The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was that I'd said too much last night, but it seems to be all right now and my comments have been taken in the spirit intended.

If I could just give a couple of examples of the sort of thing I meant, for a start all classes were mixed ability. That meant that in the O-level year, there were some pupils who weren't going to be entered for any exams at all (this was just after the leaving age had been raised to 16 and these people would noramlly have left the year before), while some of us were trying to study for exams. Of course they just messed about and took up a lot of the teachers' time and attention. Then, if I had stayed at my first secondary school I would have started learning Latin in year 8, but instead I had to do a subject called rural studies. This was essentially gardening and working in a greenhouse, which didn't suit me at all and I remember being determined to learn Latin one day, which I sort of did from Teach Yourself books.

Both are examples of the "one size fits all" comprehensive mentality. Classes should either have catered for those doing O-level or those not, but not both. Rural studies suits some pupils and Latin suits others but to impose just one subject on everyone in the name of equality is just stupid and messing with people's lives.

In my family, everyone had left school at the first opportunity (both my parents were factory workers) and my elder brother had failed his 11 plus. It broke my parents' hearts that, just when someone had come along with a bit of ability, he was receiving a rubbish education.

Just to try put across a good side to all this, I was allowed to study English with maths at A-level, which was unusual then, bullying was rare and I was never intimidated for wanting to learn, and, most of all, it taught me to teach myself and be independent, rather than relying on others to push me all the time. But I remember waiting to take my German oral exam. I had to read something beforehand and I was in the corridor during break time, with pupils running up and down and making lots of noise, another example of how the school didn't care. The visiting examiner, seeing this, asked if I wanted extra time, but I just wasn't in the mood by then. And the only careers advice I've ever had lasted about five minutes. I was asked if I preferred to work indoors or outside and whether I was a tidy person. The conclusion was that I would be better off with some sort of office job.

Also, just to put over the other side of the argument, I used to regret that we didn't have prefects or prizes. But having seen those systems in full flow since, I can see why not everyone agrees with them.

Ah yes, Latin.  At my school, the upper stream could select either German or Latin as an additional language subject from age 12.  Most chose German, and this was generally encouraged by the teachers.  I, too, chose German.  I got bored with it and ditched it two years later.

In hindsight, I think if I'd taken Latin I might have really loved it and taken it to an advanced level.

Yes, this is very interesting. I always assumed it was seen as antithetical, because the local comprehensive school where I grew up was like that, but a discussion on this subject on the Music & Society board back around November made it clear to me that there was much more flexibility in the comprehensive system.

My parents sent me to a local independent grammar school, precisely because they felt that the 'one size fits all' approach wouldn't work for me (they were probably right, educationally speaking, although a side-effect was that certain other issues to do with sociability got deferred until my late teens, at which point I had to work quite hard to resolve them), but in principle I would prefer to think that that might have been possible within a flexibly-designed state system, since I don't think the division into private and state schools helps anyone except out-and-out social snobs. (On the other hand I used to think that a division of the state system into grammars and something like technical institutes was a good idea, but since the M&S discussion I'm more open to the idea that this can be achieved within a single comprehensive system.)

As a very timid 4 year old I took what adults said literally. I hated milk so I didn't have any at morning play when all the rest of the class did. My teacher told us "When you've finished your milk you can go to the toilet" - so I thought I couldn't go as I wasn't drinking milk, and I didn't dare ask. Well, I used to keep my legs crossed all day but inevitably I'd wet myself on the way home. It was a while before my mum realised why!

Bearing that experience in mind I'm careful how I word instructions to young children.

Don,
Ah, but we were a friendly lot, never got involved with fights or anything, we just hung around together really.  People joined and left as they pleased.  There was another gang who were more of the nasty sort but we didn't associate with them.

I was in a 'gang'    The Phantom Scrumpters.  We used to shin up the garden walls and scrump and stuff our jumpers with illicet fruit, green apples, (guaranteed belly-ache), strawberries, raspberries, then we had it away on our toes, down the back alley where we lit fires and cooked dampers on twigs and shared the young wiggly shoots of Virginia Creeper we had gathered (we called it Swiss Cheese)  Oh, and yes, we plucked the flowers off Phox and drained the nectar.  It's a wonder we never poisoned ourselves.

Then one day, we were caught, lying underneath a dessert gooseberry bush, gorging ourselves, and the owner said "Look, children, please help yourself whenever you want"

That was it, we never plundered his garden again.  There was no fun if it was not forbidden.

I've enjoyed reading your descriptions, Anty. Extraordinary how vivid memories of that age are - mine too.

I spent a good bit of time lying under raspberry bushes gorging - but they were ours! A friend who stayed with me one summer wrote to me afterwards (we were about ten) saying that in the village where she lived there was a chemist's shop called R.S. Berry, and she couldn't pass it without thinking of us

Trampling the wild garlic made an interesting smell, as did the cowdung the buttercups thrived on....do you know the word cowslip, incidentally, means cowdung?

I went to a comprehensive (late 90s/early 00s) and it was great for me; glad I didn't go to a private school. There was plenty of streaming, especially in maths/science/english, and I have mixed feelings about it (well, not that mixed really). It was certainly effective in keeping difficult students from disrupting classes, but didn't do anything for those students whatsoever -- obviously sometimes there are problems which are not solvable by a school, though. But these students were really well into the minority, and the streaming system also meant that pretty vast swathes of students ended up prejudged as middling or useless; entered into exams where they couldn't score higher than a C. I'm not convinced my education would have been any worse if I'd been in unsetted classes, really.