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I took a break after Tuesday to put up pics for Wordless Wednesday as I've been taking garden photos without editing/publishing.

Now to return to the Monday topic.

Anyone who taught in comps from 1970s onwards saw changes, but most just added to workload, brought in classroom problems and made the job harder.

Did I 'live for work' or 'work for a living'? The former was true enough in the 70s the latter became the norm from the 80s onwards. I became trapped in a job that had been satisfying and occasionally rewarding. By the time I was granted early retirement it had become debilitating mental and physical drudgery.

1970s transition from secondary school to comprehensive...leavening the lump. We had streaming HUY top, TON middle and SL those with learning difficulties.
S classes were ESN educationally sub-normal whilst L were SSN severely sub-normal. Political correctness had yet to arrive. At least for S and L classes you knew there would be smaller classes with the smallest numbers in L. No teaching assistants, no special training 'get in there and get on with it'. Those kids had Uncle Norm (Norman) who was 'caretaker' for all S and L pupils. Their liking and respect for him was apparent. If he had 'free' time he'd look in on SL classes if young female staff had them. He became Uncle Norm to younger teachers too.

No such thing as 'no smoking' and Uncle Norm smoked his pipe in the staffroom. At break and lunchtime there was wall-to-wall smoke from ready-mades, roll-ups and our pipe smoker. A few brought packed lunch, a few opted for dinner duty, others headed for the VIth form canteen. When the school inspector turned up he too went to that canteen, the only difference being he had 'waitress' service. If only we'd kept guys like him, he did a superb job. I've never forgot him saying to us that there ought never to be any meetings after school. As he said 'anyone who teaches properly has nothing left by the time pupils go home'.

During the first couple of years the Deputy Head (Miss C) stood in for the Head; (Mr. W) was dying of cancer.

There were 1200 pupils on roll and the corridors were safe to walk down. We had a teacher return after a back operation, she walked to and from her room without risk of being jostled. She'd been time-tabled to work in her own room. The younger and newer you were, the more peripatetic one became. You could be at one end of the school for a lesson and the next at the opposite end of the building. 

Take a look at Plater's Beiderbecke Trilogy. 
Better still, read the books.


Of course there was no proper idea of 'equality' in the 70s and some practices would be frowned upon today.
We had two Deputy Heads, one in charge of curriculum and the other looked after time-tabling. The latter was what today would be called 'sexist'. He was in charge of the relief time-tabling as in sending people to cover other classes when the need arose.
Younger female teachers were his 'prey'; he'd stride up and say, 'Ah. my dear, you would appear to be free.' Then send you to cover a waiting class. Young male teachers lost less preparation time because they were rarely asked to cover.
Another practice that would be frowned on and quite rightly so was the Friday lunchtime visit to the pub. P.E. staff and younger staff went in several cars to a pub for a pint and toasties. One young languages teacher tended to drink pints of larger, fortunately her classroom was near a set of staff 'facilities'. She became the talk of the staff-room, not because of imbibing, but because she went with students and staff on a French trip and failed to return, deciding to stay in France!