There was always something uniquely physical about Physical Education lessons which would include the stresses and strains of exercise, having to push ourselves to achieve while under the close supervision of the teacher. It was at a time when education woke up to the concept that there needed to be proper exercise and development for girls as well as boys. Whilst we played a lot of netball, and ran, we also started to spend some time in the gym. PE teachers were also very physical in their approach to discipline should you fail or misbehave.
We had two long-term PE teachers during our time at the school, and for a period of six months a newly qualified student. The one teacher tended to concentrate on the junior half of the school. She put us through our paces without a doubt, but she was basically quite kindly and even if you did wrong or misbehave, or failed to put in enough effort, it was rare to get much more than a couple of smacks on the bottom, albeit firm ones.
The teacher who looked after the more senior girls was much more demanding and the departmental slipper was in more frequent use in her hands. She often deferred punishments until we had showered at the end of the lesson, and normally invited girls into the office to sample the extra sharp sting of slipper on wet bottom. It was she who dealt with four rather stupid girls behaving like naughty boys who took advantage of a broken shower hose to spray each other with a high-speed jet. They were dealt with in the most embarrassing way possible, in the changing room directly out of the shower in front of everyone else; five hard wallops of the slipper each, hands on the benches, bottoms defenceless. It was extremely painful and humiliating.
The student teacher stood in for the junior school teacher while she took leave. She had a determination to get us all exercised but she was a little less slipper or smack-happy than her senior colleagues. She seemed very young but her ‘older sister’ looks were countered by a very strict and vigorous approach to training. Until one particular day she had not punished any of us and we wondered whether the new approach to gym classes excluded that aspect.
We had one strange girl in our class, Ruth, sometimes very friendly but sometimes very distant. None of us could really warm to her even though we tried. On this occasion, she and another girl had been arguing all morning about something, and this culminated in Ruth pushing the other girl over quite viciously while she thought Miss E was not looking. She was. Ruth was told to face the wall with her hands on her head while the teacher helped Amy up. Neither of them was prepared to explain the incident but Miss E decided to act on the evidence.
She returned quite soon from the office with the department slipper in her hand, a large and well-worn plimsoll. Ruth was ordered to touch her toes while the rest of us stood against the wall, watching. Before bending she was told she was going to get three strokes but then argued and earned herself another one. I have to say it was an impressive performance as the first three strokes arrived on Ruth’s knickers with considerable force and at some velocity, with the third causing quite a loud ‘ouch’.
The killer was the fourth stroke. You could see the determination on Miss E’s face as she despatched it full force towards the target. At that point, Ruth lost her balance and fell awkwardly onto the exercise mat. Immature as we were, we all laughed, except one girl, Geraldine, who looked genuinely horrified at the violence.
Miss E muttered, “Oh God” under her breath and rushed to help Ruth up. Her question, “Are you alright?” seemed out of place in the circumstances. Fortunately, Ruth suffered no injuries apart from a sore bottom but Miss E learned an important lesson from the incident, which she activated immediately as we were all ordered to lean over the vaulting horse to receive our two strokes for laughing. In turn, we had to move into position to receive two really hard whacks. I felt a bit sorry for Geraldine but she coped pretty well, and for her part in the kerfuffle Amy got her strokes too. I have to say that Miss E could pack as much damage into two strokes as most teachers would need three to replicate.
The showers afterwards were amusing, if you are amused by that sort of thing. Fifteen red bottoms filing through the entrance, and two very red bottoms; Ruth’s, and Josephine’s, who had collected a three-stroke slippering from Miss R for homework failure earlier in the morning.
JennyT 2025