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

I have nothing but bad memories of junior school - I hated every minute of every day.
I think our headmaster had a policy of employing the most spiteful, bullying teachers he could find.
I particularly remember a Miss Orping, who just loved beating us children with a huge yard rule. She would work herself into an absolute frenzy when hitting a child, and usually drew blood. She was never reported - I guess we were all too scared to say anything.
Grammar school was a little better - no beatings - but it was a prestigious school, and as a scholarship girl of working class parents, I was bullied for being ‘horribly common’.
It was heaven to leave, altho’ thankfully I had done well in my exams and was able to go on to college. It was wonderful to be treated like a human being and to mix with normal girls instead of nasty little snobs.

I’ve just remembered that at my lovely infants’ school (which I have posted about already) lunches were at a shop in the village. We went by private bus and took over the first floor over a cake shop. It was a small private school and there were only about 40 of us in all. Some of the food was quite strange, but there was was still rationing and I suppose it was difficult. Once a wasp sat on my head for what seemed like ages, and I was determined to appear brave although I was actually quite scared.

I went to infants school first in Warminster, then Donnington, I enjoyed them both immensely, learning to read and write such happy schools followed by junior school in Catterick then on to Bordon, again such happy schools we were taught to write in italics, I still do, I loved these junior schools it was such a wonderful environment.

Funny the things you remember, rolling the cow gum glue into balls that bounced and the smell of the coke fumes when the caretaker stoked up the heating in the cellar. Playing two ball or doing handstands in the playground against the girls toilet wall. The tuck shop!

I also started senior school in Bordon, then on to schools at RAF Gatow and lastly RAF Gutersloh.

I disliked all my senior schools, I have some awful memories, I found it hard to make friends, I was and still am painfully shy and couldn’t wait to finish my exams and leave.

Another Service child who went to 7 schools before I was 11.
At each new school they did everything differently, how to do multiplication, what they called games, what style of writing, how they spoke.
To cover my shyness I showed off and was always the new peculiar girl who had lived abroad and knew nothing about each new place.
Despite all the upheavals my brothers, sister and I all went to grammar schools (3 each for the boys, 2 each for the girls)

A small village C of E school with 65 pupils in total. Miss Edwards taught the infants, then there were two other classes, Standards 1 and 2, then the headmistress, Mrs Fleming, taught Standards 3 and 4. I took my 11+ a year early and out of 9 of us, 7 passed (the other 2 had missed lots of time through ill health. We had a turtle stove in winter, where we dried our clothes on arrival at school and which thawed our mid-morning milk. The meals were brought in and really were horrendous. We had lots of radio lessons, a favourite being about nature study where generally a countryman (Mr Collins, as I remember) told a young lad, Tony all about country life - birds, animals etc. Then there was "People, Places and Things, Time and Tune, Music and Movement etc. The vicar came in every Wednesday and talked to us (sadly he wasn't very inspiring!) and we all went to Sunday School every week, although I suspect that was mainly because if we didn't go to Sunday School, we wouldn't be able to go to the annual picnic. Apparently in my first year, at Sports Day (I was not a very athletic child, although I always did my best and always finished (generally about 3 races after everyone else)) I saw the other kids getting packets of sweets as prizes and went up and demanded my sweeties. Our school uniform was a bottle green gym slip with a white blouse, dark green cardigan if wanted, green blazer and green/yellow tie. Then there was the ubiquitous dark green beret.

I went to a small village school, hated school milk, I can't drink milk or eat yogurt even now. Going to Headmaster's house to watch tv programmes (can't remember what it was now) in my final year. Making daisy chains sitting on the grass in the Summer. Making slides down the playground in the Winter. Passing my 11+ but my parents were advised by my Headteacher that I would do better at a Comprehensive School instead of Grammer School, wise man.

Secondary School was 11 miles away, went in a mini-bus. Enjoyed Domestic Science, Maths & English. Hated PE especially Hockey although I did enjoy the Gym. No cane at my school so no bad memories although lines were a form of torture. I had some very good teachers especially my English teacher (a fellow Monty Python fan), I love reading & constantly have a book/magazine/newspaper by my side

*Primary school memories*:

My first teacher - Mrs Silver - a lovely lady who was probably about forty, but I thought she was ancient.

My Nan walking me back and forth to school each day and also coming to the playground fence with sweets at playtimes. No wonder my teeth have suffered!

Nobody understanding what I said because I had quite a strong Welsh accent. I quickly exchanged it for Cockney.

Being slapped across the hands with a ruler and made to stand in the corner on only my third day for talking.

Afternoon naps on canvas beds; Haliborange tablets; bottled milk and also orange juice.

Outside toilets that were always freezing cold and the door locks didn't work.

Being told off because I could already read and write quite well before I started school, thanks to my Nan. I was made to feel I was doing it all wrong and thereafter I dreaded having to read aloud or read to the teacher.

A lovely teacher from New Zealand who taught us Maori songs and a dance which we performed in grass skirts and flower garlands. She also had a monkey hand puppet which 'helped' her tell us stories each afternoon.

I hated PE and games. Never been sporting and I'm not competitive.

Country Dancing, I loved it. Also Scottish dancing.

I remember being envious of a pretty girl in another class who had dancing lessons and brought her tap shoes to school to show off her dancing skills in the playground every day.

I remember being teased all through school because I didn't have a Dad. I was brought up by an aunt & grandparents. As I got older I got into lots of fights over it.

*Junior School memories*:

A dinner lady who always called me Tuppence. No idea why.

A really kind English teacher (Mr Blakely I think) who helped me get over my fear of reading aloud.

Woodwork lessons where we carved small figures of animals from Balsa wood. Health & Safety wouldn't allow it today.

Learning how to make handmade books, something I've recently rediscovered 60 years later.

Needlework lessons in the summer when we sat out on the flat roof of one of the classrooms. The teacher didn't like me because I was already able to do cross stitch (again thanks to my Nan) and when I told her she was doing something wrong she snatched my work off me and threw it on the floor! My Nan was furious and complained to the headmistress. The teacher hated me even more after that.

Climbing up the outside wall of one of the buildings in a chimney recess by pressing our hands and feet against the bricks to see who could get the highest. I nearly made it to the top (about 20 feet) and then couldn't get down and the caretaker had to rescue me. But the boys were impressed.

I remember the Gypsy children who attended our school for the summer term each year while their families camped on nearby wasteland. The boys had long hair, earrings and never wore shoes. One boy played the accordian. Some of them lived in traditional horsedrawn caravans and my granddad would take me to visit them after school. I remember the beauty of the caravans and how welcoming they were. When school finished in July they all moved on to the West Country. Eventually the land was built on and we never saw them again.

I remember an incident that happened in Primary school that really affected me. I was about eight and took my beautifully executed cross stitch to the teacher. As I was standing beside her she said. ‘Do you always breathe as heavily as that?) Move away!’ Up to that point I hadn’t noticed and neither had my parents . I later found out that I had bad adenoids and a deviated septum.
As a result I would hold my breath whenever I was standing close to her or any other adult.
I can now think that it was a really cruel thing to say to a child.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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!!!???

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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!

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.