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What was yours like?

Mine was a grey skirt, white blouse, navy blazer, dark tights (or white socks in summer), black shoes.

For PE and games we wore a white polo shirt and green gym knickers. Hockey boots outdoors, bare feet indoors. For dance you could wear your PE kit or a blue leotard and we worked in bare feet. For drama we just took off our blazers, shoes and socks.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

Black trousers (short or long in the First & Second Years), white shorts, school tie. Red blazer for 1st & 2nd Yrs, black thereafter.

For PE: white twill shorts (I still have them by a quirk of domestic history... i.e. forgotten for years in a drawer), white tee-short, white ankle socks and black plimsolls.

For Games in the Winter, particularly Football and cross-country, we wore dark-blue shorts, knee socks and sweatshirts. The shorts were in "house" colours. The "houses" for the boys were named after famous past generals and I think mine was Clive (of India).

Although the concept of a "house" was largely meaningless in a 1960s, large, mixed, non-boarding LEA grammar-school it did facilitate team sports like football despite this being not formally competitive to any great degree. The aim of school PE and Games was physical fitness, agility and stamina, not mere competition, but at least this was well before the pseudo-political anti-competition drives adopted by some 1980s-90s LEAs.

.....

The girls' class-room wear was similar but with navy-blue skirts; pleated in the first two Years, plain above, as I recall.

I forget what they wore for PE and games: white tops and navy-blue gym-knickers or hockey skirts, I think.

I don't know whom their houses were named after. 'Twere a long time ago!

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@ArishMell The houses in the boys' school were named after British admirals (the school was run mainly for the children of serving navy personnel). Ours for some reason were named after Greek goddesses. I was in Aphrodite house which did little to cool my ardour 😌

PE, like every other subject, was highly competitive. League tables for absolutely everything. Very Thatcherite.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@SunshineGirl My primary school used admirals' or captain's names but the word "team" rather than "house", perhaps as being simpler and more meaningful. I recall vaguely that mine was Nelson, the others being Blake, Hardy and Rodney.

The grammar-school did not make PE and Games competitive except at informal, single-event level but I think it did for the boys' annual cross-country race. I forget how; probably by some award at the Annual Speech day, in which I took about as much interest as in sports!

We didn't have any inter-school sports events, certainly not as far as I remember.

My parents had save our School Reports for no good reason other than a mixture of nostalgia and hoarding, and my sisters and I found them when the time came to clear their home. So I discovered that in striving to be constructive, my PE teacher wrote in one report, "Shows some interest in volleyball". That was true enough, but I wasn't any good at it! In another though he did observe my physical weakness - also true, I expect.