please empty your brain below
I went to the same school as the precocious DG about a quarter of a century earlier. I can remember a little of my first day including how I liked running my hands through the big tray of silver sand. Also a boy named Frank who was banging on the big wooden door of the classroom as he wanted to go home. I couldn't understand why.

DGD | 04.11.19 - 7:17 a.m. | #

Everything you’ve written rings true of my first day experience in the early 1970s. The induction, the activities and the Victorian building it all took place in. Even the staircase up to the area where the school’s television was located next to the head’s office! Being a September baby I started right at the beginning of the academic year just a week or so before my 5th birthday but can remember it like it was yesterday.

Phil | 04.11.19 - 7:20 a.m. | #

The kneejerk society of today wants to implement laws and change things as a result of single (or at least just a few) regrettable incidents. The result is that the children of today are much more restricted than we were. I don't suppose there were any more child snatchers or sexual predators around then than there are now.

Tim W | 04.11.19 - 7:53 a.m. | #

I had 5 first days at primary school.
1st South London 1950's glass and parquet floors
2nd Salisbury 2 nissen huts & a "modern" building,
3rd Portsmouth 2 nissen huts & a "modern" building
4th South London same again,
5th Glasgow, Victorian red sandstone.

The moves came at random times of the school year. As a result, I quickly learned was how to cope, when joining a group already known each other. This has been a help, not a hindrance since.

RosemaryT | 04.11.19 - 8:03 a.m. | #

My first day at school was in a Nissen Hut in Malta, best bit was the sand pit was in the Shooting Butts.

Richard | 04.11.19 - 8:04 a.m. | #

Born the same year as DG, but a September child, so presumably a school year behind. I am not sure if that has held me back in a deep psychological way, but my short-trousered 5-year old self was happy to stroll the 5 minutes around the block of neat, terraced houses back home on his own. My school, of that, I would imagine, similar Victorian vernacular, still stands there on the edge of one of the busiest roads in north London, and I can imagine the 'elf and safety mob have shown pollution levels are off the chart ...

PJS | 04.11.19 - 8:09 a.m. | #

I'm impressed and rather surprised that anyone can remember such extended detail about their first day at school. Given that most of us started 'proper' school at 5, I'd bet that for many the only memory of the day is one of vague emotional uncertainty. The rest is what mum or dad have told us since then; that we either marched bravely off into the unknown, or clung to them snivelling in terror.

I recall some various disconnected occurrences and people from my primary school days which are now more than 50 years past, but nothing in that sort of fine detail.

Arlu | 04.11.19 - 8:13 a.m. | #

I can remember very clearly my first day at school. What I CAN'T remember at all is the 1966 World Cup Final even though it took place just 5 or 6 weeks beforehand and my parents often told me that I was watching it on TV.

David | 04.11.19 - 8:26 a.m. | #

I too went to the same junior school as a parent. In fact my sister was taught by the same teacher. As a result she has always had better handwriting than me.
I can remember little about it though. The ceilings were made of some sort of compressed straw.

Malcolm | 04.11.19 - 8:30 a.m. | #

It's a nice memoir. While I did receive cane cuts to my hands when I said pitchers instead of pictures, I have really no idea how I received a reasonable education. My mother's was even better with less years, and her mother's was better still with even less years.

Andrew | Homepage | 04.11.19 - 8:37 a.m. | #

Pretty sure that my reception class teacher was the school's head when DG went there. Might have had an inkling of what to expect from the little four-year old.

DGD | 04.11.19 - 8:48 a.m. | #

Whilst not on the same level as DG, I remember in my first few weeks the wooden sticks used to assist with counting. Fortunately, these were never inflicted on most of the class. After all, I deduced, numbers were numbers and they didn't need to be represented by anything.

Two years later I got really irritated when taught how to do subtraction with carrying. This 'borrowing so you had to give it back' approached made no sense to me. Could the teacher not see that the 12 (one ten and two ones) on the top line was the same as 12 ones so you didn't need to resort to voodoo?

Pedantic of Purley | 04.11.19 - 9:10 a.m. | #

Being 5 years older than DG, a television room at school would have been an unbelievably futuristic concept.

kev | 04.11.19 - 9:26 a.m. | #

Mine was 62 years ago at Vernon Terrace school in Northampton, which, a few years ago, was still a school.

We were handed those little boxes made of very thick cardboard, and rivets in the corners, full of brightly coloured beads, one colour in each box, and told to thread them on a length of cord. Then eventually sort them back into the right boxes.
I liked the dark blue ones.
Those boxes were everywhere in shops and businesses, probably would last for years.
There was a big rocking horse in the classroom, I saw it used only once when a little girl got into floods of tears and couldn't stop, and she was sat on it until she calmed down. I was rather annoyed at the injustice - those of us who behaved and coped didn't get rewarded.

Joho | Homepage | 04.11.19 - 9:29 a.m. | #

I can recall only the idiotic school teachers and school staff...there seemed to be an assumption that no child could know anything that they hadn't told them. I could read long before reading was taught to us at school, (thanks mum). I could wield my knife and fork properly and place them down after use properly well before the idiot kitchen assistant tried to tell me to hold my knife like a pencil. They got the death stare from me, (aged <4). Mum was not impressed with the school when I told her later and, from then on, my grandmother came to get me at lunchtimes to have a proper meal at hers.

B | 04.11.19 - 9:43 a.m. | #

My first classroom is now part of "a stunning home of immense character offering versatile characterful accommodation with great living space over two floors" with a £¾m price tag.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 04.11.19 - 9:45 a.m. | #

My first day at school was in September 1989, parts of which I can remember quite clearly, such as sitting next to my soon-to-be best friend Mark, doing a jigsaw of a clown, and drawing some kind of squiggle on a piece of paper with a yellow crayon, but the teacher said she couldn't see the colour yellow, so I had to go over it in green which was very difficult. "What a memory you have!", my mother said when I told her this quite recently.

I can also remember a couple of months later being sat at home, in my school uniform, sat on the floor watching the small black and white television which we still had in the corner of the dining room, and seeing lots of people climbing up onto a wall, waving flags, cheering, and then for some reason appearing to break down the wall with sledgehammers. But my mother tells me I cannot possibly remember this as I was too young.

David Miller | 04.11.19 - 10:00 a.m. | #

I vaguely remember my first year, but the second year is vivid. Miss Salmon tweaking the hair by my ears if I got my times tables wrong. Ouch! However I can now work out now how much change I need in a shop without resorting to pressing buttons on the cash register.
Our TV was wheeled from class to class on a very tall platform on wheels.

scrumpy | 04.11.19 - 10:02 a.m. | #

I remember my first class, which was Primary 1 and 2 combined. 60 children presided over by Miss Little, with nobody so much as a teaching assistant in sight.

(Apparently that gigantic class, in 1973, was part of an educational experiment which was ditched a few years later. It was nothing to do with lack of funding or teacher shortages).

Alastair Scott | 04.11.19 - 10:34 a.m. | #

My school was built in 1931 but still had the draughty design and outside toilets!

Apparently when I started playgroup in the church hall at 2.5, I must have been a bit reluctant because my mum had repeatedly told me that I could play in the sand when I went and being a beach baby, this was my idea of heaven! Apparently I arrived back home a short while later announcing that I'd finished playing in the sand so had come home again!
This incident seems to spark a recurring theme during my early years at school! Precocious? Yeah!!

I was a bit of a free spirit - not intentionally naughty but somehow always on the wrong side of the school rules so had many trips to the headmistress. One time she came to me in my classroom and spanked me in front to everyone for telling a lie - I'd been caught on my way back from the toilets when a classmate saw me and asked for help in finding their new reading book, which were located outside the headmistresses office.
Obviously we were being too noisy as she came out to see what we were doing and asked if we were supposed to be there -both replying yes!

And again being mentioned by name in a whole school assembly (and everyone turning round to look at me as I tried to sink down into the parquet flooring) that if any child saw me lurking in the playground outside of playtime or after school, they should report me to a teacher, as I probably shouldn't be there!!

But my most enduring memory of infants school is absconding every time the school dentist arrived, usually with with the school nurse in hot pursuit! I only lived a couple of minutes down the road and so always ran home. If my mother didn't march me back I was usually found hiding behind a bush in the front garden!

Happy days!

Cornish Cockney | 04.11.19 - 11:08 a.m. | #

So many people have such clear mental pictures of their first day at primary school. I can remember very little of that whole year. Milk in small bottles. The mechanical pencil sharpener. The endless supply of SMP maths work cards came a bit later.

Andrew | 04.11.19 - 11:14 a.m. | #

My first primary, Fleetwood in Stoke Newington, has been converted to a des res though it was a gym until a couple of years ago.

The nearby decrepit house my parents bought in the early 50s for £500 was sold some years ago for £1 million.

The first school I went to as a cycling instructor was near Fleetwood. The buses still stand on the green on Rectory Road. People call the area Stokey now; I still think of it as Choked Spewington;)

Toni | 04.11.19 - 11:55 a.m. | #

Television room?

My second school acquired a radio while I was there in 1955 - I was seven. Upton Notts.

Mike D | 04.11.19 - 1:07 p.m. | #

Jigsaws- at school?

It’s from those days I got my visceral aversion to tinned peas, boiled cabbage, rice pudding and Dettol. My recollection is seeing the head more often for naughtiness - and the slipper looked enormous - but there were also good people and good times. My school survives remarkably unchanged. Photos on its website show the same rooms with the same radiators. Bet the lunch is better and the slipper long gone.

NickW | 04.11.19 - 2:06 p.m. | #

All our school books were marked Croydon Corporation, Town Clerk I was at Waddon Infants School in the mid 60's 5 days a week. I could already read, write & do basic maths before I started school. My mum tought me using new fangled "flashcards". I was quickly labelled as troublesome and disruptive at school.

Andrew Jarman | 04.11.19 - 5:08 p.m. | #

Ah yes, this takes me back to the early 70s. I was walking to and from school alone soon after starting infants (and initially going home for lunch). Only a few minutes walk but it would be unheard of today. I do remember a teacher at my junior school (8 mins walk away) one day being a little surprised to discover I had my own front door key at the age of 10, but otherwise it didn't seem that unusual. How times change.

David | 04.11.19 - 6:05 p.m. | #

I too could already read before I went to school. My second primary school was in Egypt, a school for Forces children in a military camp. The class was very large and mixed ability, and the teacher made use of me by putting me in a corner to listen to others read aloud, and correct them if necessary.
Then when I was back in England on my first day at my 3rd primary school I remember being in the headmaster's study with two teachers while they discussed which class I should go in because of my patchy education so far. But I never had to help other pupils with their reading again.

amber | 04.11.19 - 6:09 p.m. | #

Takes me right back to the mid-1950's. My Infants School was in the same road as my family home, in the then County Borough of East Ham. A solidly Labour run Borough which put a strong emphasis on education, and I've always appreciated the chances given to me by them.

Like everyone else we walked / ran to school. No school-run in those days as hardly anyone in our street had a car, except the Ford workers.

There was no concept of Pre-School. You just turned up on the appointed day. If I'd been born a week later I'd have been in a different year.

Anyway I'm glad I was at school then rather than today. We were just allowed to be kids, not educational units to be managed, monitored, measured and assessed against educational and behavioural norms laid down by hordes of educational "experts".

Thanks for the post DG, allowing me to take and share a walk down my own memory lane.

IanD | 04.11.19 - 9:46 p.m. | #

I genuinely remember the horrible realisation on the morning of the second day of school that this wasn't a one off thing I could try and then go no thanks but something I was going to be stuck with doing day after day for years and years.
(Fortunately I was ill for quite a lot of the first two years of school, this probably didn't help much with my socialisation but did mean I got to avoid 2 years of tedium)(To be honest I think there was a bit of collusion here in that I didn't like school and my mum, who was not terribly emotionally robust, liked having me around, though I was a sickly child)

John Styles | 04.11.19 - 10:11 p.m. | #

"Are you the little girl who keeps on hitting Brenda?" asked a mother in the playground. I don't remember but I have a horrible feeling I might have been. Brenda and I became best friends later.
We all adored Miss Drew, our first teacher. She walked with a spring in her step and she had bouncy hair.

Great Aunt Annie | 05.11.19 - 7:56 a.m. | #

The overriding memory of my first day of nursery, was and is the smell of the red playdough that I was immediately drawn to on entering the classroom. I remember starting to play with it while my mum spoke to the teacher and not being particularly daunted by the huge building and multitudes of bigger children. This would have been September 1980. Lovely East end victorian building, with the shiny parquet floors, kindly teachers, and lots of fun learning. The kids were more rough and tumble than I was used to and a couple of girls were somewhat mean in the years that followed. But I made good friends, boys and girls, until I moved schools a few years later.

E1W-er | 05.11.19 - 1:28 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy