We all have `em....... Primary schoolday memories,so how about sharing?

Did none of you have the nit nurse? You can tell what sort of primary school I went to
The best part for me was the pre school (4-5) this was a completely self contained unit where we had our own indoor toilets and a huge fireplace with a real coal fire.
We each had our own little camp bed that was brought out after lunch for our little nap.
It was all downhill after that.

There were still big air-raid shelters in the grounds of my infants' school and we were 'not allowed' to go near them.

Yes, I remember the nit nurse.
And the little camp beds in nursery. I remember having a nose bleed when I was in nursery and one of the assistants putting a cold key down my back.

I don't remember ever having a nit nurse but a dentist came once and I had to go and have several teeth out with gas (terrifying!) As an only child who hadn't played with other children before I was completely traumatised by school. But in those days no body bothered, they just expected you to grow out of it because "it never did the rest of us any harm". I do remember being terrified of the man who taught the top class at primary school. He seemed so serious and strict. When I got into his class I found he was lovely and we got on really well together. I was sorry to leave.

If we’re going back further than junior school:

I went to a very small nursery school from the age of three, where I remember we practised blowing our noses. Our teacher kept her handkerchief in her knicker leg.

My marvellous, slightly eccentric infant school, not connected to either the nursery or my junior school, influenced me more than any other school I went to.. Again, a very small school. We learnt French and sang lovely folk songs. Sometimes our headmistress would sing to us. She was a professional singer who sometimes appeared on Children's Hour on the wireless. She sang mostly folk songs, and was one of those people who can really put a song across. I was spellbound by the tragic story of Lord Randall.

We also had a wonderful lesson called Picture Study, where we studied reproductions of great works of art. None of your kiddie stuff here. We had Leonardo da Vinci and Dutch Interiors. I kept my book of Pieter de Hooch paintings for many years.

I was still there in the dreadful snowy winter of 1947. Our headmistress heated our milk on the old-fashioned range in her kitchen. Sometimes it would boil over, and the smell of burning milk still reminds me of that lovely school.

My handwriting problem was different from some here. I had dreadful trouble with the looped style, and when I got to junior school and we did Marion Richardson writing I was fine!

I could go on for ever, so I had better stop.

We live in half a converted village Board school and this thread has brought the lives of the former pupils to life. I had never really thought about the minutiae of their lives.

Our front door was the Girl's Entrance and, although our neighbour's 'half' is much smaller than ours, I always envy them their much nicer Boys' Entrance.

Lots of people (including one Sil and one Dil) talk to us about their time at school here but, sadly, no-one we have met has any memories going back before the late 1940s

I also remember the dreaded nit nurse, queueing up to go in, and the children with nits crying as they came out.I was told I had nits ( and didn’t believe it) but turned out I really did. I refused to cry though, being me.

Lucky you lot with nits. I had impetigo.

I started infants just after I was 5 and remember on the first day wondering why my friend was crying for her Mum - I wasn't bothered. The school was about one mile away and my Mum shared the school run (walking of course in those days) with two other nearby Mums. I remember when I was 6 or 7 I was an early reader and was reading aloud advertising hoardings, street names etc. on the way home and being told I was showing off. I liked my teachers and the lessons but hated school dinners. I missed playtimes when I was quite unable to force the awful food down.

The other thing I remember, being in Kent, that we did Kent tests every year through Junior school which went towards our 11+ results. Every else seems to just have done an exam at 11. We then had a choice of any school in Kent if we passsed our 11+, as well as some grant maintained/private schools in inner London.

I went to a small C of E Primary school. It was a long walk to get there and by the time I was 11 I was taking a group of younger children with me- we used to count all the way and see the highest number we reached! My most vivid memory was on Prize Day( we only ever had one!) I got a Service
Prize aged 8 - I was disgusted - I wanted one for being clever! The thing I liked most was Country Dancing - years later I taught it! The Service tag followed me to Grammar School where in my last year I got another Service Prize - I wasn’t any happier about it at 18 as I was at 8☹️- it sounded dull and unexciting!

I remember the teacher, Mrs Pickles, complaining of a 'smell' and she insisted that every one of us stood up, one at a time - we'd been sitting on small chairs in a semi-circle. Eventually the source of the smell was revealed - obviously one of the girls (not me!) had done a poo on her seat.
I don't know why the poor girl didn't ask to go to the toilet but I imagine that she was scared - Mrs P was rather fearsome.
That's the first memory which always comes to mind of my infant school days.

My primary school was a brand new post war miracle of glass and brick; parquet floors, lovely pink tiled loos, blue and white marble stairs led up to the hall (steps but no risers - I was terrified of falling through the gap and wonder if they are still in that defiance of health and safety design) I was so happy there; I remember us all building a huge snowman in the playground with Miss Jones, and tramping through the snow to look at a pillar box and read the times that post was collected - about four times a day I think! Lots of singing to the piano, country dancing, and good friends. I then went on to a Victorian girls only school with outside loos that were so spidery and cobwebby that I never did use them - hung on until I got home.

My childhood was similar ninathenana, my infant school was in Kenya and involved a trip in a military truck there and back. I loved that school. There were a couple of schools in Germany after that, Hannover and Fallingbostel, I can't remember a single thing about those schools! Next was a posting in the UK, Aldershot followed by the best experience ever for a young teenager - we were posted to Woomera, Australia. It was fabulous and I have very fond memories. I'm still best friends with Sue who came back to the UK just after us, that's almost 50 years ago!

Oh yes, Nitty Nora the bug explorer, remember her Petra.
Worse though were our trips to the local clinic to see the dentist, always women, remember the drill on a stand with belt whizzing round, on one occasion the woman put it just inside my mouth and ordered me not to move, she then went and stood in doorway with another women, watching me and laughing "till I started to wriggle out of the seat and she came over and slapped my legs. Another occasion they removed a tooth and it wouldn't stop bleeding and my older sister took me to the hospital and I had stitches in my gum,
Think it was all to do with new NHS. system and training new dentists.
Some of the teachers were I'm sure sadists, remember well not being able to write down a number, too many or not enough noughts and the Teacher, a Mr. Fry hit me lots of times on the palm with the edge of a ruler all the time looking at me to see the effect, I recall forcing myself not to cry -- Oh happy days of school!

My most vivid memory of primary school ,I started at the age of five, was losing my best friend in tragic circumstances the memory with me to this day. She was a pretty child and I wished that I had her blonde curly hair instead of straight dark hair my mother insisted was tied back with an enormous bow.Coming back to school after the summer holiday we were informed of a boating accident. The whole family were involved and I would never see my friend again . My parents also told me after seeing it in our local paper.I do not recall ever being as friendly with anyone else while at that same school.

Primary school memories of Mrs. Holyoake our sewing teacher who hit me across the knuckles with the sharp side of a wooden rule...EVERY lesson ... because I didn’t like sewing at all and preferred maths and English as worthwhile subjects. Every time I pick up a needle and thread now to do the simplest job my hand starts to shake and strangely ‘hurt’. I did manage to see up the seam of my grandsons’ school pullover yesterday .... won’t give the ghost of that teacher the satisfaction!!! In secondary school things improved slightly and my favourite subject was science ... I was completely hooked on it and couldn’t wait for double-science to come around on the timetable every week. Till I was thirteen and us girls were told our science lessons would be replaced with ( you’ve guessed it) sewing and cooking lessons....so we could ‘pander’ to lazy men all their lives. I screamed inside my head for a long long time. I gave up on everything then. I hate sewing and I abhor cooking ....and I’ve been doing it 47 years for a extremely lazy husband. He’s absolutely no good at science either....is that what they call irony!!!???

I started school in February following my fifth birthday at the local council school, where yes, the nit nurse came once a week and the School attendance officer came in too and got a list of boys and girls who were absent and went to check whether they were ill, or just being kept at home.

No-one would play with me there, because I was the doctor's daughter, so a year later, when this finally dawned on my parents I was sent to an all girls private school.

I loved school, though looking back not all of our teachers were very good. At both schools there were two women who had clearly chosen the wrong profession as they disliked children!

Some of the teachers at the private school were widows with very little to live on, and I don't think they had any formal qualifications, some of them were marvellous teachers all the same, but one who taught beginners' French and Scripture was dreadful - even as 7 year olds we found her ridiculous. Poor woman, she must have had a horrible time.

I had rarely had any contact with other children except my 2 younger brothers when I started school in 1959, aged 5 and 2 months. I was shy and didn't make friends easily. I was nervous of the teacher and afraid to answer any questions in case I got it wrong. I remember the hot varnish smell of the desks when we had to put our heads on our arms and have an 'afternoon nap'. I never managed to go to sleep. I remember the day I was called up to the teacher's desk to read from my Janet and John primer, and the words actually made sense. This was such a powerful moment for me that it has stuck in my mind as the day I could read - I wasn't yet six. By the age of seven I had a love of reading and have never gone a day since aged 9 when I haven't been immersed in a book for some of the time. I remember the oak tree at the bottom of the field and how I loved to be under it, looking up through the branches in the sunlight. I remember the term I stayed to school dinners - all of us at long tables on benches and having to say 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful' before we ate. I remember not much liking PE because I am not competitive and hated heights, so the climbing bars terrified me. I remember 'Time and Tune' where we sang from a book to the piano accompaniment - this was one of my favourite lessons. My love of singing has persisted, although I'm only averagely musical - I sing with an amateur choir nowadays. I remember loving to write stories, but also that my writing was very bad, and I had to keep on practising it and teachers were always pulling me up for untidy work. I remember the horrible smell of school milk, and the white paper straws we drank it with - during my first term it made me sick one morning, and thereafter I was excused from having it! I remember bean bags, and loving the feel and floppiness of them as you hurled them into a bucket. I remember the joy of seeing Mum waiting for me at the gate at the end of the school day.

One memory I have of primary school was the radio programme "Music and Movement". We used to take part in the school hall. It was during one of these sessions that the programme was interrupted with the news of the death of King George 6. The programme was then suspended and the teachers weren't sure what to do with us, so we were all ushered back to the classroom, where we stayed until lunchtime.

How I have loved reading your varying accounts of those early years of your schooling.
It puts my time there to shame as there was nothing outstanding about it at all.
Yes we had the nit nurse and dentist visit,the latter I recall remarked how sound my teeth were and that memory has stayed...........though certainly no longer that good!
A lot of differing tales indeed and it has proved quite an eye opener.
Keep `em coming!!!

I went to fourteen different schools in thirteen school years and the longest I was at any one was two years.

What I remember from the whole experience was that every time I started a school the other children always thought the way they thought and did things was the only way in the world whereas I knew differently. It gave me an outsider's perspective.

I coped by being such an avid reader that I virtually taught myself any subject you can pick up by reading alone. The ones I came adrift with were the hierachical ones where you need to know one bit to understand the next. Luckily I wasn't stupid and came top of the class in various subjects and twice top in everything.

I started at a convent school and remember the nuns were lovely. They gave out sweets and pictures of Jesus and Mary for good work. I loved that.

I remember sitting in a 'double' class of both five and six year olds. While we were being instructed to make sticks and circles with our pencils the older class were taught proper writing so I abandoned the sticks and got writing instead.

I remember a homesick nun in Australia talking about Ireland and the lovely colours of Autumn leaves.

I remember:-

-Taking the P.E teacher's red setter for a walk at lunchtime

-Making a dire blouse which everyone was required to sew but no one wore

-Learning to scrub dishcloths (that's come in handy!)

-Falling asleep in Science in the last lesson the year we did double summer time

-The day the boys set fire to the lab and smoke was pouring down the corridor

-Sitting in a classroom when the teacher left the room , the only quiet child, writing about Cowper's 'The River' as chaos reigned and a chair was thrown out of the window

-Viewing an eclipse with pinholes in card

-Suddenly 'getting' Jane Austen's irony and thinking it the best thing ever

-Similarly, finding Shakespeare

Lots more, of course. I ended up teaching English.

We had a nit nurse too. I'd forgotten about that.
I loved my primary school, just at the bottom of our road.
It was wartime so we all carried our gas masks in bags over our shoulders and we often had air-raid practice where we all had to walk-not-run to the bomb shelter lined with sand-bags.
Every afternoon we had to lie on rush matting on the floor and go to sleep. I never could though and can remember lying there watching teacher walking around us.
The only thing I was any good at was reading, so I often had to read out loud in front of the class, which I hated!
Once I ate a toffee in class and was hit sharply on the palm of my hand with a ruler and it hurt a lot. It worked though as I never again ate sweets in class.
They were mainly happy days and I remember crying on the day I left.

I left the local county primary school when I was 7 and went off to a fee paying boarding school. I feel sorry for myself being sent away so young but thank goodness for small mercies, as although I completely hated every terrible second I was a boarder it was better than where I was before. At the primary school we had a bi*ch of a teacher who went round boxing ears for no reason - not that there could ever be a reason to do that to anyone. She boxed mine a couple of times and the pain is still with me, I swear. We had lift up desk lids which another teacher decided I shouldn't have up, pushed it down and it fell across my nose, giving me 2 black eyes. There was a girl in my class who was made to stand on a chair and have the backs of her legs repeatedly whacked with a cane because she asked a question without putting her hand up, and a boy who was wedged tightly into a corner facing the walls ALL DAY with no lunch because he said to the teacher his willy hurt. We were under 7 at the time and I remember the trauma of it all as though it was yesterday.

I was only at my first infant school for a couple of terms because a new school opened closer to home and quite a lot of children were moved there. I became friendly with a girl in the first class who didn’t appear to turn up when the weather was bad. This puzzled me for ages and I finally mentioned it at home. My father said that it was possibly because she didn’t have suitable shoes or clothing and that it had been a common occurrence when he was a child. I’ll never know if it was true as she didn’t move schools with me. Hardly anyone went to school by car and so in bad weather you sat all day with wet shoes or with sore legs from wellies that rubbed them!

I went to the local RC primary school in London where a Nun was headmistress and always enjoyed my time there. From that school I went on to a Convent, again in central London and found the Sisters there to be lovely women who worked hard to encourage our studies and ambition. I wouldn’t have swapped schools for anyone and consider myself very lucky to have attended both schools.