Terrifying and sadistic
I was a boarder at Arnold School, Blackpool from 1955 to 1958. Teachers used to roam the corridors at night looking for people out of bed (or in the wrong one), carrying a slipper with which to administer frequent beatings. Our highlight of the week was listening to the Top 10 on Radio Luxembourg on Sunday night with the radio turned very low.

There was a regulation bath every week. There was no privacy, and you had to watch your back whilst undergoing this hazardous procedure.

Weekends were times of almost unbearable boredom, unless you had 'leave out' with your parents or the parents of friends. The best bit was after the enforced attendance at church on Sunday mornings, when we retreated to the nearby coffee bar with a Woodbine or two carefully saved for the occasion.

The only teacher I remember with any affection was the art teacher, who had genuine empathy and humour, who spoke to us as human beings ...

There was the merciless 'combined' (ie army) cadet force, which meant perfect blanco, polished brass, soap inside trouser creases and all the classic bull on Friday afternoons.

Occasionally there was British Bulldog in the gym - a terrifying and sadistic 'game'. It was a miracle that no one suffered serious injury. Then there was the 'plonker' craze. You rolled some foil into a cylinder and squeezed the middle. In one end, you put soggy chewed paper, then flung it at the ceiling, where it remained for ever.

One day, a lad stole one and sixpence from someone's pocket, and the head, with great seriousness, announced his expulsion at assembly. You would think he had committed murder. After that, he was ragged mercilessly by his erstwhile 'friends' - so unjust and over the top and it brought out the worst in everyone.

Tremendous benefit
I went to a grammar school in the mid-1950s. I was born in 1941. My father was a miner and I lived in a typical pit village near Chesterfield. We had no books in our house. I learned to read by reading the Daily Herald and Treasure Island at school. We were by today's standards poor, I suppose, and living in 'poverty', although we never regarded it as such.

I have realised, perhaps not soon enough, how wonderful the opportunities I was given were. Not for me a life of working down the mines, as did virtually all my contemporaries, but a career in industry. My schooling was marvellous, and I have never failed to recognise how fortunate I was to be born with a reasonable brain.

School dinners never seemed awful to me. In fact, food in that era was so plain, at least for our family, that I thought they were quite tasty.

I was proud to wear my school uniform, and my parents, I believe, were proud to see me wearing it. Few people from our village went to a grammar school. All the teachers in their gowns, and the whole ambience of the place was grand.

It did not turn me into a snob as you may think from the above. I believe I benefited from my grammar school education in the 1950s tremendously. Even though we were given what now may be regarded as a privileged education, we were not resented by our friends in the secondary modern schools.

John Marriott

A murder
I started grammar school in 1956 in Hamilton in Scotland. I was 11 years old at the time. My earliest memory of that time is about my school prefect who was murdered by Peter Manuel (he was hanged). It was a very traumatic time. We had no counselling of any sort, and so we were scared for ages.

However, I enjoyed school, games, etc and was punished once for smoking. The uniform was a nuisance, but not too bad. School shoes were the worst, so clumsy, so we wore more fashionable ones when we could.

Alice Cairns-Wallace

Six of the best
I was at Douai Abbey School, a Benedictine public school, from 1953 to 1958. You were beaten 'six of the best' for not working hard enough and for running down the cloister, and given 100 lines if you could not answer your prefect's questions on your study work - eg Latin, maths, English, history, chemistry. Sitting exams in the gym was normal.

It was a great school to be at. It taught you discipline.

Back to Top ^