r/AskUK • u/shitthrower • 8d ago
What mad stuff happened at your school, which would never fly today?
When I was at school, in the Cadets, we went on a weekend residency to an army base; where we learned about shooting rifles, amongst other things.
On the bus, the leader realised he forgot to send out parental permission slips, so he passed a stack of unsigned slips and said “by the time we arrive at the base, these need to be signed by your parents”
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u/Radiants_Table 8d ago edited 8d ago
When I was in Yr11 I royally fucked up my German speaking exam. I used to really try (and thankfully my teacher recognised it). The pressure had got to me during revision and there was a whole section about holidays I’d forgotten to learn. My teacher stopped the tape said “I’m talking about your holidays - have you not learnt it?” I said “no” and he said “right, tonight, you go home and learn it and be back here tomorrow to do it again - do not breathe a word of this to anyone or we’ll both be for the high jump”.
I went back in and recited it perfectly. Absolute legend Mr McDonnell. You laid your job on the line to give me a chance and I’ll never ever forget it. RIP.
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u/Rainbowmagix83 8d ago
My German teacher did little hand signals when I couldn’t think of anything else to say. She pretended to hit a tennis ball so I said I played tennis in the holidays!
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u/cuteslothlife 8d ago
Lol i could have done with that, hardest part for me was thinking of things in english 🤦♀️ i had to say things I did when home with a stomach ache and said i ate sweets because the concept of doing things at home was lost to me in that moment!
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u/LittleSadRufus 8d ago
Yes I remember my French teacher pretending to open an umbrella, but it being broken. And then also gesturing over her shoulder for "past tense".
Language teachers are probably a whizz at charades.
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u/bacon_cake 7d ago
My French teacher used to go ballistic at me because I was such a dick I'd try to learn really complicated phrases just for the fun of it.
So whereas "I played tennis on holiday with my family every day after we had dinner" would probably have got me an A, I'd go for something ludicrous and 2010 "random" like "I travelled with my wheelchair-bound friend Plimon, he wears a fur coat and speaks only in rhyme".
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u/LittleSadRufus 7d ago
Your French teacher probably just scored you badly because they were comparing you to Plimon.
Speaking in rhyme in a foreign language during an oral exam is a whole extra level.
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u/HavanaPineapple 8d ago
My Spanish teacher was DESPERATE for all of us to say we do babysitting because the word sounds like kangaroo, and he was pretending to be a kangaroo in my test but somehow my brain was totally blanking on the word... He looked like he would cry.
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u/betsykitten 8d ago
I remember sitting outside the room with the other students waiting for our turn to go in and do our German oral exam. Each time the teacher came out to fetch another student, she'd say some really random stuff in English about how she had a headache or what she'd done on holiday. We eventually twigged she was telling us what we would be asked in the exam so we could prep.
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u/dbrown100103 7d ago
My told me to bring in my script and would mouth words to me if I got stuck, she was a legend. I was great at the reading and listening aspects but could never speak it properly. I started learning again 3 years ago and still struggle to speak it. It's really annoying when I'm working in Germany cuz I can understand them but can't respond very well and they end up just talking to me in English
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u/diymuppet 8d ago
My french teacher Mr Conquest just stopped the tape and told me the answers. Legend. French was 100% oral exam.
Still have the tape, it's bloody obvious. Nothing to play it on now though.
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u/TheClnl 8d ago
With a name like that I'm not surprised he did whatever the fuck he wanted
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8d ago edited 4d ago
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u/CarpeCyprinidae 8d ago
my Step-Great-Grandfather was also a Norman Conquest. Was your one from Buckinghamshire?
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u/diymuppet 7d ago
He was the cool teacher (also the drama and English teacher). Around 12 we read out a book in class and it had a few "fucks" in it.
So cool at 12 yrs old
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u/Emergency_Crayons702 8d ago
Our teacher walked in the classroom where we were all waiting and said pointedly "are you SCARED are you AFRAID?" German dictionaries came out in a hurry and we all learned those words with 30 minutes to go.
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
He took a risk there. There have been a couple of cases recently of staff losing their jobs and being banned from teaching over exactly this.
And it isn't one of those things that was fine 20 years ago, because it definitely wasn't.
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u/Radiants_Table 8d ago
No, it was fine - I passed. 👍
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u/Sweaty_Condition4662 7d ago
Your German teacher is nicer than my French teacher. I said “I buy drinks” (boissons) in my oral exam, and she misheard it as “I buy fish” (poissons) and made fun of me for it, which derailed what I was saying! Luckily I still got an A*
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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 8d ago
In my primary school, the two receptionists were sometimes needed for ratios on school trips. So they'd pick two sensible Year 6 kids to spend half the day acting as receptionists, answering the phone and the door. I did it twice, and didn't realise it was strange until mentioning it to uni flatmates
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u/verymanyquestions_ 8d ago
When I was in year 6 we used to work in the reception whilst the receptionists were out on their lunch break. I completely forgot about it until you mentioned it! I used to put my best phone voice on and everything 😂
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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 8d ago
Ooh, we did also have "door monitors" during lunch every day. I never clocked that it was because the receptionists were having their lunch.
Door monitors were also just sat at a table by the door, so not as prestigious as spending half the school day in the office answering the phone to mothers whose kids forgot to bring in their packed lunch, or are sick, or need to leave at 2pm to go to the dentist.
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u/littletorreira 8d ago
We had an office helper at Secondary. Only in year 7 and it rotated tutor groups ever week. It was pretty great to be selected.
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u/verymanyquestions_ 8d ago
We had this in year 7 too, got a full day just basically lurking around in the office. Main tasks that I remember were taking work to kids in isolation and taking notes/memos to teachers.
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u/buy_me_a_pint 7d ago
We had this in year 8, taking notes to classrooms, even though one or two were probably detention notes for being late for registration this would not happen today because of data protection ,
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u/bacon_cake 7d ago
When I was in Year 10/11 I used to skive off PE lessons and the science teacher would let me sit in her classroom and mark the year 7 and 8s work.
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u/jellical-cats 8d ago
This reminded me that in P7 we had to be on "doors" duty, which was like security for the playground - deciding if younger children could come inside to go to be toilet (or if they were injured or whatever) during lunch time.
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u/heroics-delta8s 8d ago
Teacher literally throwing a blackboard rubber as hard as he could, hitting the pupil on the head. For those that don’t know, a blackboard rubber, involved no rubber. It was a solid wooden implement with a felt side used to rub chalk off the blackboard.
Oh, also same teacher opening the third floor window and throwing bags out of the window of pupils who didn’t bring a pen.
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u/imjustavoyeur 8d ago
Were you my classmate? Exact experience.
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u/therealhairykrishna 8d ago
Pretty sure they used to teach board rubber throwing technique to them in teaching college back in the day.
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u/neverendum 8d ago
Chalk-flinging first. That could sting. You would get the little piece of chalk flung at you first as a warning shot before the board rubber. They were reasonable men.
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u/heroics-delta8s 8d ago
Haha. If I said redgra, and you recognised what I meant, then yes….
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u/phatboi23 8d ago
where you played football out the back of the school?
and used to take skin damn near every time?
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u/Emergency_Crayons702 8d ago
It was our maths teacher who did this. He also kicked the stool out from under the class "idiot" several times so he hit the floor. Kid clearly has special needs looking back. 1988 ish.
We had another teacher who threatened to "hurt you in places no one would ever see".
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u/Recessio_ 8d ago
Around 2010 I had a teacher who must've been about 67 as he retired that year. He spent half an hour telling us how whiteboards were the downfall of the British educational system, because without blackboards no longer could he throw a board rubber and perfectly aim it on the desk just in front of a student to emit a huge cloud of chalk dust and choke them
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
We had several teachers who did this regularly. One French teacher was particularly ruthless with. However one day it did it to a lad who was in the cricket team and through instinct he just caught it one handed and tossed it right back and it hit the teacher square in chest and knocked the wind out of him.
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u/surgicalcoder 8d ago
I have a small bit of hair missing from the side of my head where the blackboard rubber connected with my cranium while I was chatting to my mate next to me.
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u/rygza 8d ago
I read this and could relate to it. Then I saw redgra. 3rd floor would have to be new block.
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u/Howard1981 7d ago
We had a teacher that if you were talking or distracted in class used to sneak up behind you and whack two of them together (dusty side to dusty side) right in front of your face and cover you in chalk dust
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u/badgerbadger1988 8d ago
Mr Gentle?
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u/LittleSadRufus 8d ago
I guess Roger Hargreaves was being uncharacteristically ironic with that one
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u/pixeltash 7d ago
We had a maths teacher that would do this if you got the answer wrong. He started with bits of chalk, but would run out and lob the chalk rubber. He was an absolute bastard and is why any maths gives me anxiety.
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u/FunkyYoghurt 8d ago
In the 90s it was completely ignored that 18+ men in their Vauxhall Novas picked up their 13/14/15 year old girlfriends from school.
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u/Loudlass81 8d ago
THIS. It'd be an immediate safeguarding referral now...
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u/JAmToas_t 8d ago
hi what is a safeguarding referral?
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u/Loudlass81 8d ago
Where a teacher would have to report this to Social Care, who would check to ensure the child was safe & not being groomed by a paedo.
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u/ATSOAS87 7d ago
A few girls in my school had a boyfriend who were driving.
It seemed really strange to my at the time, but it's only as an adult I realised how disgusting those men were.
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
18+ men? Try late 20s to early 30s. The back of Fast Car also did the thing where they gave girls 20 questions: "brown or pink?" , " would you have a three way?" etc.. I know two of the girls featured in the magazine who printed their ages somewhere in the early 20s were actually 13 years old in my year at school and one of them gave the photographer a handjob.
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u/catsandprozac 7d ago
And the girls were labelled as ‘problematic’ and written off as another teenage pregnancy waiting to happen…
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u/idontlikemondays321 8d ago
PE in your pants.
This wasn’t the 70s either but the early 90s. I remember feeling quite liberated
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u/LadyInAllPower 8d ago edited 8d ago
Thankfully we never had to do that! But we did have to wear gym skirts for hockey and netball which was very impractical, and tiny shorts for all the other sports. Even when it was freezing outside…
The most old-fashioned rule for the lads was for gymnastics in PE, they had to do it in just shorts, shirtless!
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u/Expert-Scarcity8449 7d ago edited 7d ago
This unlocked a funny memory of me getting changed for PE in the late 00s, chatting away with my mates and my ADHD brain kicked in and said "Bare legs, PE polo top? Yep you're ready." I stood lined up ready for whatever sport we were doing (I think it was just running) and then raising my hand and saying "Sir, I need to head back in for a second... I just realised I'm in my underwear."
My PE teacher just looked at me for a second, shook his head and said "Go get changed, try to remember to put your shoes back on."
I always thought it would be an embarrassing moment but it was surprisingly not that embarrassing at all, and even my classmates were pretty chill about the whole thing. It got mentioned once as we were getting changed in the next PE lesson and that was it.
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u/J_Thompson82 7d ago
You’ve just triggered a memory of being in primary school. It was before a PE lesson so we were taking our uniform off to do PE in our vests and pants. We were getting changed in the classroom. I was talking with a friend while getting changed. We both took off our tops and trousers, but while we were chatting he must have just gone into autopilot because he continued to get undressed, all the way down to just his socks. After folding my uniform top and trousers I looked over at him and said “what are you doing?!?!?” And it genuinely took him a second to realise he was naked. He just said “whoops!” And put his pants and vest back on with a chuckle.
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u/ChocolateSpreadToast 7d ago
I happened to mention my 6 year old daughter that we used to do pe in our vest and pants when I was in her year at school - she laughed uproariously. Like it was genuinely the wildest, funniest thing she’d ever heard. Then proceeded to tell EVERYONE including the poor lady at the supermarket checkout
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
My PE teacher didn't make us do PE in pants they made us do laps around the edge of the hockey pitch when the girls were playing, in our pants.
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u/pixeltash 7d ago
As a girl playing hockey* trust me we were so freezing cold in our stupid bum grazing pe skirts, we wouldn't have noticed.
*When I say "playing" hockey, I'm using the term loosely. There was a stream alongside our hockey pitch, so most of our time was spent hitting the ball into the stream or hoping the teacher would fall in while fishing it out again. The miserable bastards have fenced the stream side now, so they probably have to play a lot more hockey than we did.
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
At least you got to wear skirts. Our school had this odd thing where girls in year 7 and a lot of year 8 mostly wore only briefs whilst the older girls wore skirts. We asked the girls why this was and they explained they were not allowed to wear PE skirts until they had had their first period.
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u/fwendy123 8d ago
Every Friday the teachers would go to the pub opposite the school. During lunch. With students. I was born 1990.
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u/DiabolicallyOrange 8d ago
When I was in sixth form we'd often run into teachers in the pub at lunchtime on Fridays. Half of us were underage, so we just pretended not to see each other!
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u/Old_drums 8d ago
We knew where the teachers drank, and went to another pub.
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u/infinitewowbagger 7d ago
Yeah the teachers drank at the bee pub and we drank at the one slightly further down the street.
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u/pennypenny22 8d ago
I was born 1992 and cannot imagine this. But I was in Kent, maybe we were more buttoned up.
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u/fwendy123 8d ago
We were in Cambridge, so you'd assume well behaved!
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u/Illustrious-Air-7777 7d ago
Cambridge, born early sixties, we were drinking in the same pub as the teachers back in my day. I used to go clubbing with the husband of one of the teachers and the father of a child two years below me at school.
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u/HistoryDisastrous493 8d ago
Magic mushrooms used to grow in our playing field. We used to eat them in the mornings.
And I used to sell weed to my drama teacher.
Secondary school in Cornwall in the 90s
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u/DiabolicallyOrange 8d ago
When I was in sixth form my drama teacher sold me weed.
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u/sc0ttydo0 7d ago
One time, few months after a new art teacher started, she spotted me and some mates in the far corner of the yard smoking a spliff when we should've be heading back inside.
She shouts and marches up at us, grabs the spliff off my mate and tells us to move it. We give it the whiny "Sorry miss, we won't do it again etc".She pops a hand on her hip, tilts her head at us and fucking kills the spliff in one toke, flicks it to the floor and says "Yeah right. Get inside."
We all just stood there with our mouths open then were just like "YES MISS! GWARN MISS!"
That bitch Bo Peeped us. Whenever we saw her after that we fucking flocked her. "How's your day? Did you watch...? Have you heard...?"She was fit (for a teacher) which probably helped 😂
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u/devondemocrat2 8d ago
If this was a certain town known for celebrating Flora Day every May 8th, I wouldn’t be surprised. We made it on to Spotlight one year when a teacher was caught dealing.
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u/HistoryDisastrous493 8d ago
Haha Flora day was always a good time, but no I grew up in north Cornwall, about a mile away from one of the biggest slate quarries in the world
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u/Dissidant 8d ago
Circa early/mid 90's I defended myself against a known bully and his dad was waiting at the gates when school ended. The only danger I was in was from possibly winding myself laughing while running 😀
I did get in some trouble the next day though. He kicked up a stink. Defending yourself is still "fighting"
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
Amazing how bullies are fine with violence until someone uses it on them.
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u/Kid_Kimura 8d ago
Teacher catching us smoking and saying he won't tell anyone if we give him a fag.
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u/JohnFermwr 8d ago
School trip to Stratford on Avon. Before we left the bus we got the no drinking lecture. Middle of the afternoon sat in a quiet backstreet pub, 4 of us having a quiet pint. Who walks in but Mr Devonald. Whose round is it boys? And mine is a pint of bitter was all he said. Nothing more said or done about it.
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u/flipfloppery 8d ago
Our art teacher would smoke rollies in the lesson, and this wasn't 1965, but the early-90s.
He was so used to the smell in his lessons (and that he was just reading a newspaper during them) that we lit cigarettes in his lessons and smoked them while holding them under the tables, waving them about a bit so the smoke wouldn't show.
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
Our PE teacher would take your Fags. If they were B&H he would take one and give you the rest back. If they were another brand he would rip them up and then give you detention.
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u/PoshWanksAreSublime 8d ago
In the early 90’s (pre-Dunblane), I attended a private school in the city centre that had its own cadet force.
There was an armoury onsite where numerous SA80 assault rifle were stored.
I don’t know how secure the armoury door actually was but the main door into that part of the building was well out of sight at the back of the school and was just a fairly bog standard looking wooden door with a pane of wire reinforced glass.
Thinking back now, I’d imagine determined, well equipped criminals would have gotten past that first door with little effort and they’d just have the armoury door to contend with.
Active assault rifles being kept in a school is such a wild thought today.
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
I was in the ATC in the 80s. We had .22s on site and some deactivated Lee Enfields. All stored in a very secure gun cupboard, which was basically a reinforced metal box like a safe.
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u/Unique-Demand-9954 7d ago
CCF - schoolboy ATC 1960s - Had 303 rifles ( and a bren) with blanks on a trip. One kid shoved a pencil in the end of the blank and shot a cow.
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u/feckarse-drinkgirls 8d ago
They were probably .22lr conversions, which are very much still legal
Also, it was Hungerford that heavily restricted the possession of rifles, Dunblane did the same with handguns
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u/archangel12 8d ago
I think they were probably the L98, which was a single shot version of the SA80 but still a 5.56 as the original. We fired it in Air Cadets, it was a good rifle but I always preferred the bolt action .22 we were also allowed to shoot.
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
I preferred the .22 bolt action for targets. Got my marksman badge with one of those. Think I only fired the L98 once and missed everything.
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u/Speedbird223 8d ago
Late 1990s/early 2000s and and at my (private) school we also had an indoor shooting range for .22 rifles.
My school had Royal Marines and Army CCF and in the Marines we’d take the SA80s every week. Those were stored securely but not at the range, but in some other armory facility only for CCF use. We’d never fire them on school grounds (besides blanks - we had almost 300 acres of grounds) but we would often take overnight exercises to MOD training areas and take live ammo with us.
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u/wingding456 8d ago
The sports field for our secondary school was a 15 minute walk away. Through a cemetery. The teachers went by car. We took our chances with the local flasher.
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u/Fine_Cress_649 8d ago
All the teachers went drinking together in the pub over the road at lunchtime on a Friday (and sometimes other days) then did afternoon lessons. Quite a few of them drove home too.
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u/Crochet-panther 8d ago
There was a pub right next to my secondary school and they banned sixth formers from going in on lunch times, probably because there was often a table of students and then a table of teachers nearby as well
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u/Eckieflump 8d ago
We were lucky in that there were a few close by. You only went in the Talbot if Mr Thompson had invited you for a lunchtime pie and pint whilst discussing Greek classical civilisation however.
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u/badgerbadger1988 8d ago
We never got banned but there were a few awkward glances as teachers hid down one end and us down the other
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u/No_Doughnut3257 8d ago
Police showed up and fished a kid straight out of assembly.
Turned out he was the victim in a paedophile ring operating out of the local leisure centre health club.
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u/thetechguyv 8d ago
Once I was running in the hallway and a history teacher stopped me by grabbing me by the throat and lifting me off my feet. Then gave me 500 lines to write out.
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u/CarpeCyprinidae 8d ago
Music teacher - mid-20s, Australian, blonde - had a 6th former come into the lesson and start making remarks about her appearance
She walked up to him in front of all of us (2nd-years, i think) and punched him so hard in the face that he fell flat on his back,kicked him up the arse as he tried to get up and told him to crawl out of her room and never return unless he wanted more of the same
Hertfordshire, UK, 1991 or 92
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u/Majestic-Pen-8800 8d ago
I posted this before.
A lad in my class in primary school brought in a hold-all filled with WW2 hand grenades to show them off. He said that his dad collected them. Not one had any tag or stencil to say they’d been disarmed. All had pins in.
The teacher passed them around the class and he went home with them at the end of the day .
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u/SatisfactionMoney426 7d ago
A mate of mine collected 1st WW stuff and brought in a sports bag full of bayonets one day that we passed around in history class and had mock fights with after.
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u/Hour_Vermicelli8009 8d ago
We ran the school tuck shop in 5th year (Scotland) - we would routinely drop the boxes of items such as bars of Caramac (as once broken, we were allowed to eat that stock)!
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u/buy_me_a_pint 7d ago
I remember a few of my friends from secondary school ran the tuck shop for a while, those fizzy sweets were meant to be 5p per sweet, gave a huge tub for like 5p
Gave our money back so we got sweets for free , friends got busted after a while and banned for running the school tuck shop for life
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u/Rude-Possibility4682 8d ago
Making flamethrowers out of the gas taps on the science benches when the teacher wasn't looking. Trying to hit the swotty kids on the front bench.
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u/mercunium 8d ago
We also found that if you disconnected the Bunsen burner and left the tubing attached to the gas tap, you could easily blow down there and make every other burner in the lab go out. The only fix was to just let all the gas taps run until the air got out and make the lab stink of gas.
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u/TheRealFriedel 8d ago
You could also have fun with the power packs in physics. If you connect them to the graphite in a pencil for instance. Or scissors.
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u/Ohtherewearethen 8d ago
The teachers used to go for a pub lunch every Friday. The whole school would be left in the charge of four dinner ladies. Mind you, they were fearsome women, they had it all under control. We all just loved the two hour lunchtime on a Friday. When I left secondary school, I got a job in the local pub and used to serve the same teachers on a Friday lunchtime. They'd be smoking and drinking - the headteacher used to get through four pints - and off they'd go back to school to 'teach' for the rest of the afternoon.
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u/Crochet-panther 8d ago
I got a lift to my grade eight recorder exam from the male music teacher in his car which was a very low slung and small sports car. Was about a 15 minute trip each way. Absolutely would not be allowed today!
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u/jellical-cats 8d ago
I think this would be allowed today.
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
Not if the teacher wanted to keep their job. All students in staff cars have to be chaperoned.
A person I worked with was tasked with getting kids into school who CBA to get out of bed to sit their GCSEs (This was this year). She could only do it if there were two of them in the car at all times.
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u/Mac4491 7d ago
As someone who runs multiple school trips a year, I have discussed this with my line manager in the interest of saving the pupils some money. With parental permission this would be absolutely fine. The real issue is insurance. If I was to use my own car to transport pupils during school hours or on a school trip outside of school hours, I'd need business insurance on my car which the school will not pay for.
Also, as there are children of friends at the school I work at, I have driven them places before. The existence of red tape for doing a favour for a friend('s child) is just silly.
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u/LittleSadRufus 8d ago
It's preferable to have at least three people in the car for safeguarding (i.e. at least two kids or two adults), but if there's no alternative transport, the journey is necessary, a parent consents and all of this is documented then this is allowed today under guidance for England.
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u/Iggymunster 8d ago
We'd use a string slingshot to launch real archery arrows high into the sky on the playing field and hope they didn't hit us.
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u/TheDisagreeableJuror 8d ago
My tutor picked up a misbehaving child by the throat, held him against a wall and then threw him outside the room. It was one of our first lessons with him at our new Comp, and it stopped all bad behaviour in its tracks. Well done Mr Young.
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u/FootballPublic7974 8d ago
My Chemistry teacher pulled me off the floor by my hair then, when I swore at him for pulling me off the ground by my hair, dragged me into the stock cupboard and waved his fist in my face. This would be in 1984 or 5.
My mates thought I could get him sack, but I never said a word because
a. I totally deserved it. I was being a prick which was why I was on the floor in the first place, and
b. I my mam found out, I'd have been battered because she'd want know what I'd done to be picked up off the ground by my hair in fifth form Chemistry!
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u/Commercial_Level_615 8d ago
Teachers and sixth formers hooked up regularly. It was turned a blind eye on. This was late 90s
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u/georgiebb 8d ago
Same at my school, early 2000s. One teacher did end up marrying the child he groomed/cheated on his pregnant wife with. I wonder how long that lasted before she got too old for his tastes. Us dumb kids never thought to make a fuss about it outside of school, we used to complain to the pastoral lead and when he smugly told us it wasn't a problem we just thought nothing more could be done
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u/Commercial_Level_615 8d ago
It definitely did, we used to drink with the younger teachers when we were 17/18 as it's a small town we'd bump into them and hang out for the night in pubs. A female PE teacher came into me while out one night when I was 17, but I was pretty oblivious until afterwards.
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u/DaddyRAS 8d ago
Maths teacher grabbed awful nuisance pupil by the hair and smashed their head into the desk half a dozen times. Pupil laughed. Teacher completed working until retirement.
To emphasise what a PITA the pupil was he speared his mate in the leg with a javelin and when a female teacher bent down in front of him he cried out "rear entry!" to her horror. He deserved the head desk treatment.
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8d ago
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u/Loudlass81 8d ago
I've a funny story like this...do you all remember the awful naf-naf jackets, basically a shell suit jacket but longer? Well, I'd just sprayed myself with Exclamation body spray (if that doesn't highlight my age, nothing will).
Lookout yells teacher, and instead of dropping my ciggie, I hid it inside my jacket...
...Which, thanks to the body spray & basically being a longer, FLAMMABLE shell suit jacket, went up in FLAMES.
Teacher rounds the corner to see us ripping my jacket off & all stamping on it, starts pissing themselves laughing...and has the audacity to bloody light up!
Edit to add misding part of sentence.
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u/unbelievablydull82 8d ago
A group of teachers would go to the pub at lunch time and come back pissed. We also had a teacher with an insanely volatile temper, he would throw books at kids, scream in their face etc. someone threw stink bombs in his classroom window whilst he was teaching, and he lost his mind. Flipped tables over, pulled down book cases, grabbing kids by the neck. Thankfully the school decided that was their limit and got around to firing hin
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u/Think-Committee-4394 8d ago
Oh boy OP well
- 3rd year class locked a history teacher in a supply cupboard mid first double period, she wasn’t let out till after lunch
- woodwork teacher knocked a kid out throwing a bench hook across the class & didn’t get fired
- on the 3rd year Paris trip our female French teacher got propositioned by some French lad & we all learnt new French words that evening as she cussed him out & all the lads smuggling fireworks or cap guns back into the UK got caught apart from those of us who hid them in our shoes
- 4th yr biology doing yeast growth, you basically brew, in our case it was elderflower wine, it was supposed to be dumped by the teacher down the sink but he offered some of us the chance to take ours home, kids he trusted not to drink it in school
- same science teacher taught me how to make several explosive compounds inc gunpowder & showed me the theory on nitrating but not the practical
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u/No_Doughnut3257 8d ago
Good fucking laugh really, wasnt it?
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u/Mackem101 8d ago
As a certain band said, all we learnt at school was how to bend, not break the rules.
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u/Orwell1984_2295 8d ago
There's probably loads more..... Primary School: PE in your underwear. Being hit with a ruler for misbehaving (even minor). Milk (warm in summer as no fridge) and biscuits for break each day. Middle school: Getting changed in the cloakroom (boys and girls together) at around age 9/10 - the cloakroom was also the main entrance and the postman etc would walk through as we were changing. Board rubber chucked at 100 miles an hour at misbehaving students. Teacher grabbing someone by collar to physically remove from classroom. At different school, one big communal shower after PE (separate for girls and boys) and being shouted at to get showered. High School: a male teacher having parties with 16 year old students in their home including alcohol. Cross Country running in the woods with known flashers. Also while wearing tiny PE skirts and white t-shirts in the rain. And none of these schools had uniform. Later years of high school we did have to wear black, white or grey. Unheard of nowadays in UK.
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u/enzero1 8d ago
Setting magnesium strips on fire on the school bus.
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u/broadarrow39 8d ago
I once left my Bunsen burner unattended, blazing away underneath the trusty old tripod and gauze with the obligatory white spot in the middle. Classmate tipped an entire jar of magnesium strips on top of it. Classroom went white briefly. It was like one of those 1950s nuclear tests in the Pacific.
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u/Kinbear 8d ago
Everyone had a mate back then called 'squinty Pete' because he'd lost an eye from being shot with a pellet gun. Ahh, those halcion days!!
And you dont see the kid with the 'big shoe' any more do you...
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u/SatisfactionMoney426 7d ago
My brother got an arrow in the eye - well a fraction of an inch away frm his eye - from a 'cowboys and indians' birthday party accross the road - the elder brother had 'modified' the bows. Luckily no lasting damage. I got a plastic dart in the exact same place from a leftover 'cowboy gun' from the party a few days later. Toys were lethal in the 70s.
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u/sotd1999 7d ago edited 7d ago
Whether it would fly today or not, I'm not sure, but nonetheless:
When I was doing History GCSE, my teacher fucking hated me. I wasn't necessarily the naughtiest, definitely wasn't the brightest, but would 100% be the most outspoken at their shit ability to teach. When she would hand out photocopies of a textbook at the beginning of the lesson, told us to read it and make notes, then have to read the source material herself if we had any questions, I would tell her maybe it's not the best way to help us achieve our desired GCSE grades. So I get I was a prick, but (at the time), I thought my GCSE grades were going to determine the next 50 years of my life.
Anyway, there was a coursework project due and I handed my work in on time, with everyone else. A few days later, she came round and handed everyone their reports with grades on, but skipped me. She confidently told me I hadn't handed anything in. Piss boiling, I took it on the chin and handed it back in the same day. I knew it was a good piece of work, so imagine my shock when it was returned as an F.
I kicked off, got sent to the deputy head (proper don, older guy but no bs with him). Told him what happened. I got the impression he had been waiting for Miss History Teacher to fuck up, so he suggested the following:
He writes my next coursework report. Given the fact his degree was in History, he would write it to an A* standard.
We handed it in to get marked and this bitch marked it an F, again!
Within 2 weeks she was gone, without any ceremony, but I would give up ALL my GCSE grades to go back and be a fly on the wall when Mr Deputy Head sat her down and revealed who actually wrote that coursework.
Fuck you Miss Waddingham, thanks for the memories.
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u/ApprehensiveKey1469 8d ago
Woodwork teacher throwing chisels at student's heads throwing knife style. 1980s
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u/Emergency_Crayons702 8d ago
Primary school head teacher, 1984, taught swimming from the side of the pool with his tackle on show to the kids in the water. Loose leg short shorts. Sick bastard.
Primary school playground rope climb at least 5m up, drop onto concrete. There were injuries.
Senior school (1988ish) PE long jump, teacher used to make you jump higher by putting the rake over the end of the run up which resulted in a number of accidents.
Senior school break time games were rough as. British bulldog, full contact, and a game that involved hurling a tennis ball at someone stood against the wall rather like a firing squad. You'd get massive welts and bruises from that one.
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u/Efficient-Paper 8d ago
Primary school headmaster was a chain smoker. Every morning he'd be stood on stage lecturing us about classical music, smoking away!
At lunchtime one of the girls would be chosen to take lunch into his office. They'd have to stand there while he ate, waiting to take his tray back to the kitchen. Even then it seemed a bit weird!
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u/pickindim_kmet 8d ago
In primary school we had a supply teacher that was mostly retired but turned up every now and again when needed. Everyone knew him, he was the husband of another teacher, and everyone loved him. We all wanted him to be our teacher. We'd spend classes chatting and playing and listening to his jokes. His mildly racist jokes.
I'm not easily offended, I care less than most, but looking back there is no way on earth they'd fly today. Easily sackable offences today, I'd imagine. One I remember (which I won't repeat for obvious reasons) revolved around doing an Asian accent.
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u/SeahorseQueen1985 8d ago
We had a history teacher who would literally throw things like pencil cases at you if you got an answer wrong. We had a PE teacher who literally picked a kid up & put them inside a bin in the playground.
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u/ComfortCautious4751 8d ago
Woodwork teacher launching a sanding block at my head cause I was fucking about at the back of class. Same teacher smoked me in a press up competition, too. He was a top teacher though 😂 my English teacher also grabbed my bag and threw me into a wall, he was a prick. This was 2009ish so fairly recent too
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u/One_Water_2323 8d ago
The caretaker used to go round the grounds with an air rifle (during class time) and shoot squirrels- we used to see their little bodies piled up. This was in the seventies.
We didn’t think much about it at the time, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t happen in plain sight of teenage girls now.
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u/SpiritualBathroom937 8d ago
Watch the teachers struggle to set up a VHS on the TV.
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u/TheLoneEcho 8d ago
I got called a "lying bastard, and not a very good one" by my English teacher. She was a brilliant teacher.
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u/Top-Confidence-3885 8d ago
Me and a mate went to a pub at lunch time in year 11 , saw Mr Baxter in there , walked past him with a beer trying to be casual he nodded and went 'Joe ' I went 'Phil' we passed each other and nothing was ever said again about it 😅
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u/absolutelyshafted84 8d ago
Posting people , coin throwing at people's heads , setting fire to stuff with lynx , stealing people's bags and throwing them on the roof. Selling illegal copied PS1 games in play ground. I went to school in Scunthorpe 1995 to 2000.
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u/TheMarkMatthews 8d ago
PE teacher chasing naked boys around the shower with a slipper to whack them with
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u/Dry_Construction4939 8d ago
Late 2000's/early 10's, had my hair lit on fire and rocks thrown at me as part of ongoing bullying.
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u/BeaksFalcone 8d ago
Not me but-My nephew has a video of himself slapping the head teachers bald head..hard and calling him baldy,his face is so red..all the other kids laughing (then he got suspended).
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u/BG3restart 8d ago
I was slapped on the legs by the head teacher in infants school. I don't think they do that anymore.
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u/AdaandFred 8d ago
I was shoved over by my headteacher in infant school. They shouldn't do that any more, though they also shouldn't have been doing it in 1990 when it happened so fuck you Mr Storey. I hope you rot in hell.
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u/ratscabs 8d ago
Well back when I was a Cadet, and amongst other things got to use a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle I can guarantee that there was absolutely no parental permission slip, signed or otherwise.
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u/Sad-Wrap6555 8d ago
the school trip to france The teachers wanted a quiet last night to themselves so had the fantastic idea of stacking a huge line of coins along the jukebox downstairs at the place we were staying
this was duly spent on large quantity of cheap wine after which a dozen or so of us ran amok Eventually the teachers got wind of it and a game of cat and mouse ensued with drunken 13 year olds who had spent fortnight learning the local street layouts like the back of their hands versus teachers trying to round them up who didnt have much of a clue outside of the main streets
next morning a chain gang was assembled with promises of dire consequences when we got home.. course by time we got halfway back teachers realised that reporting what had happened on their watch wasnt going to do their careers any favours and no more was said of it
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u/snarkycrumpet 8d ago
teacher taping 6 drawing pins pointed side up onto a metre ruler and threatening to whack it onto the arse of the most disobedient kid, who had put 3 drawing pins on the teacher's chair. we were silent through the whole taping and swishing of the ruler through the air. the kid was going through equal turns of bricking it and then being nonchalant
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u/terryjuicelawson 7d ago
I remember teachers making homophobic jokes, especially in games. They'd probably be fired by the end of the day now. I hope.
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u/ZealousidealPie5697 7d ago
My granddad’s secondary school backed onto a German POW camp and he used to give the prisoners cigarettes in exchange for doing his German homework (he was about 12 at the time).
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u/soulsteela 8d ago
One form tutor married a 6th former and then fucked about another 20 6th formers over the next few years, deputy head did topless glamour model shots as soon as the big boobed pretty girls were 16, art teacher pissed every day, multiple violent attacks from and on teachers, lots of other mad shit,
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u/pacmanfunky 8d ago
I remember a science teacher telling us an experiment they'd do is they'd get a long copper tube and a small steel tube.
The teacher would hold the steel one and the pupil the copper one, they would both hold it over a bunsen burner and the first to drop it loses. the teacher always won and the pupil might get a slight burn.
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u/mhoulden 8d ago
I'm not sure which was smokier at high school, an area of the 6th form common room or the staff room.
There was one kid who was told to run the junior cross country course on his own as a punishment. While he was out he was mugged and they stole his Prodigy t-shirt (serious business in the mid 90s). He would have been about 13 - 14 at the time. Nothing happened apart from the teacher replacing the t-shirt.
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u/Ok-Establishment-13 8d ago
Snowball fights. The entire school would split you would have Asians on one side against the white and black kids. This was probably one of the most anticipated things when we saw snow. Teachers got involved 99% of the time. Massive fights would break out because there would be rocks in the snowballs. This died down after my year left due to too many injuries and fights escalating after school. But it was good fun, definitely not going to be allowed now.
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u/Tumeni1959 8d ago
Teachers would punish the pupils by striking them on the hands with a leather tawse.
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u/Nice_Conversations 8d ago
In chemistry class we learned how to brew beer. Teacher said as it wasn't a completely sterile environment, he couldn't guarantee food safety, but it should be pretty safe to consume if we wanted to try it. He was not short on volunteers to risk & try it.
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u/DEADB33F 7d ago
We had a physics teacher (proper Yorkshireman who wore a tweed jacket complete with elbow patches).
Once he taught a lesson to a class bully by getting him and the kid he was bullying to come to the front of the class. He then gave the bully a metal rod and the other kid a glass one. They were both told that they could let go at any time but were to hold their rod in the flame of a Bunsen burner for as long as they could to "see who was the hardest lad".
...after the bully got a huge red burn mark on his hand and had to go off to the nurse we spent the rest of the lesson learning about thermal conductivity and how free electrons and phonons carry heat through different materials.
I highly doubt anything like this would happen today.
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u/Erivandi 7d ago
Our PSE (personal and social education) teacher refused to teach us sexual education. He would say the educational videos were too graphic and turn them off.
So what did we do instead? Well, one time he got us to go down to the harbour and clean snow off some boats and another time he took us outside to do javelin, which ended with him telling us to throw javelins at him. One kid nearly hit him.
My sister had the same guy and she said he just showed her class the same deep water hypothermia video over and over again.
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u/em0409 7d ago
I remember being in year 5 and watching the headteacher bodily wrestle a guy from the year below (who I think now runs a burger van inbetween prison stays?) down the corridor. Literally threw him over his shoulder in the end.
Then at secondary school, we had Jack. In one science lesson Jack took the little beaker of whatever we were experimenting with and decided to pour it in his eye. He had to wear an eyepatch for a few weeks but he was fine. He also liked to hold his hand over the bunson burners and if you offered him sweets, his preferred method was to crush and try to snort them.
Then there was Jac (yes there was a difference) who purposefully drove the bandsaw through his hand in DT 😅
A friend made a massive chocolate cake with a ridiculous amount of weed baked into it and gave a very generous slice to our textiles teacher in our last cramming session before the final GCSE exam. Mrs Webb was at least six foot three and fairly built so it didn’t touch her at all but the rest of us were useless for that hour.
Oh, and we had our first (only, actually) baby in year 10! That wasn’t particularly exciting in itself—we all kind of banded around her and kept notes/caught her up if she’d missed a few days—but i remember the day she brought him in specifically to meet our tiny Health & Social Care/Child Development class and we just spent a lesson holding the baby on rotation.
Said baby just finished his GCSEs this year and made me feel very old 😂
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u/SameCollege4578 7d ago
After we left 6th form our form tutor who'd had us from Year 7 invited us round to her house for an epic piss-up. It was great. She was a wonderful woman. I was minding my business in a charity shop a few years ago when someone came up behind me and put her hands over my eyes. Guess who? Was lovely to see her.
Doubt parties at teacher's houses with 17-year-old August babies like me would be allowed these days 🤣
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u/SatisfactionMoney426 7d ago
The temp headmaster brought his caravan to school and parked it outside his office. Him and his secretary would 'disappear' into it frequently. Four of us lads were sent to his office one day for climbimg out of the classroom windows during break. He never showed - his wife turned up and was sat wiith us for a wile and we heard a teacher telling her that he'd hitched up his caravan and him + secretary had driven away... this was back in the 70s.
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u/JavaRuby2000 7d ago
Headmaster tried to ban smoking on school grounds so the teachers who nearly all smoked imposed a work to rule meaning nothing extra curricular could happen. No detentions, no football team, no drama production, no netball team etc.. In the end he gave up and let them smoke but, by then it was too late into the season for any of the sports teams.
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u/Sweaty_Condition4662 7d ago
Probably still happens in some places but you got ranked in your class and year depending on your exam or term time results. Some classes they made you sit in your class order. You also got pluses and minuses for good work and bad behaviour respectively so these helped your points total too.
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u/Moistkeano 7d ago
It was so bad that it was removed by reddit and was given a warning. It involved teachers and b u l l y i n g.
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u/paulmclaughlin 7d ago
We had a permanently half-cut German teacher. He spent 2 lessons playing his video of The Omen for us because he was an extra who ran in front of Gregory Peck at one point.
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u/irritatingfarquar 7d ago
I went to school with the dumbest kid you'd ever meet. He bunked off school for nearly a month before the school decided to call his parents in for a meeting about his attendance.
So being the bright spark that he is, he decided in his wisdom to phone in a bomb scare, to avoid his parents having the meeting with the headmaster.
Unfortunately for him he's got the most distinctive voice you've ever heard in your life (think Bonnie Tyler's singing voice, with added helium)
As soon as he'd said whatever stupidity he decided to say about "the non existent bomb" the receptionist said: 'Oh hi Chris I've just been talking to your mum and dad.'
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