Primary School

The age when you don’t have any responsibilities. Play is free. Running around on the streets and building dens.

I think in juniors things started to feel a bit different at times. There were playground arguments, and I’d find myself with someone not speaking to and have no idea why. Had I done something? I still have no idea. The popularity contest starts then with picking people for sports. Does that still happen? I hope not. It’s awful when you think about. Although I was never last I always felt for the people who were. I was never chosen first either but I didn’t care. In the whole 7 years of going to primary school I won only one badge at sports day. The third badge when there were only three of us in the race. I could have probably done better if I’d tried, but it felt futile and my heart wasn’t in it. After getting this badge I felt I was ready to leave primary school. Apart from that I felt completely overwhelmed by having to make such an important life decision at 11.

From endless play things took on a more serious tone when playground talk started to revolve entirely around the 11 plus. What school will you go to if you pass? What school will you go to if you fail? Consensus seemed to be if you failed you were regarded as either poor and/ or stupid. I didn’t want to be part of any of this. I wished there was just another school that was somewhere in the middle. It felt like polar opposites. The school that you went to if you passed was single sex and old fashioned. I thought it was wierd. I’d been to visit another school far away which seemed better then either the pass or fail schools.

I agonised over the decision. I couldn’t decide. It all felt too much. My parents had paid for some extra tutoring. I sailed through the 11 plus. I found it so easy I finished early and thought I’d done something wrong. I wished I’d just done it of my own accord though. It felt like manipulating the result somehow. After the 11 plus exams things at primary school never felt the same again. Selection had begun and there was no going back.

In the end I went to the grammar school and hated it. Years later my mum said that I couldn’t go to the one further away as it was out of the catchment area and they didn’t accept me. I’ll never know. For years I put it down to my choice, feeling I’d passed so I had an obligation to go there. Going from being a high achiever at primary to feeling like you can’t compete at secondary does something to your confidence. My mum might very well have made this white lie up to make it seem like it was out of my hands. I know I’ll never know the truth. There were so many white lies.

My parents would never have moved us to a different area for better schools. My mum talked almost incessantly about wanting to move over the years, to the extent I packed all my stuff into boxes in my twenties convinced the move would happen. Twenty years later I realised they’ll never move.