It was back to school this morning for DD. She is in Year 4 this year and is starting to look really grown up. Worryingly tall as well! We had the usual problems that accompany a school morning - DD needing to be crowbarred out of bed; spending more time staring into space with the spoon halfway to her mouth than eating her breakfast; and reading 'The Railway Children' rather than putting some clothes on but we did make it eventually.
Watching her walk into the playground in search of her friends, I started to reminisce about my own days at primary school. I was very lucky in that I attended an excellent school and I have some very fond memories.
It was a very small school in terms of both the building itself and the number of children it could hold. There were only five classrooms and 140 children, so of course everybody knew everybody else. As the school was not big enough to be split into Infants and Juniors, there were often a number of children from the same family together in assembly, at lunch and at playtime.
It was a Church of England school, connected by a small wooden bridge over the beck to the parish church where my parents were married and my sisters and I were baptised and although the area it was in was very much part of the main town by then, many people (including my Grandparents) still referred to it as 'The Village'. The parish priest came into assembly every Tuesday morning and the curate of the time was fed to the wolves in Friday assembly. Out of the four curates who were posted with the church whilst I was at the school, some did markedly better than others when it came to dealing with the children. Being asked to draw a picture of God by one of my sisters can't have been the easiest task in the world!
I was at primary school a fair few years ago and in those days there was much less interference from the government in terms of a hard and fast curriculum and targets. My year didn't do SATs until Year 9 and the closest we got to any kind of testing at primary school was the mental arithmetic each morning and the famous times table test in Class 5. I'm sure that my teachers did have certain things they had to teach us at certain times but it all seemed to be very ad hoc and due to this it was incredibly enjoyable. DD has had a set timetable for her lessons since Year 1 and has had homework since Reception class. There seems to be a lot to cram in to a week at school these days and although I am sure that focus groups and OFSTED are ecstatic about it, it doesn't seem to be that much fun for the children.
I am probably remembering through rose-tinted glasses but things were much less structured back then. If we were doing maths (Scottish Maths books - remember them?) before lunch and we were all getting on ok, we were allowed to continue after lunch. We didn't have to drop things and move onto something else.
Time on the (now ancient but at the time very state of the art) BBC computers was given as a reward and an incentive. PE would make the HSE these days cry - clambering around untethered on rickety metal apparatus or playing shinty were my particular favourites.
Creative writing was very much encouraged and if we were on a roll we could continue until the piece was finished. I despair when reading DDs exercise books as it is obvious she has not been allowed time to finish stories properly and has rushed the ending. Think Stephen King and you get the picture.
Our headteacher was allowed to teach, rather than being cloistered in his office completing paperwork. Our deputy head was also the class 5 teacher. Mums would come into school and help us with our reading and the dinner ladies were for the most part related to at least one child eating.
We had proper assemblies every morning and we sang hymns and various other songs every day. I was surprised recently to hear Johnny Cash singing "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a hymn after all! There are some songs that instantly take me back to school and one of them popped into my head this morning to inspire the title of this post.
Alumni of Cockerton Primary - all together now:
"So I musn't forget, no I mustn't forget, to say a great big thank you, I musn't forget".
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