Well we made it through another 7 weeks of school at home. Thankfully a week free from school now beckons. Oh what bliss. No more trying to explain how to factorise a quadratic equation with a lead coefficient greater than one…… I couldn’t do that when I was a teenager and now, 752 years later I still can’t do it. At least I’m consistent.

I’ve just been reading an old school report from all those years back. Here’s an edited summary.

  • Attendance 100% – which is odd as I can remember at least one day when I attended the morning register and then went back home at break time as my parents were both at work…….
  • Behaviour ‘exemplary’ – pretty easy to get that when you bear in mind that in our class we would eventually compromise one murderer, one attempted murderer, 2 convicted armed robbers, a burglar, someone who blew up the teachers desk (and got expelled) and a kid who set fire to the church hall.
  • School Honours – ‘Elected school prefect’ – which was news to me, I never knew that. Maybe it happened on one of the afternoons I was nicking off.
  • Maths – ‘very capable but seems to lose interest very quickly’. But it’s maths what do you expect (so speaks the accountant).
  • English – ‘can’t spell’ – I did struggle with that. Still do.
  • PE – ‘Really good at team sports. Captain of the Rugby Team’. We didn’t play a Rugby match that year as Tommy R burnt down the rugby posts before the season started and school couldn’t afford a new set. For some reason we never got invited to play at other schools – were we that bad a school….
  • French – ‘Not very good’ – which is worrying as I was the best in the class at French.
  • Drama – ‘struggles to deliver lines’ – what do you expect I had a stammer…..
  • Biology – ‘Needs to work harder’ – I suspected that referred to my refusal to dissect any living creature.
  • Chemistry – ‘Needs to concentrate during practicals’ – that might have been when I forgot to switch on the fume cupboard and the school had to be evacuated when the alarms went off.
  • Art – ‘He does try hard but’ – the words after ‘but’ are difficult to decipher but I guess they could be ‘but he’s crap….’
  • Geography – ‘he has had a decent year’ – that probably referred to me being able to locate the classroom in the school most weeks. A task clearly beyond some of my class colleagues.
  • History – ‘OK’ – that was it, just a one word report for that subject. Wow must have created a real impression on that teacher.
  • Woodwork – ‘Has some issues’ – another kinder way of saying that I had as much practical skills as a drunk pigeon. Much to the consternation of my dad who was a joiner by trade.

So that was me as a kid. The report was actually a pretty fair representation of the adult I would end up being. In the words of one teacher HAS SOME ISSUES…..

71 thoughts on “Half term”

  1. 😂 I don’t have a clue what my reports said… I destroy that kind of evidence. But I did poorly in most subjects. English and art were my best subjects. They still are. Words and pictures are fun. 😊

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      1. I’m not an expert, and I’m really out of practice. But okay. Don’t have a drawing contest with an expert. That sounds like pretty sound advice. Glad you not having any drawing contests with any experts. 😂😂😂

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  5. We only got grades. Comments were reserved for regularly scheduled in person parent-teacher days. I have no idea what any of my teachers thought of me.

    Were you raised inside a prison? That’s quite a list of hoodlums!

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      7. Coolest car I ever saw was on a truck passing me on the freeway. Solid chrome. Clearly being delivered somewhere. About a year later I learned it was Justin Beiber’s car, during his mondo asshole phase.

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  7. I think most of the comments on my report cards were “good student, talks too much”
    I was an excellent student. In all the advanced classes and everything. My senior year English teacher got tired of telling me to stop talking (my best friend and future roommate sat right next to me) so he took an index card and wrote “Angie, shut up!” on it. He’d just hold it up until I saw it, or someone nudged me.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    And here I am, yammering on in your comments.😂😂 I guess some things never change.😉💌💌💌

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  8. Clearly a selective memory. The rugby one reminds me of the winter of 1962 when I was treasurer of the Old Boys – the ground remained frozen throughout and we didn’t have any games so I didn’t have to badger 5 captains for match subs.

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  9. “psst” I decked my headmistress of a new school on my first day for pulling me out by my ear in the dinner queue for a slight hiccup in the dress code, so we best go figure what kind of report might have been written, but that no one seem to acknowledge my existence in their school after that and I bunked off all the days.

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      1. I was reminded re the attendance bit of how I once got this prize for perfect attendance at some Sunday school. I mean come on I think I was there once in my life, but then i guess where I grew up that would count as perfect attendance. needless to say I was not there to receive it.

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      5. My goodness I found ti on the shelf. We have a section of really old classic books. Prob the best bit looking at the inscription was not the perfect attendance guff, it was the fact that the surname had an H in it and I suddenly minded my da going nutz re that. Now, having done all the family hist I can say, the biz of how a name is spelt is ridic when often as not folks couldn’t write but despite all that, he well knew that locally anyone with that name with an H in it was NOT related..and that actually was true.. cos we were like one small family. And as I widened the net to actually get this lot down through history he was well right.

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      7. A lot was down to whoever wrote the name down on a record. Even when people could well write, censys entries were filled in my a taker. who didn’t seem to even trouble themselves if the first name was right. Then there’s also the matter of dialect and pronunciation. You can almost hear your ancestor speak in the mangled way they must have said that name to some parish clerk. But yes there’s also instances where a name has been anglised. .

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  12. Your PE teacher said “Really good” in your report? I tell my kids not to use the word “really” in formal written documents as it sound casual and messy.

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  14. Wow. My reports were never this descriptive. Generally speaking, I think in the U.S. teachers aren’t allowed to be that blunt. We just got letters and satisfactories and unsatisfactories. Conferences expanded a bit on that, I guess, but my mom couldn’t be bothered to go but to one or two of those. All she’d hear is I was so quiet they’d forget I was there until I handed in my paper. 😄 Most all my years I was one that pushed pretty hard academically in all areas, even the ones that didn’t appeal to me. Desperate to please my self-analytical mind would say now. That worked great until middle school when math and the darned gymnastics unit in physical education had me drowning. I actually began to hide out in the girls’ locker room during the latter. Surprisingly, no one ever tried to come get me. Guess they knew I was a hopelessly uncoordinated dork. 😁 Barely scraped by that year. And then, high school, I plowed through the necessities (my math teacher essentially handed us the answers, none of which I can remember now) and learned to strategize my electives to those things I actually liked-drama, creative writing. I liked art but never wanted to be told how to do it. Still don’t. 😁

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  16. probably as well this was pre Muppet, so they couldn’t categorise you thus. Incidentally, I was thinking the other day, given how precise Hawklad seems to be, has he decided which Muppet you most resemble? Given where you live, below the national water table in Yorkshire making it likely you are part amphibian, and your consistently chirpy nature, Kermit seems possible – are you green? But sometimes I’d guess we’d be set fair to reprise Waldorf and Stadler on that balcony – what do you say?

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  17. Ahhh ha!! So you were good in school!!

    That’s so funny 😄😄 Mr Metal lol … that’s very awesome though

    History was my favorite and sciences was awesome too… the rest were boring. Hated math 😝😝

    I’d say I was average… school didn’t have my full attention … we moved too much.

    I used to get in trouble for talking or laughing in class 🤨😏

    But I was new all the time – is hard to be focused when always at a new school and they on different levels, and different kids… and people be talking to me! ✌️

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      1. Well good school or bad school – you were still good in school and that would be even harder in a bad school (many temptations) … so you did not plead your case very well lol

        Plus being smart is awesome – wave that flag!!!

        I wish I could do over – I would not talk or laugh as much… however I did enjoy school because of that… so eh whatever ✌️

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      3. That’s awesome! I actually enjoyed it for the most part too… probably would have gotten more out of it if we didn’t move constantly! That was hard. Interesting to see the differences in schools across the United States and in different states… but hard to keep up with so many different studies and where they each were.

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      5. Yeah that was hard, but even harder for a child in school. I made a point not to do that to my own children. I made sure they have lifetime friends and their schooling be stable.

        Was not good to go from school to school to school – very disruptive to a child’s education. Focus was hard always switching around. All schools were in different areas of learning. None were the same or at the same place educationally. So it was tough.

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      7. Thank you 😘🙏 they all A’s so grade wise yes… and they all picked amazing friends they are very close to and they have amazing memories … so I think so too ❤️✌️

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