday, before the bump became too obvious.
Numerous pregnancies and three deaths from heroin in our last couple of years.
An amazing network of thieves and vagabonds who signed up for European trips just so they could steal as much 'casual' gear as possible - 30 kids with huge suitcases, empty on the way out, full on the way back. They took orders before every trip.
Diadora Borg Elite? Certainly sir, what size?
An amazing young entrepreneur who had a business selling secondhand Porsche spares from his bedroom in Moston. Finally caught in a sting by GMP in the Arndale car park whilst attempting to liberate a decoy 911 Turbo.
French teacher caught painting graffiti describing the deputy head in less than flattering terms on the science block walls, pissed out of his head one summer's evening.
Found a huge collection of cannabis plants growing in a disused classroom in a block due for refurbishment. Not sure which teacher was responsible, but it wasn't the physics teacher, as he was a self confessed heroin addict who borrowed money from the pupils at extortionate interest rates. 🙂
Conversely, very little bullying and hardly any violence among the pupils - we left that to the teachers.
As a fairly brainy kid who stayed out of trouble and hung around with the weirdos I quite enjoyed it.
Well glad I went after the beatings stopped.
Notable mentions do go to getting to see or maybe touch the 5 nations trophy when an old boy made it to England, being completely ignored at PE until the PE teacher saw me in the lead group of the Junior Great north run leaving the Gateshed stadium (lets call that enthusiastic and I died real quick after that) but I was accepted in PE after that 🙂
We hid the PE Teachers Renault 4 one day, got less fun as he is mt Aunts Uncle now.
We duct taped the head boy to the desk at the leavers party.
The inevitable - no need to spike the punch we have put some in already ball.... ended as expected something quite good to getting pissed up at the original Hogwarts (well it wasn't that then)
We had a relief teacher we called Batwoman because of her batwing glasses.
She was 5foot f all, had ruler straight hair and rode a Norton Commando.
And she didn’t take shit from teenage boys.
Our headteacher was called Batman - mainly due to the gown he wore as he walked in to school assembly that trailed behind like a cape given the speed he walked.
There was also a Mr Kerr. 0 guesses what his actual first name was.
In the previous school the deputy head we were sure was well in to boys. After I left he got the boot allegedly for feeling girls to see if they'd started wearing a bra yet.
All the best teachers were Maths teachers. Out of every teacher I ever had the only ones I'd actually consider having a pint with was 1 PE/Games teacher, and most of the maths teachers.
Whoever said "school is the best time of your life" clearly didn't go to Uni.
Was a milk monitor in primary school. Ink monitor was a bit before my time. It was more ink cartridge projectiles by the time we were taught joined-up.
I was sent to the deputy heads office. I sat there for a couple of hours,then spotted a bottle of whiskey in a cupboard. So I went & had a nose. There were hundreds of fags in there too 😁. So I nicked the fags & whiskey. The deputy heads nicked em off the kids ,so it's ok for me to nick em off him. I sold the fags & spent a week at school half cut. Like most of the teachers. I also got suspended for a haircut 🙄. Just tramlines,but by then the teachers had developed a deep seated hatred for me. A kid with Billy Idols haircut walked past the headmasters office while my dad was discussing my treatment. My dad pointed it out. The head said "but that's different". I enjoyed the time off.😊. I ended up getting expelled for " disrupting others education". I weren't violent,just annoying . The violent kids had absolutely nothing done to them . This has left me with a mistrust of " authority". But hey. I went back to do my exams, green mohawk,studded jacket,chains doc Martin's etc. A 5 ft teacher started mouthing off at me for not wearing uniform. ( I'd been expelled for a couple of months) I'm 6ft,so told him to f*£k off . He backed off. I passed all my exams. Went on to tech,got some more passes . I learnt more from my dad than the egotistical ****s that called themselves teachers.
Hairies v Skinheads, tribalism, micro mini skirts, sex & violence , ciggies, beer & music ..education was at the bottom of that list ..the 5th form ran the school..somewhere in North West Durham in the 70's ..and that's about as much as I'm telling !
Violent teachers - check
Daily pupil on pupil violence -check
I think I have PTSD from my schooling , I'm going to crowdfund so I can pursue damages from the Local Authority....and it always rained.
dovebiker - which school? I went to hillpark ( southside Glasgow in the 70s)
AS you can imagine as an english kid with a lisp I got it tight from the bullies but somehow found my way out of that - mainly by being popular with the girls!
One of the funniest things was hiring the bon accord for a 16th birthday party by telling them we were 18 - even got a late license and a bunch of teachers came along to it as well.
Had a teacher who despite not being a games teacher always seemed to be around at shower time. The boys were told he was NOT to be called Queer Beer so they duly cooperated and thereafter he was 'QB'.
I went to a comprehensive in one of the supposedly roughest areas of England, but it was quite pleasant really! I can only recall about 3 fights between pupils. In the first week there was a fight between a 5th year and a teacher (a little maths nerd) in the corridor in front of me, which we thought was a taste of things to come, but nothing like that ever happened again.
I mostly remember laughing like a drain at me and a mate listening to tapes of Monty Python (Eric the half a bee sticks in my mind for some reason); asking out girls (snogging Jenny in the corridor before class 😆 ); getting a solar plexus punch from a mate of my brother's in the year above (I think I'd asked his girlfriend out) and thinking I was going to die; travelling to other schools in the minibus to play rugby on white, frosted up pitches (I say playing, I just shouted a lot); and skiving off a lot in the 5th year cos I couldn't handle triple science lessons. Wasn't too bad really.
Think I could save time here by c&p’ing transcripts from Operation Winthorpe.
I was a little shit. My record was three visits to the headmaster in one day for:
- Throwing a condom full of water into the Matron's office
- Letting off a fire extinguisher
- Sliding a piece of marble up the marble-floored main corridor (it slides beautifully) and smashing the glass in a door.
Each time it was as part of a gang and all of us just denied it was us and said we didn't know who did it. How the hell I wasn't suspended I will never know.
Oh, we had a head-mistress when I started at my school and even when still at juniors we kids ahem, knew that one of her breasts was made of wood. There was a rhyme about it, but I can't remember her name. Oh yeah! Miss Gregory. Wouldn't it be funny..? Definitely true, I reckon.
Another ex milk monitor here, though at a time when it was taking the tops off glass bottles. So yes, we had ink wells too.
Oh I remember being sent off the football pitch for dissention. Unfortunately the ref was the PE teacher, so I got the slipper too. Not long after that I successfully skived off games for about two and a half terms before anyone noticed (or could be bothered to notice).
That wasn’t Speedy Bill Williams was it, or did all Latin teachers do that?
My one was Killer Booth so must be all of them
When I was at primary school, Fridays were fish fingers, beans and mash followed by chocolate pudding and chocolate sauce. When I was dinner monitor (which meant going to collect the food for the table of eight and serving it out to the younger kids) me and my co-monitor (Fiona - she was gorgeous) would always give ourselves the most fish fingers and all the sauce (I got the skin off the top too).
🙂
^^ Blimey, that triggered a memory from junior school, where we had dinner monitors (Called "servers"). They used to dish stuff out of tin pots. The memory is of a lad coming over to the girl server on our table and saying a load of filthy stuff to make her sick - she puked into the tin pot and the kid next to her was made to puke by the sight of her puking. Such japes!
They used to dish stuff out of tin pots.
Yeah same thing for me - everything was in battered old tin stuff - trays full of fish fingers, huge jugs full of chocolate sauce 🙂
When I went to primary school in The Wirral in the mid fifties we didn't have an inkwell for the first couple of years. I was given a slate. Wood edged. Clear on one side and with lines on the other so you could practise handwriting. Did my cycling proficiency badge on the huge tarmac school play area on 'roads' marked out with fire hoses.
Slate!! Blimey, I thought I was old.
Crappy comp in crappy redcar, the PE teacher used to have us playing football/rugby whatever the weather, some proper arctic conditions but it was okay for him as he used to drive up and down the sideline in he escort xr3i shouting out the (open 2 inches) drivers window.
I have tried to block out my school days, i went to all boys Grammar School, that had previously been a barracks and was still run like one.
We had a history teacher who was a hateful bloke, he used to speak so quickly you couldn't write down fast enough what he was saying, and you knew there would be a test at the end, someone once raised it and he said that you should write in bullet points, when asked how much detail these bullet points should have, he replied "they should be like a girls skirt, short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject"!
We used to have a weeks Army cadet camp and a weeks "adventure training", which i used to love, but we used to have a young Irish teacher and an older teacher that used to slope off to the pub once we'd got in our tents. I remember them coming back pissed as farts, and the irish teacher collapsing into tent to the point where his feet were stuck out, we had been chatting to a group of girls further over in the campsite, and managed to get a girl to crawl into his tent next to him, then as he awoke, she kissed and said "thanks for last night" and walked away, he was very quiet from then on in...
Was it Overchurch eddiebaby.
Secondary school was all fifth formers on heroin and threatened with being stabbed if you used the loos in morning break. Militant selling newspaper outside school gates whilst someone tied to the railings was set on fire. Careers advice in last year was how to sign on the dole. Amazing I’m such a well adjusted person really.
Slate!! Blimey, I thought I was old.
It wasn't all deprivation - that was just The Wirral. My last 6 months of primary school were spent in Oxfordshire. Still inkwells on the desks but mechanical calculators to play with. The school even had a box of Curtas to admire and learn. ! have no idea why a bunch of 10yr olds warranted that.
Was it Overchurch eddiebaby.
No, a quiet little village just outside Chester with just a primary school (4-10 yr olds). Pretty idyllic. Woods and fields and mates who lived on farms and had mini trials bikes. Happy days.
I went to school with Greg Davies. His psychotic school teacher act is about half the truth.
Comp in Bristol. Normal stuff, alcohol, bit of smoking, setting lockers on fire, snogging.
We had the perviest male PE teacher ever, and he would come into the girls changing rooms to go through to the gym hall. I think he was sacked for it eventually. and the Head had a nervous breakdown.
did you got to school in 1847?
My parents also started on slates, probably late 1940s, so they must have still been reasonably common then.
My parents went to school in the 50s slates and ink pots were still around, yes shock horror they were still in use in the 50s.
A very very very famous Celtic player I know shagged the female PE teacher when he was in 3rd year at school in Hamilton
Another, not quite as interesting as my previous post..
When I came back to the UK, I did my A Levels in a local Grammar School. Large student base, but I made friends quickly. Anyway, in my 6th form there were a small handful of very pretty girls all studying Art, as you do.
Two girls (very pretty) met two Iranian guys very shortly after leaving thier 1st yr A Levels, then promptly whisked off to Iran.
This was ohh 84/85’ish and we never saw them again.
Then a friend of mine from back then linked them to me on FB, so I took a gander at thier timeline..
Looks like each had a bunch of kids and a pretty hard life of it by all accounts..
All of the above. I went to a Benedictine Abbey public school near Reading, suffice to say they had a big kiddy-fiddling scandal and the school is now defunct, the buildings turned into apartments. My housemaster was a disgusting specimen, we called him Flob. Thankfully I survived all that with my honour intact.
I went to school with Greg Davies. His psychotic school teacher act is about half the truth.
Was he your teacher or a fellow pupil...?
"Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher" - yep I can remember being milk monitor in the mists of time, nothing untoward at school apart from the usual physical punishments. Telling my kids a teacher once called I me a spastic & a pratt seems to shock them enough 🤔
Pupil band mate and drinking mate
The children of Brechin circa the mid-90's had to deal with Mr. Farrell. I don't mind naming him as he was, in hindsight, a massive paedo.
When the teachers were out of class (he was the head) he used to stand behind the kids and fondle their ears(?!). As 7/8 years olds we just thought it was a bit odd, suspect if it happened now he'd get done pretty sharpish.
Telling my kids a teacher once called I me a spastic & a pratt seems to shock them enough 🤔
Yup, I got that too. "You run like a spastic!" from the PE Teacher.
God I hated games. The school was only interested in rugby, which I was not built for. I hated doing anything I was told if I couldn't see the point of it and there was no actual "teaching" involved - you were just sent out in the mud and rain and left to work out the rules for yourself.
"Peep!" The whistle blows again. What can it be this time? "You were standing forward of the school giraffe when the ball was not in play and it's a Thursday". Oh, OK. Scrum down.
Same with running or Cross Country. Off we all go; the fit ones disappear into the distance and the likes of me hit max heart rate in 30 seconds trying to keep up, resulting in a stitch and a long walk. Did dear teacher ever explain the idea of "pacing yourself?" Did he heck. He's in the staff room with a cup of tea.
My one was Killer Booth so must be all of them
Are we talking about a school in the middle of Chelmsford here?
All of the above. I went to a Benedictine Abbey public school near Reading, suffice to say they had a big kiddy-fiddling scandal and the school is now defunct, the buildings turned into apartments.
Douai Abbey?
Dovebiker, Shawlands academy?
Anyone ever read "Boy" by Roald Dahl?
That's where I went... and things were similar in the 1990's to the 1930's
Are we talking about a school in the middle of Chelmsford here?
Yep.
Speshpaul were you one of his mates who played the music room snorkel parka game?
Two teachers both male, one liked boys one liked girls, set up a disco in the rural studies lab, blackout blinds on all windows and doors,and only the more developed lads and girls allowed in for a fee or no fee if they couldlnt afford to pay, see me next week the usual comment, strangely benny b...n, also ran a photography class at lunch times, and just like the disco the lights would fail once in the dark room, leaving the room in darkness and it had been noted that the door handle always seemed to be in a place you wouldnt expect a door handle to be.
Another school we sold hundred of pounds worth of raffle tickets, strangely the money disappeared and a teacher got a new car a few weeks latter.
I went to school with Greg Davies. His psychotic school teacher act is about half the truth.
Blimey, My boss went to Uni with him and they are very good friends, he came down to Kent for his 50th birthday last weekend.
My school life was exceedingly boring in comparison to this. Chatting to a work colleague who’s only slightly older than me (~35) revealed that at the private school he was sent to corporal punishment was still a thing. Apparently he got thumped with a cricket bat by the headmaster.
I don’t know whether I’m just a modern snowflake but he seemed quite amused by my outrage that such a thing was considered acceptable in my own lifetime.
I remember when Mr Booth retired and someone scratched his new car. He stood up in assembly and offered a reward for any information. No idea if it was deliberate or not but I genuinely think he would have killed the person responsible if he’d ever found them.
Dovebiker, Shawlands academy?
No Woodfarm - it was burnt-down just before we arrived, so it was still Portakabins and a building site when we arrived. It was also the first year where clever kids weren't 'streamed' and sent to Eastwood - so academic excellence was basically O-grade woodwork and home economics. The rebuilt main block was reopened for the second year. One day, all the door locks were removed - a couple of pupils decided to break in and remove them all. The school managed to mix-up my twin brother and I for a couple of years and wondered why my brother couldn't reach his 'potential' whilst I was stuck in classes with the misfits. I ended up having to do an extra year at college to get the grades to go to university.
A very very very famous Celtic player I know shagged the female PE teacher when he was in 3rd year at school in Hamilton
Frank McAvennie?
Several things:
The Games Master showering with us (as a consequence the run back to the changing rooms from the pitches was done at a far faster pace than any of the organised running).
Rugby - totally pointless. There was a kid who was twice the size of anyone else throughout the first three or four years, and he could run a sub-12 second 100m at the age of 12. Whichever team had him always won.
Cycling in the fourth and fifth year - this was unaccompanied and the way they checked that you'd done the route was through your answering a series of questions about things at various points on the route. My mate John used to just look over the teacher's shoulder at the answer sheet when he collected the route, memorise the answers and we'd all go off and ride the local trails instead.
JP
I went to a comp in Gloucestershire in the early 80's.
Enjoyed it and the teachers were a mixed bag. There was only one genuinely crazy teacher - taught History and used to throw board rubbers at pupils who were not paying attention.
There was the standard issue creepy games teacher who always seemed to watch kids getting changed - we ripped the piss out of one of the lads when this teacher admired his new vest and y-fronts ensemble.
There was a youngish history teacher who used to sit at the side of the desk of the most attractive girl in the class when we were writing stuff rather than listening to him.
There was a music teacher who used to pop out in the middle of every lesson for a fag - they were 40 minutes ffs.
Most of the other teachers were fairly ok although there were a lot who were just going through the motions and medicating with a couple of beers at lunchtime.. In hindsight some of them were really decent people but I did not really appreciate that at the time.
Our headmaster spent time at her majesty's pleasure for getting too close to some of the boys on field trips. It was the yellow platform shoes get gave us a hint.
But mostly I remember playing endless football either at dinner time or 50 aside with tennis ball at break
My first proper school was in deepest, darkest Somerset. Two classrooms - big class and small class. We were 'taught' by the headmaster, an alcoholic WWII veteran who slept the entire afternoon. When he was awake, he encouraged activities along the lines of building hot air balloons for invertebrates, cutting up magazines to make bizarre collages along wildlife themes and once his patience ran out and the hangover kicked in, games of "...the next one who talks, gets everything on my desk thrown at him".
This has stirred up some memories. Our head was a 5ft scrawny sadist. I had the cane a few times. He'd run across his " study" & put all his might into trying to break your hand. The first time I had the cane he asked if I was left or right handed. I thought quickly & said left. ( I'm right handed) . He snapped the cane in the 3rd stroke. I had to go back the next day for the next 3 I couldn't write for a fortnight 🤣 I got 12 lashes for pointing out he had a semi during one of the beatings 🙄After I left. I saw him in the street. I'm 6ft & was a full on punk at the time. I went over to the withered old fart & said " You gave me the cane" from about 2 inches from his face. He literally shrank then scuttled off. Horrible little demon of a man 😐
Aged 8, moved to new primary school. One of those tiny village affairs, all the kids in the same room, one hideous teacher.
First experience of many was to be stabbed on the top of my head by a ballpoint pen, repeatedly, for not writing in cursive (something not taught at my previous school until the next year.
Drew blood.
My handwriting is appauling, is that surprising?
My school was were all the kids that had been expelled from other schools, or their behaviour was just too disruptive etc were sent.
Slipper, ruler, cane, flying board rubbers all pretty standard at our school. Kneeling on dice in the heads office if he was feeling particularly vindictive.
Once the deputy head who really wanted to be the head but would never make it, and nickname was 'nazi', was yelling and spitting inches from my face (I don't recall what I had done), I took exception to this and headbutted him, he punched me so hard I hit the deck. He left the room and told me not to leave, I left, nothing was ever said about the incident again.
Usual, booze, smoking, petty theft, shop lifting, bullying etc. A group of lads took to breaking into petrol stations at night and nicking all the sweets and fags to sell at school. Most of the loot was stashed around the school. One of the lads always took a dump on the floor of the petrol station as a calling card.
Had a supply maths teacher who came in all bravado "not taking any shit from you lot as I've worked in borstals". Challenge set. No one listened to him and played up all lesson. He only lasted a day. We got a lovely lady after that, she was so nice we didn't give her any shit, and she stayed for months, was sad to see her go.
A creepy 5th former was caught with a much younger lad behind the bike sheds forcing him to give him a hand job. The same 5th former nick my pants (after games/swimming or something) so I gave him a beating for that. Not a lot was said about it.
To balance all that there was some great teachers and if it wasn't for them I wouldn't be where I am today, I'd have gone right off the rails.
Ahhh at wilthorpe junior school in Barnsley ( whoops that slipped out) Mr Middleton the pe teacher tripped one of my classmates up on purpose breaking his arm and threw another against book shelves putting him in a collar. They didn't sack him as he was the only one that could teach pe. He did get suspended tho when he left one day in a rage and reversed into the headmaster car.
At the next school we had an English teacher who liked to touch herself while reading books. Best thing was she would sit legs akimbo on a desk during reading time. Poor Scott on the first row didn't know where to look.
All this pails into insignificance however at one of my workplaces. It still pains me to this day that I didn't shop the director to the police.....
Love the bit up there about cross country. A group of us used to follow the serious runners out of the school grounds, turn left and up to our mate's house for a cup of tea, then rejoin the run on its way back into school.
did you got to school in 1847?
I've just had to explain to my family why I was laughing out loud…
I loved school (grammar school in N Yorks). It taught me some good lessons, like the right time to sell. I lived in the dales and used to spend a lot of spare time on a mates dairy farm. One year (my first year at the school) we found dozens of small used plastic syringes, all of which had the name "Glaxo" on them (and which in retrospect had probably contained antibiotics). We washed them in a stream and I sold them for 20p each at school. We made a tidy profit before I sold off the rest in one job lot to another kid who wanted in on the action. He was nabbed by the deputy headmaster a day later and took the blame - even got a mention in assembly. It always pays to get out at the right time 😜
stabbed on the top of my head by a ballpoint pen
We had a teacher at primary school who would shove a pen in your back if you slouched. When she slipped on some spilled glue and dislocated her shoulder, none of the pupils were sad.