« Reply #29 on: Wednesday 03 March 21 04:45 GMT (UK) »
This would be the 1990’s Rena.
At school I don’t remember there ever being a teacher on yard duty .
I did every playtime, the infants,especially the four year olds in reception were too young to be out there on their own,the yard is a frightening
place ..The infants alone had about 100 children milling round .
Being an old building the little quad was ideal for just the reception class ,so up to thirty - thirty five children about the same age each knowing the other.
Fancy, the school I attended before passing the eleven plus must have had children from seven to fifteen ,so nine classes .
Say thirty to a class so at least 270
I don’t remember any trouble and there were children unsupervised on the yard for two playtimes and the hour long dinner break ,though many went home for their mid day meal.
Were we better behaved?
Viktoria.
The 1990s would explain it Viktoria.
Most schools in old towns were parish schools built circa 1890 and protected by cast iron railings and gates that could be locked. The school I went to was built circa 1940 and consisted of three buildings; infant; senior then junior. There were no safety railings/fencing around the school buildings I think only the infant school separated the boys from the girls and. I do recall a teacher supervised the infant girls at playtime, it was a good job otherwise I can imagine a few tots would have escaped.. I don't know about that senior school, but do recall that the junior school had a mixed boys and girls playground with one of the teachers in attendance ready to blow a whistle when anything untoward happened. One time was the 1947 winter of the big freeze and the whistle was blown because we were all enjoying ourselves too much on the really long fast slide we'd made and was destroyed by the caretaker's heel.. Then another time was when we had a couple of lines of children facing each other holding (crossed) hands and we'd bounce other children over our arms from one end to the other end; the whistle was blown on that happy exhilarating game too :-)
I don't quite know how the classes were arranged in that infant and junior school. I know I started school on my 5th birthday and it seemed halfway through a year the head teacher of the primary/infant school would appear at the classroom door and I'd be taken out of that class and put into the next class, where the pupils from my first class would join me at the start of the next term. The same thing happened in the junior school too; until the year metriculation age was changed and the 11+ was introduced, which had a different qualification age - That year I missed the metriculation cut off and stayed in the same junior class for two years.
There were 39 pupils in my grammar school class.
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