Some thoughts on my own schooling

I had a ‘traditional’ schooling. I went all the way through primary school then onto a private secondary school. All I can remember about primary school was the bullying and the teasing. I did ‘well’ at primary school and I took the entrance exam for a private secondary school and passed with flying colours and got a scholarship to cover the fees so my parents didn’t have to pay. I remember crying when I found out that I had got into the school as I didn’t want to go there and I had only done the exam to prove that I could do it. All my friends were going to the local state secondary school. I had wanted to go to either the same school as my friends or a private school that was just round the corner from where we lived at the time which I passed the exam for but didn’t get a scholarship and my parents couldn’t afford the fees.

Secondary school was worse than primary school. The school was 15 miles from our house so I had to leave the house at 7.45am to get the school bus and then we didn’t finish school til 4pm and by the time I got home it would be 5pm. I made a few friends but ended up having just one for the last couple of years I was there as each one either moved away or their families couldn’t afford the fees anymore.

The uniform was the most disgusting thing in the world. We had to wear bright orange jumpers, cream blouse, brown skirt, fawn over the knee socks that would fall down and hang around your ankles and either a brown blazer or a fawn duffle coat. I think I wore the duffle coat for the 1st year I was there after that I refused to wear it and even on the coldest days would only wear my blazer which was only slightly better than the duffle coat.

I hated it there and 12 years after leaving I can’t really remember anything I was taught there even though I left with 10 good GCSE’s. I just remember being bored stiff most of the time.

I remember in the 3rd year I got 2 Saturday Detentions for failing to do my Art homework. I was absolutely rubbish at Art and so are all my side of the family so I couldn’t even get them to help. I had already chosen my GCSE subjects and was dropping Art so I could not see the point in doing an Art project that would take up weeks of my time at home when I was not going to be continuing with it after the summer anyway. So I was punished by being made to give up my Saturday mornings to go and scrub chewing gum off the desks.

Also we were made to do Design & Technology which I was absolutely rubbish at (I wasn’t very good at anything creative) and we had to design and make something (I can’t remember exactly what we were supposed to be making) but I spent the whole term (12 weeks) just sanding down pieces of wood and hacking them to bits with a junior hacksaw so that it looked as if I was doing something when in fact I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. At the end of term when we supposed to show off our finished products I hid in the toilets during the lesson so that I didn’t have to go.

I also remember the peer pressure. I tried smoking due to peer pressure (I never inhaled and just used to put a lit cigarette in my mouth and pretend to smoke it) and when I got my first boyfriend at 15 I slept with him due to peer pressure. I really regret that now and wished that I had waited for someone special. I don’t want my kids to go through that and feel forced to do stuff because of peer pressure.

I then went to a college and did my NVQ in Business Administration and I enjoyed that as I had chosen to do the course. I learned to touch type quickly and have kept that up to this day and can still type with all my fingers fairly fast and without looking at the keyboard and I learnt how to use spreadsheets and databases.

Then I started to feel the pressure to go to university so I decided to do ‘A’ levels at a 6th form college. I was a year older than everyone else there and whilst they were used to being told exactly what to do my year at college had been very relaxed and it was up to you whether you attended or not and you were responsible for yourself and it was more about what you wanted whilst the 6th form college was like being back at school. They had parent’s evenings and termly reports that they sent to your parents. I hated this. I met my husband Vic through a friend I made at this college and moved in with him. I was 18 then and if I missed a day at college they would phone my parents and tell them even though I had told the college that I was not living at home anymore and at the time I wasn’t even speaking to my parents. I quit college not long after as I couldn’t stand it that they refused to treat me like an adult even though I was 18.