please empty your brain below
School leaving age was 15 when I attended so beards did not come into it!

John | 26.04.21 - 8:04 a.m. | #

I wonder whether thing 21 might be "Full details of school rules and policies are published so that parents, alumni and others can discuss and criticise them"

Malcolm of Kent | 26.04.21 - 8:22 a.m. | #

It would greatly help public understanding if schools could have pupils/6th formers and colleges/universities could have students!

Ian | 26.04.21 - 8:23 a.m. | #

So many memories triggered (mostly happy to be honest)!

"Corridor code" immediately reminded me of a phase of using segs (Blakeys). Strutting and clunking down the corridors seemed to induce an air of superiority over the juniors; I seem to remember they were banned after a while. What was definitely banned was the use of syringes as mini water pistols; a school mate's sister who worked in a hospital had procured a load of them.

Tim | 26.04.21 - 8:48 a.m. | #

'Everything you buy in the canteen is digitally recorded so your parents can see what you're eating'.
Acclimatising future generations to the surveillance society.

'Cashless canteen' - one positive, as it reduces the chance of theft, but everyone having a phone sort of cancels that out.

Foreign languages - It's odd that in London - where at least one second language is common, that there isn't more of a push to get the pupil a qualification in that language.

Still Anon | 26.04.21 - 9:08 a.m. | #

What! You had a shared terminal connected to a computer. Luxury!

We had to make do with a paper coding sheet which was sent off by post and a week later you got a list of your errors - if you were lucky.

Pedantic of Purley | 26.04.21 - 9:25 a.m. | #

The length of the school day. We had an afternoon break and the school day finished at 4 pm.
My children did not have an afternoon break and therefore their school day finished at 3.30pm. Same number of hours during the day only spread differently.
Also in the winter terms with an earlier finish children are not coming home when it is too dark.

Sara | 26.04.21 - 9:30 a.m. | #

Most of these resonate with me. The big exception being school uniforms. I never wore a uniform at school as was council policy throughout Sheffield in the 80s and early 90s. If you did see a school pupil in uniform you knew they must go to either a private school or a Catholic school, and so were picked on as a result. Now though most schools seem to have a uniform but it's just a branded sweat/polo shirt and black trousers.

Anders | 26.04.21 - 10:17 a.m. | #

> a bleak hall with wallbars, ropes and a vaulting horse stashed in the corner

That memory still gives me a horror of gyms nearly 50 years after leaving school

*shudders*

Andrew | 26.04.21 - 10:19 a.m. | #

Having had kids who have gone through the system more recently, there were no surprises, but many bittersweet memories resurfaced!

Nowadays 6th formers (both in school and college) have to carry an ID lanyard.
In some 6th form colleges it opens the security gates to let them in - or as I discovered with of one of mine, to keep them in - they can be disabled after arrival to stop them bunking off again!!

Cornish Cockney | 26.04.21 - 10:31 a.m. | #

Never understood how the shorter school days were an improvement. If your school letters were carried home in a briefcase, it must've been a "posh" school. Our bags were either the heavy vinyl type favoured by 10-pin bowlers, or logo'd sports bags with a shoulder strap - until the strap inevitably broke during some playground rough-housery!

Frank F | 26.04.21 - 10:47 a.m. | #

I really wanted to study German, because my older brother did and we'd learned together a bit. But I was randomly allocated French, and wasn't allowed to change.

R2 | 26.04.21 - 10:54 a.m. | #

Also I'm surprised you didn't cook at school. I'm a few years older than you, and we had Home Economics which some (mainly, but not exclusively girls) took as an O Level. Food Technology is a laughable title for what my offspring did in more recent times.

Frank F | 26.04.21 - 10:57 a.m. | #

Do the girls also play rugby, or is it a boys' school? My biggest complaint of school was that PE for boys always involved mud, mud and more mud, along with plenty physical violence (pushing and kicking), generally in the cold and rain, while the girls stood around in the warm clean gym occasionally catching or throwing a ball. Oh, and boys had compulsory communal showers while girls (reportedly) had individual shower cubicles.

Alan | 26.04.21 - 11:13 a.m. | #

PoP - What! You had a paper coding sheet which was sent off by post to an actual computer. Luxury! We had to make do with log tables, tables of sines, cosines and other functions - if you were lucky. Otherwise you had to write them yourself. It’s

Bob L-S | 26.04.21 - 11:38 a.m. | #

We did have the odd bearded sixth-former back in the 60s, and even one grey-haired one! The digital monitoring is truly scary though.... The main thing that unsettled me on a return visit - and this was back in 2001 - was that the bike shed had been replace by a drama studio...

cau1khead | 26.04.21 - 12:32 p.m. | #

A lot of familiar stuff there. I had long forgotten the weekly nightmare of PE. Winter matches of rugby in the rain and the mud were definitely the worst, with the rugby scrum the pinnacle of the horror.

Jack | 26.04.21 - 1:30 p.m. | #

If you want to see how much things have changed, watch early Grange Hill. Casual racism, kids falling off a roof and dying (to indifference from both teachers and pupils), regular beating of children.
I watched it at the time and it wasn't remotely shocking then, but some aspects are now.

Will | 26.04.21 - 1:55 p.m. | #

If it was what was Rickmansworth Grammar School in my day that you went to I can relate to the comments from my time there nearly 20 years earlier.

Tones | 26.04.21 - 4:28 p.m. | #

DG, my son went to the same school as you. He left the 6th form 10 years ago.
As best as I can remember or know of; 9 or 10 of your list has been introduced since he left.

MikeK | 26.04.21 - 5:06 p.m. | #

I went to the same school as DG but more than twenty years earlier. As a result I have a lovely set of school reports, printed on good quality paper and filled in by individual teachers using fountain pens. Worth keeping even they were rather critical at times.

DGD | 26.04.21 - 7:15 p.m. | #

I wanted to learn German at school, they refused to let me unless I took French as well so I refused to take part in the lessons. I got dumped in the Spanish class instead much to the annoyance of the Spanish teacher

Andrew Jarman | 26.04.21 - 10:31 p.m. | #

Taking a look, not much appears to have changed at my old secondary school since I left, though average class sizes in Years 7 to 11 have increased slightly from 30 to 32.

They still have six houses, still with 76 x 40 minute periods over a two week timetable (with early finish on Tuesdays and Thursdays).

But blazers are now optional, so you have to have the school badge on your jumper as well.

Barry S | 27.04.21 - 7:42 a.m. | #

My school got knocked down and replaced with something completely different and a new name not connected with the previous one

Rachel | 28.04.21 - 6:32 a.m. | #

When I was at secondary school in the mid-late 1980s we moved to "Continental" scholl hours. We still kept the same periods of education, but a lot of the "fluff" was cut or shortened (morning/afternoon registration periods, break times etc...) so that we could leave school much earlier.

I suspect your old school has done something along these lines too, I can't imagine anyone cutting down on schooling in these days of league tables!

Mark | 29.04.21 - 11:42 a.m. | #











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