[Gsr]

School assembley days​

During my school years I attended 4 different schools. The first was a small country school out in the sticks, 1 teacher, less than 10/12 kids most of the time, from ages 5 to 12. We had a front verandah and a hallway that ran from the verandah to the classroom door. We all had to line up on the verandah, youngest to oldest, march up the hallway into the classroom. Then we had to stand while we said good morning to our teacher, sing “God save the Queen”, recite our times tables from a chart on the wall, and practice our spelling from a list of words written on the blackboard. Then we could sit at our desks. We had different sized desks and chairs for different aged kids. The second school was a much larger primary school in town. We all had to line up in class groups at the first bell, then at the second bell walk to our classrooms in an orderly fashion. once a week the headmaster and a couple of the teachers addressed the whole school, mostly to tell us what students were doing wrong and what changes were needed to fix it. Then we sang “God save the Queen“ before going to our classrooms. The third school was again a small country school held in an old church hall. The church was near it and was still used. The teacher lived in a house next to the church grounds. Again 1 teacher, kids from age 5 to 12. Classes from kindergarten to sixth class. Here we just went into school when the bell was rung, stood at our desks, said good morning to the teacher, and sat down. We sang “God save the Queen” once a week. Then high school we had to assemble in class groups in the quadrangle, the headmaster said good morning to everyone, we all replied, then we walked off in class order to our classrooms. Once a fortnight here we had a formal assembly which dragged on as the headmaster and lots of teachers, and sometimes a parent or business person from the town addressed the assembly with a lot of basically twaddle. Some of them just liked the sound of their own voices I’m sure. We sang “God save the Queen” at these assemblies. Every school had a flag that was raised up on the flagpole every morning, and taken down every afternoon, carefully folded and put away. Every classroom had a picture of the Queen hanging on the wall. There were no fans, heaters or air conditioners in any of the school classrooms back then, but they did all have opening windows. Ah, memories, I really loved school.