Daft school rules

[STEVIEBOY1]

Seeing the above dozen or so posts. In the 1960s and 1970s, we had to use cartridge or fountain pens and I too was always covered in blue ink, I remember the fad about Slazenger Pullovers and I also recall, if we forgot our PE or Games Kit, not only did we have to do it in our underpants and vest, we also got 2 or 3 hard whacks on our backsides from the PE Master and his big plimsol/trainer/slipper, the same treatment was also given, if we tried to avoid having a shower, which were always cold and smelly.

 

[TravelDream]

if we forgot our PE or Games Kit, not only did we have to do it in our underpants and vest, we also got 2 or 3 hard whacks on our backsides from the PE Master and his big plimsol/trainer/slipper, the same treatment was also given, if we tried to avoid having a shower, which were always cold and smelly.

I went to school in the 2000s and we also had to do PE in our underpants if we forgot our kit if it was an indoor lesson. If it was outdoors, it was even worse as you had to take damp, smelly and dirty clothes from the lost and found bin. I don't know why, but I really can't imagine that happening today even though I went to school not so long ago.

I use a communal shower a couple of times a week nowadays and it doesn't bother me at all, but I would have died of embarrassment as a teen if I'd had to use the school ones. Oddly the school rules required us to bring a towel for PE even though we were not even allowed to take a shower. The first lesson of each semester we had to bring our whole kit to have it checked including the towel. That took up the whole PE lesson. Totally pointless.

 

[PeterC]

I looked at my old school's website and year or so ago and found the uniform rules far more prescriptive than in the 60s. In my day as long as you wore the blazer cap and tie anything not outrageous would be accepted. Now shirts must be white while jumpers and gym kit must be from the approved supplier with the badge embroidered.

 

[westv]

I looked at my old school's website and year or so ago and found the uniform rules far more prescriptive than in the 60s. In my day as long as you wore the blazer cap and tie anything not outrageous would be accepted. Now shirts must be white while jumpers and gym kit must be from the approved supplier with the badge embroidered.

My secondary school in the 70s just insisted on a navy blue blazer on which you could sew the school provided badge.

 

[Busaholic]

I heard indirectly (I haven’t kept up with other pupils and resigned my life membership of the Old Boys Association) that a few years later he ‘got God’. If he was trying to atone for his sins, he was going to be busy for a long while.

Jonathan Aitken?

 

[johnnychips]

Oddly the school rules required us to bring a towel for PE even though we were not even allowed to take a shower. The first lesson of each semester we had to bring our whole kit to have it checked including the towel. That took up the whole PE lesson. Totally pointless.

I started the thread, and I think this one takes the prize!

 

[py_megapixel]

Re PE: when I joined my school they were very proud of the fact that their changing rooms had been newly renovated. They had showers, not fully private but were separated by partitions, and we were told that we were allowed to use them if we wanted to, but nobody (and I literally mean nobody) did so - because there was never enough time.

I'm not really sure why they bothered having the showers at all if I'm honest. As I say, they were never used.

 

[johnnychips]

I'm not really sure why they bothered having the showers at all if I'm honest. As I say, they were never used.

I think I might have posted the same thing a bit back, but in the 70s very few houses had showers, or efficient heating. So my hygiene regime was a bath on Sunday and two communal showers during the week at school. I can’t remember anybody using deodorant if it existed. So perhaps we all smelt a bit, but nobody noticed because we all smelt - if you see what I mean.

 

[TravelDream]

I started the thread, and I think this one takes the prize!

It didn't used to bother me to be honest. As a teen, I never liked sport and always thought I wasn't that good at it so avoiding it with an 'equipment check' was fine with me. Nobody brought towels any other day apart from the first PE lesson of the semester, but it was a pain as you'd have to bring two bags to carry rugby boots, shin pads, indoor kit, outdoor kit etc.
Anyone who didn't have everything would have an after-school detention and then have to bring the stuff to be checked the following week.

There were plenty of other petty rules too, but most of them have already been mentioned I think.

A few that really used to annoy at the time, but probably aren't massive in the grand scheme of things are...
The deputy head had a fascination with facial hair, or more lack of facial hair. The school actually had disposable razors and would force boys to shave if she noticed someone had facial hair. The secret for the lazy was to avoid her as nobody else seemed to care too much for that rule.
Blazers could only be taken off with the headmaster's permission. What he seemed (or maybe chose) to forget is that some of the portakabin classes were ten degrees hotter than any other, but woe betide anyone he or someone else in the SMT or a number of the more officious teachers found not wearing his blazer.


A bit different to others is that most people at my school had a nickname they were known as. Whether based on their first name, surname, an attribute or something else. Of course, you'd never call a teacher some of their nicknames as some were pretty harsh.
Merv the perv (no evidence of being a perv tbh), Psycho Price, Whisky Winters (used to stink of whisky at times and clearly an alcoholic thinking back), Spice boy, Roly-poly Rowland (a rather rotund man), Scouse C... probably shouldn't type that one.

 

[bussnapperwm]

Which member of the cabinet is he now?

PM

 

[Bevan Price]

I think I might have posted the same thing a bit back, but in the 70s very few houses had showers, or efficient heating. So my hygiene regime was a bath on Sunday and two communal showers during the week at school. I can’t remember anybody using deodorant if it existed. So perhaps we all smelt a bit, but nobody noticed because we all smelt - if you see what I mean.

Most men did not use perfume back then, not even aftershave. I still don't - only partly because many perfumes induce fits of sneezing.

 

[PeterC]

A few that really used to annoy at the time, but probably aren't massive in the grand scheme of things are...
The deputy head had a fascination with facial hair, or more lack of facial hair. The school actually had disposable razors and would force boys to shave if she noticed someone had facial hair. The secret for the lazy was to avoid her as nobody else seemed to care too much for that rule.
Blazers could only be taken off with the headmaster's permission. What he seemed (or maybe chose) to forget is that some of the portakabin classes were ten degrees hotter than any other, but woe betide anyone he or someone else in the SMT or a number of the more officious teachers found not wearing his blazer.

Our head was obsessed with hair length and facial hair. I remember hearing him bellow down the corridor at another boy "Get your hair cut!". The boy turned round which resulted in a second bellow of "and have a shave!"

I don't think he had touched a razor in his life and the look of pride on his face was a sight to behold.

 

[A Challenge]

On the subject of towels, talking this evening with a friend a soltory I'd heard before came up - at one of the schools she'd been at (quite a few in different parts of the country), they did swimming in Year 5 because the angle of the playground meant their classroom flooded in rain and they wanted the students to have towels

The really strange rule was somebody else's school in Kent that had, due to a series of incidents of people being pushed down the stairs, a rule that no student was allowed to use the stairs unsupervised, which as nonsense rules goes is rather impressive in my view.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

For a brief period at my high school, there was a craze for stealing chalk from the grooves at the bottom of a teacher's blackboard, and using it to draw a line down the back of another student's black jumper as you walked along the corridors between classes.

This led to teachers having their chalk rationed, which in turn led to students pranking each other by running a pen or finger down their back... making them think that they'd been "chalked" and have to remove their jumper to check.

Added bonus if a teacher saw them do the check, and the student wasn't wearing a tie... as our uniform policy only allowed jumpers to be removed if there was a tie underneath. So if a teacher was particularly pedantic one might get written up for not complying with uniform.

 

[HST274]

We had to stand up whenever a teacher entered the room. 1998-2004, all boys grammar school. That rule was archaic even then.

Still is a thing. I despise at as a concept

 

[nw1]

Generally, up to O-Level the masters used surnames, except for for those who just said ‘You’, and the boys said Sir (or ‘Mr. X, Sir‘). In the A-Level years it was a bit more mixed with some masters using first names, but boys still saying Sir. Between boys it was often surnames except amongst your circle of friends. Nicknames weren’t often used to someone’s face as all too many of them were nasty.

For me it depended on the teacher (this was in the 1980s). Generally, the more old-fashioned and/or strict ones called you by your surname, the more friendly and/or modern ones called you by your first name. I think Sir was partly expected but I don't think it was rigorously enforced. And one guy called us 'Master XXXXX'. This was after we'd been on first name terms with him on a school trip, so it was odd having classes with him a year or two later and him addressing us more formally.

In junior school, the head dinner lady had some dumb rule in the dining hall where you could only traverse it along the walls in a clockwise direction. It was for safety reasons, apparently. So, if you wanted to leave and your table was just offside from the exit door, you had to head to the wall and trapse all around till you made your way back to where the door was. Non-compliance meant she'd blow on her retired husband's police whistle and roar at you to "go round!".

I remember some older kids, once, making a point of mocking it by doing several laps - "you went round twice - get out!".

Ah yes, dinner ladies. It was those I was frightened of at primary school, not the teachers who were generally pretty soft and likeable. The dinner ladies were a formidable pair, though... also responsible for supervising the playground, if I remember right.

 

[johnnychips]

yes, dinner ladies. It was those I was frightened of at primary school, not the teachers who were generally pretty soft and likeable. The dinner ladies were a formidable pair, though... also responsible for supervising the playground, if I remember right

Peter Kaye’s ”it’s spitting, get inside” sketch was so good because it was true. Our playground supervisor was Mrs Cheetham, and her word was law. It is telling I can remember her name after 55 years.

at 2:25. We would never have called Mrs Cheetham by her first name, though, in fact I don’t even know what it was.

 

[Busaholic]

Peter Kaye’s ”it’s spitting, get inside” sketch was so good because it was true. Our playground supervisor was Mrs Cheetham, and her word was law. It is telling I can remember her name after 55 years.

at 2:25. We would never have called Mrs Cheetham by her first name, though, in fact I don’t even know what it was.

Playgrounds?? You soft Northerner!

 

[Dent]

I don't think anyone has mentioned hand washing yet. In primary school we always had to wash our hands before eating, but then had to use cutlery and not touch food with our hands, which made the hand washing superfluous.

 

[AlistairCowell]

There was a team leader called Sharon Bakker at my school residence who was a very strict lady. She is heavy handed at times and she even shouted and screamed at a pupil in a middle of the night while pupils are asleep.

A senior care worker in the same school residence physically forced a pupil to use the toilet or he won’t be going swimming.

 

[gg1]

Not really a rule as such but definitely a conscious decision taken by my school (none of the the other local schools did so) which really annoyed me at the time, and looking back still does now a little:

When the time came to choose GCSE options, subjects were grouped together, one of the groups was Geography and History from which all students selected one. The annoying element was you could ONLY select one, it wasn't possible to take both subjects at GCSE level.

Guess what my two favourite subject at school were.

 

[Gareth]

That's dumb.

 

[Gloster]

When my parents were searching for a public school to send me to, the choice ended up between the moderately well-known one that I eventually went to and my father’s old school, which happens to be (by most of the usually accepted definitions) the oldest public school. We visited both and my parents asked me for my opinion, although I had little expectation of much value being put on it. Just about my only comment was that my father’s old school only studied geography up to O-Level; I liked geography and was fairly good at it at the time (I was eleven or twelve). Later on, when I went to the other school and things did not go well, my mother used this opinion to pass the blame on to me, “Well, you chose X.” In truth, I think that cost was a major factor for the eventual choice and my parents were of the generation who made the decisions about their offspring with little attention being paid to the latter’s wishes. A cousin, who did go to the oldest school, has commented that it considered that you only needed sufficient geography to manage your landholdings and that had all been covered by O-Level: anything beyond was superfluous.

 

[ComUtoR]

That's dumb.

It hasn't changed. My Daughter just experienced this. The school has subjects in a group so she had to choose between subjects.

The other year my Son (same school) wasn't allowed to choose music because it wouldn't be offered as a GCSE. They still study it for the previous couple of years but because the take-up is so low it just drops off as an offer.

 

[Dent]

Not really a rule as such but definitely a conscious decision taken by my school (none of the the other local schools did so) which really annoyed me at the time, and looking back still does now a little:

When the time came to choose GCSE options, subjects were grouped together, one of the groups was Geography and History from which all students selected one. The annoying element was you could ONLY select one, it wasn't possible to take both subjects at GCSE level.

Guess what my two favourite subject at school were.

That is presumably because the classes run at the same time, and the students can't be in two places at one. I don't really see how that is "daft", or how else it could possibly be done.

 

[gg1]

That is presumably because the classes run at the same time, and the students can't be in two places at one. I don't really see how that is "daft", or how else it could possibly be done.

It's daft because Geography and History are a pair of subjects where it's quite common for students to be interested in either both of them or neither of them, making the ruling 'you must study one but you can't study both' particularly illogical.

Another grouping was an arty/creative one, all students had to pick one from Art, Music and Pottery, all of which I loathed. Again this is a mix of subjects where there is an overlap in terms of interests and a high likelihood of significant numbers of kids wanting to pick more than one of these options.

 

[Dent]

It's daft because Geography and History are a pair of subjects where it's quite common for students to be interested in either both of them or neither of them, making the ruling 'you must study one but you can't study both' particularly illogical.

Is your issue with that particular grouping, or the whole concept of running different classes at the same time?

 

[gg1]

Is your issue with that particular grouping, or the whole concept of running different classes at the same time?

It's the grouping of subjects where there is likely to be a strong overlap in terms of interest (or disinterest) I have issue with.

 

[Welly]

There was a team leader called Sharon Bakker at my school residence who was a very strict lady. She is heavy handed at times and she even shouted and screamed at a pupil in a middle of the night while pupils are asleep.

A senior care worker in the same school residence physically forced a pupil to use the toilet or he won’t be going swimming.

That's child abuse.

 

[Gareth]

The other year my Son (same school) wasn't allowed to choose music because it wouldn't be offered as a GCSE. They still study it for the previous couple of years but because the take-up is so low it just drops off as an offer.

I couldn't choose music (my strongest subject) because they alternated its availability to every other year and I lined up with the "off" year. This was because they had only two music teachers in the entire school, so couldn't take the workload.