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I remember there were several primary schools in the different neigborhoods we lived. There were a lot of different approaches to school wear at these different schools. I can tell you a bit about this based on my own experieces. There were quite a variety of schools around the area of West London where we lived. Most did have uniforms - it seemed that the church-based ones - like mine (C.of E.) or my mate Michael's (Catholic) - were the most strict. There were, however, other junior (primary) schools which had uniforms including ties, but not blazers like we had. There were also non-uniform schools like the one my friend who started at infants with me went to after his parents took him out of our school.
There were quite a variety of schools around the area of West London where we lived. Most did have uniforms - it seemed that the church-based ones - like mine (C.of E.) or my mate Michael's (Catholic) - were the most strict. There were, however, other junior (primary) schools which had uniforms including ties, but not blazers like we had. There were also non-uniform schools like the one my friend who started at infants with me went to after his parents took him out of our school.
My older brother and I attended the same primary school. It was a traditional Church of England school in West London. I started there in September 1964. We had a strict uniform: cap, blazer, shirt and tie, shorts (grey), gartered socks with green rings around the tops, black shoes even from the earliest years (age 5). Caps must have died out--I only remember having one when I first started at the school). We wore grey shirts most of the time but white was allowed too and as my older brother always chose (from when I was aware of it) to wear a white shirt I always insisted on wearing a grey one--just to be different! I also remember objecting to wearing his "hand me down" shorts as at that time (I was about 9). They were too "baggy" in comparison with my friends'. I learned tom always wore
by socks fully pulled up and with garters. It was big trouble at school to have your socks down, the only worse offence regarding clothing I can recall is having your hands in your pockets. One incident I do recall was when we had a trainee teacher for P.E. in primary school.
I never really saw my mate Michael's uniform until one day after school when my mum was taking us to the barbers. His was a catholic school in the area– but not one of the one's we used to play football with. I'd passed the school a couple of times – but obviously not when the kids were there – if I had I'd have been in trouble as I would have been meant to be in school myself! I didn't get into bunking off 9skipping0 school until I was older as I liked my primary school and must have been one of the few kids who begged his mum to be allowed to go into school rather than stay at home in bed when I was sick. I met Michael playing on the bombsite one summer when I was about 9 years old. We hit it off straight away. Although we asked what schools we were at we didn't really talk about that then as we had other things to talk about and it was the holidys. I suppose the first time I saw any of his
school uniform was when I went round to his place on a Sunday and he was wearing his school socks with his mass suit.
Michael's uniform was probably only just the fanciest I saw as a boy. Yet another school in the area I lived in when I was a boy was Corona Academy--a stage school. What struck me then was the cap with the "Maltese Cross" on it and the fact that the boys wore yellow shirts. The girls also wore yellow socks rather than the white I was used to seeing at school. They also wore exactly the same ties as we did - green and yellow striped - which struck me as a little kid. I only used to see these kids going home with their mums when I was playing in the park - this would be later - I think they stayed behind later at their school doing drama work. There were also older kids in the same uniform - I think it was a 5-16 school - private fee-paying of course. I do remember when I was very little playing with one of these kids who was with his mum at the paddling pool in the park. I remember us having to sort our ties out after as they were exactly the same - but labelled. I've no idea who this kid was - but if we'd have gone home with each others' I could have been
in the possession of the tie of a famous future film star.
My friend who I used to play with started at the school on the same day as me, but his parents took him out of the school after a few weeks and sent him to a more relaxed school up the road (a low-level post war school - ours was an old Victorian building). His school had no uniform and I remember noticing that at an early Although there was no set uniform at this school all of the girls wore dresses and the boys shorts as seems to be the case in several impages in the HBC school section. A good example is the page that addresses gender trends. I don't know if this was the rule there, but I think it was well into the 70s. The school was just down the road from my old primary school and on a couple of occaisions our class went down there and they gave a concert for us. Then they'd come back to our school. I think this was just something arranged between the teachers rather than the local education authority as there had been some trouble after school between the two schools. I remember our teacher being impressed with their school building - it was new and all on one level whereas ours was an old Victorian building with winding stairs etc. She was particularly impressed by the open-plan arrangement of the classrooms - and the fact that their classrooms were so light - one wall was almost all glass and looked out on their playground. We often had to have the lights on in the Winter as we had tall windows but they started about six feet from the floor so the kids (and the teachers!) couldn't look out. She was not so impressed by their schoolwear though. She told us she'd have liked to have their building but with the children dressed like us. I remember thinking that it was odd too - that the children were in school dressed for play. The schools were close to my grammar school and I did notice that this non-uniform school did seem still to require dresses and short trousers in the 70s - although otherwise anything went. Funnily enough at this time I noticed that my old primary school, while still having quite a strict uniform, allowed some of the older boys to wear long trousers.
A third type of school was the one my younger brother went to after we moved. It was in a much tougher area of London - we moved onto an estate there. Mmy mum didn't want to, but it's all that they would offer us and at least us three didn't have to share the same bedroom like at the old place. At my younger brother's new primary school they could wear anything they liked - including jeans - and eventually my mum allowed him to wear more or less what he liked - except she insisted on shorts in the Spring and Summer for him and he used to complain about that if other boys hadn't started wearing their shorts yet. My mum had a changeover around Easter. Because he'd started at our old primary school - he was there with us until he was 8 years old when we moved - he still had some of the uniform for that school. He would wear those items for best - visiting our Grandparents for instance. Mum would also sometimes put them out for him for school if there was an event on that she was going to. Our old primary school kept parents outside of the gates but his used to put on various events to which parents could come into. If my mum was going to take the day off work she'd dress my brother up in a white school shirt and grey shorts even though it was not the school uniform. This caused no end of arguments and I sometimes wonder whether me and my older brother weren't better off - at least it was the school that set the clothes we wore for school so we didn't have those arguments on the whole. Going to a non-uniform primary school also made it tougher on my younger brother when he moved up to secondary school (a Comprehesive) which did have a uniform - he wasn't used to it like we older two had been.
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