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Former pupils confess their rowdiest stories from British state schools

‘A substitute teacher was locked in a cupboard and the whole class refused to let her out’


Every school had that one teacher who was hooking up with a sixth former in the art room, or had to leave because they were shagging half the female staff. The Year 11s were annual legends thanks to their last day antics, stuffing fish behind the radiators and lathering lube on the door handles. And who could forget those lunch time food fights?

State school was a whole different world to private school: it was more rowdy, the fights were better and a higher percentage of substitute teachers were tormented and locked in stationary cupboards.

We've already dished the dirt on the juicy ongoings of private schools, but to see the difference we asked former pupils from state schools around the country for their bonkers traditions and most scandalous playground gossip.

Brookfield Community School

Maddest thing that happened: A fight between two girls that consisted of one of them dragging the other across the playground by her hair until her extensions were ripped out, and then smashing the girl's head against a pilar multiple times and there was blood left on there for a few years.

Biggest rumour: A long time ago a member of staff was suspended for apparently perving on girls by telling them to pull their skirts higher and asking them if they'd lost their virginity yet, and also asked boys if they had fishy fingers after he heard them chatting about some girls.

Traditions: On the last day of school the Year 11s would hide down at the bottom of the hill opposite the school and wait for the rest of the pupils to come out and then proceed to throw eggs, milk, flour, water balloons and fire paintball guns at them.

They also keyed the head teacher's car, wrote "Voldemort" on the side of a building in red paint but spelt it wrong and then managed to burn a massive cock and balls onto the school field which grass didn't grow over for years.

Philip Morant

Maddest thing that happened: A girl and her boyfriend put a Nokia up her vagina and then rang it on vibrate, he naturally told all his mates about it. This spread around the school and people followed her round humming "buzz buzz".

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Saint Aidan's

Maddest thing that happened: There was a music supply teacher in and everyone decided it would be a funny idea to see if they could get someone to fit inside a tuba case. One girl managed it but someone closed the lid and it locked. The kid whose tube is was wasn't in school so no one knew the code to open it. Everyone was crying and freaking out that she was going to suffocate and die but she eventually managed to kick her way out. It was the talk of the school for the rest of the week.

Another time, someone stole a needle from textiles and went around stabbing random people with it. The school nurses had to give everyone who had been stabbed a Hepatitis jab incase the needle was infected.

Biggest rumour: Apparently, two Year 10 girls hid in the tech block so that they got locked in overnight. They baked a cake in Food Tech, got bored and broke out of the fire exit.

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Chichester High School for Girls

Maddest thing that happened: One day some ex-pupils came back and managed to egg the head and deputy head teachers. The whole school found out and was chasing them around watching it all unfold. Seeing our head teacher covered in egg with this girl mouthing off at her whilst the other teachers tried to pull her off was one of the highlights of school life.

Biggest rumour: Some girls said they did an ouija board and then claimed they had random scratches and injuries all over them out of nowhere. They freaked out and spread around that they’d been possessed by a demon. To this day don’t know if it was all a big joke just to freak people out.

Traditions: We used to fold the pleats of our skirts to the side to look cool for the boys school next door.

Dunraven School

Biggest rumour: That a teacher got bricked in the head by a former student on her way home.

Coloma Convent Girls' School

Maddest thing that happened: In lower school, students stole the supplies for the school fair and drank the alcohol for the raffle, and then pissed in a cup in the room, which they left behind because they heard someone coming.

Traditions: On Year 11 muck up day, signs about orgies involving all male teachers got put up and naked pictures of one of the teachers were posted everywhere. A paint bomb was let off on a teacher's car as well. The Year 11s were sent home before 9am.

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Ross High

Maddest things that happened: A teacher famously had a pet rock called Peter which he used to drag along corridors on a leash. Students once stole it before summer and emailed him photos of it on holiday which prompted him to threaten police action. His pet rock also had a rock girlfriend named Patricia.

Traditions: Before graduation the seniors would muck up the school with whatever they could find. Some examples were filling staircases with balloons, filling cups with water and putting them on the headteacher's office floor, attaching a rape alarm to a helium balloon, letting chickens loose, and egging or water gunning the first years.

Alcester School, Warwickshire

Maddest thing that happened: A Year 11 dropped a Year 7 on his knee, breaking all his ribs, all because he threw a basketball at him.

Biggest rumour: A pair of married teachers both had affairs with other teachers. This did the rounds but, fun though it was, it wasn’t true. Also another teacher went off sick with mercury poisoning in dodgy circumstances, people even wondered if he got high off it.

Traditions: Printing off thousands of photos of a certain teacher, different every year, and sticking them anywhere you could reach on the last day of term.

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Wymondham College

Maddest thing that happened: There was a party one weekend at a house down the road from school and the fridge got thrown in the river, a sink got ripped off the wall and the poor girl who hosted it had all of her and her family’s personal possessions stolen. Obviously the police were called to tackle the party at which point many of the less smart students began to challenge the police. It resulted in one boy firing fireworks at the police cars and one boy shooting Roman candles at garage doors. The total cost of this single evening was £30,000 of damage and a disowning of the girl.

Traditions: Some kids invented a ghost called the Grey Lady who would torment Year 7 pupils in their first few weeks. It led to some legendary stories such as one poor child getting so scared he shit himself on the floor.

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St Benedict's

Maddest thing that happened: Two girls in my year had a fight over a boy which resulted in one of the their faces being dragged along the mesh wire outside the tennis courts and she had to get stitches. To top it all off, the teacher who tried to break it up got head locked and punched in the stomach.

Traditions: Once a year, all the sixth form classes would lock the door of their classroom and turn everything in the room upside down whilst the teachers were trying to get in.

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Shelley College

Maddest thing that happened: Once a guy in my class locked a substitute teacher in a cupboard in the music room and the whole class refused to let her out, so she had to ring the school’s receptionist from the cupboard to ask someone to rescue her.

Biggest rumour: A head teacher had moved from a private Catholic school to our school because he'd slept with his receptionist and got her pregnant. How it started no one knows – and it was as daft as the day was long.

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Reading School

Maddest thing that happened: Someone in our year shat on someone's pillow on a GCSE Geography field trip.

Biggest rumour: That someone paid a fiver for sex in the music school toilets.

Traditions: There were loads of random chants, ranging from "he shits where he wants, he shits where he wants, he's blankety-blank, he shits where he wants" to "howwww expensive, howww expensive, how expensive are your boots".

Hardenhuish School

Maddest thing that happened: The Year 11s bought industrial strength weed killer and sprayed that a teacher is a rimmer on the grass on top of the hill in giant letters. It could be read half a mile away. They had to burn the grass on the hill away but it was so strong it discoloured the soil beneath so even after that you could still read it for months.

Cramlington Learning Village

Rumours: One boy used his school email address to send a picture of a penis as a dare. Everyone called him Captain Hook after that because apparently the dick was super curved. Never found out if it was actually his though.

Traditions: Every year at least 20 Year 9 girls would pick triple science at GCSE even though they hated it, all in the hope of getting one Physics teacher who people thought was fit. If they didn't they'd just suffer for two years instead.

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Bartholomew School

Traditions: Having a very competitive 12 days of Christmas shouting match between boys and girls and being bitter about losing for the entire year.

Milne's High School

Maddest thing that happened: Someone released four sheep into the school and labelled them 1, 2, 4, and 5. The teachers still look for sheep 3 to this day, not knowing that it doesn't exist.

We also put fish and off milk down the back of the radiators and the canteen had to be blocked off for ages while they unscrewed all the radiators from the walls to remove the fish and bad smells.

Traditions: We started wearing Christmas jumpers to school around about Halloween time despite being told not to.

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Frances Bardsley

Maddest thing that happened: In my first week, the dinner ladies told us not to walk on one side of the corridor as they tried to sweep up the weave on the floor that had been pulled out after a fight.

Rumours: A girl wanked off her dog because she felt sorry for him after being neutered.

Traditions: When starter pack memes were a thing they started popping up on posters calling out girls (e.g pregnancy tests, pound shop make up etc).

The Deanery C of E High School

Maddest thing that happened: We had bars on the windows to stop us getting out and a boy in my form decided to put his head through the glass, cutting his face and getting his head stuck in the bars.

Another time, a group of kids in my year took legal highs right before our GCSE mocks and needed to be taken to A&E.

Rumours: The producers of Educating Yorkshire wanted to use our school for the next series, which really tells you a lot.

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The Friary School

Maddest thing that happened: Someone drinking ethanol in one of the science labs thinking it would get them pissed. In fact, it just got them hospitalised.

Rumours: That a girl lost her virginity to a deodorant can.

Traditions: On the last day of sixth form, everyone caused havoc around the school. However, someone took it too far and actually took a shit on the school playground.

All Saints, Stockton-On-Tees

Maddest thing that happened: A boy at my school made fun of a someone from a neighbouring school who had been killed in a car crash. His friends jumped the fence at lunch, found the guy and proceeded to kick the shit out of him. The only thing that stopped them was being chased off by the newly hired, 6ft4, ex MMA/cage fighting DT teacher, who literally vaulted the fence in one jump and chased them down the main road swearing.

Rumours: A guy and a girl snuck into the toilets during class and tried anal for the first time. No one knows what happened but apparently she ended up shitting absolutely everywhere and the girls loos were closed off for two days and both of them moved schools.

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Barnwell School

Maddest thing that happened: The new headteacher imposed a no touching rule. No hand holding, hugging, kissing. No touching under any circumstances. Not even between same sex friends.

Rumours: A head teacher left their previous school because they were bullied. Under weird circumstances, she vanished from our school a couple of years later and no one knows why or where she went.

Traditions: Going to a field after the last day of Year 11 and getting really drunk. Happened every year and the police never stopped it.

Kennet School

Maddest thing that happened: On the last day of term a kid in my tutor group up pulled his pants down and took a massive shit right there on the carpet in the middle of registration. We never saw him again and still don't know why he did it.

Rumours: There was a rumour that one of the arts teachers was caught sucking off a science teacher in the disabled toilet. Typically mad and unfounded, for sure, though they both left that year.

Traditions: In Year 7 we'd have a big Christmas dinner and all the teachers would dress up in cartoon mascot costumes from the 90s. So you'd just be sat there eating turkey as the Head of PE danced behind you in a Pingu costume, it was a bit weird in hindsight.

Did we miss out your school? Or a particularly mad story? Please get in contact with us, don't worry we won't tell anyone it was you who told us.

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