school

Ah yes, those halcyon days at school where you went some place to spend the day with your mates and maybe learn some shit that you would never use in adult life (i'm talking algebra) then come home and demand tea with menaces because all you'd had to eat that day was a can of irn bru and 19 mars bars from the tuck shop.
School hasn't changed that much from when i attended to now when my girls go. I suppose the only real difference is that teachers are no longer allowed to dish out corporal punishment such as lobbing a black board rubber at your head or giving you a crack with a ruler/slipper/cane or furry part of their hand. I bet the more seasoned veteran teachers long for those days especially when some lippy tweenage chavalanche tells them to 'fuck off slap head' or declares 'they is offended' because the uniform they have to wear is a bourjois concept based on a militant regime where everybody is seen as equal so as to deter prejudice and favouritism...i blame the internet. I don't recall uniform being such a big deal when i was at school. As long as i had the correct school tie on and top and bottoms vaguely matching everyone else's, i was good to go. Nowadays uniform is so unique to the school you can't get away with 'similar'. Everything is addled with logos and the school crest, even down to the bloody PE socks. Schools put so much pressure on the pupils to look as though they are representing their school in the world uniform olympics that parents have to fork out an arm and a leg and re-mortgage the family home just so their child fits in and looks the part. Hitler might have got away with this kind of rigorous uniform policy but do me a favour...where the fuck is the school's inclusion policy that they love to bleat on about? If a school wants to be a sandal wearing, yoghurt eating, aluminium collecting, tree hugging "we include every child because every child is different" inclusion policy flag bearer then let my child wear leggings and flip flops and stop being hypocritical twats. Fascist bastards.
It's that time of year when the school holidays are over. A crack team of wildlife trackers are despatched to herd the kids back to reality. Most kids have gone fully nocturnal by the end of the 6 weeks British school holidays, or 8 weeks if your kids go to private school. One well off friend of mine whose 3 kids go to private school once said 'i pay more and their off for longer. Where's the justice in that?' The shock of having to get up at 7am instead of going to bed then is probably some sort of infringement on their basic human rights but who cares? Not the parents that's for sure. Parents across the UK rejoice at their kids going back to school because they don't have to entertain and constantly feed their often ungrateful offspring. Not to mention break up fights between siblings, host christ knows how many sleep overs and hear the words 'i'm bored' a million times a day. Once the kids go back to school we are set to suffer the barrage of social media photos of other people's kids in their uniform with such pithy quotes as #soproud or #bigschool or #missyoualready . If parents put these photos up they should be made to use their actual feelings to accompany them like #thankfuck or #thoughthisholidaywouldneverend or #cantaffordchristmasthisyearbecausetheuniformissofuckingexpensive . My kids are also going back to school but i won't bore you with the details #triedtotakethembackadayearly .
So they'll be back around a week and the homework onslaught begins. Oh joy. My 6 year old asked me to help her with some maths homework that a NASA scientist couldn't decipher. The countless projects i have helped with over the past 10 years should have got me at least another 5 GCSE's and a mention in dispatches. I've done my time. I didn't sign up for more homework when i had kids.
Around 2-3 weeks into the new term and the detentions start. The buzz of starting a new year at school and seeing your mates has worn off and the feral kids break free. The uniform becomes a little less rigid, behaviour deteriorates and teachers start drinking gin out of a hip flask at break time. When i was at school in the 1980's a detention was the worst thing ever. If your parents found out, you were in the shit. Nowadays kids wear it like a badge of honour. It means nothing and certainly is not a deterrent. In my day detention generally meant  detention centre in later life. You were a wrong 'un.
Not long after the new term comes the parents evening. As a kid we dread this because the teacher might actually tell our parents what bell ends we are. This doesn't usually happen because the teacher wants to make out that all of their pupils are 'quite brilliant if a little talkative'. It's a complete waste of an evening better spent going to the pub or binge watching Peaky Blinders.
After parents evening come the school reports. Another waste of precious time. My school report from the age of 6 to 16 were reasonably good apart from maths. Even though i attended around 6 schools during this period, because my dad was in the army, each teacher said the same thing-' Nichola shows no particular interest in this subject'. How right they were.
School, for most , really is the best years of your life. You might not think it at the time but hanging out with your pals, making friends and learning important social skills is much better than going to work, paying bills and adulting. Give me school any day.