Bunking off from school/playing truant/hooky

[Sporting]

It strikes me that it's much harder these days to get away with it, given schools' propensity for ringing parents or getting in touch via mail if little John or Mary is so much as ten minutes late for class. Form-filling for absences, in my son's school at least, is strictly controlled, not like back in the day at my secondary school where signatures could be easily forged, dentists' appointments doctored (nice pun there, thanks for the upvote!), Many teachers in the afternoon classes simply didn't bother, or weren't asked to, take a register, so lunchtime (often spent outside instead of partaking of the boring school food...and it was a chance to get away from the institution in any case: again, minimal if any controls on the age or right of kids leaving the school premises...and there were backwards routes as well in any case).

I mainly played truant because a lot of classes bored me or I didn't understand what the hell was going on (physics, chemistry) and so felt it wasn't worth attending the classes because I would never need the little I learned from these subjects in the future. And to be honest, I've been proved pretty much right about this, though it's not something I would tell my son. Not just yet, anyhow.

The funny thing, looking back, is that when I was playing truant, usually together with one or two others (including those who had pretended to be ill at home and crept out while their parents were at work) was how we spent a lot of the time worrying about being caught and finding places to go where we were unlikely to be spotted by whistleblowers. Quite a lot of effort and stress just to miss a few afternoon classes.

Did anyone else here miss the odd class or two?

[Felicity, I guess so]

It was called juking (maybe duking) the school in Elgin. My brother did a lot of it as he got in with a bad crowd (some of whom were, gulp, RANGERS supporters...) and they used to go down to the river and gaff salmon; go bird-nesting; camp out at the loch and smoke etc etc

I was very small (nickname Diddyman) but protected as people would say 'that's Big Jock's wee brither'.

I only juked a couple of times as I found school easy. basically staying in the town shoplifting after the dinner break.
The other crime committed, your honour, was knowing a shortcut and being able to play around in the woods during cross country and still get back (breathing theatrically).

[Sporting]

Oh fuck... I did cross-country while at St Mary's College in Crosby (vile school) and unfortunately there were no convenient shortcuts on our winter's weekly route. The gym master used to run in the opposite direction (well, that's the impression he gave) and catch and bawl at the usual backmarkers (I could run ok but often chose not to do so).

[Felicity, I guess so]

Ironically I later was part of the champion team from my school in Forces Germany which won on a completely snowbound hill course. The benefits of being a wee boy.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The legend at our school was the fearsome deputy Head, Mr Brown, stalked the High Street of the town at lunchtimes and woebetide any pupils found outside the gates or trying to sneak back in. The truth, as I discovered some years later, was that Mr Brown, while probably coming across the odd truant, wasn't actively hunting them at all but was going across the road for a couple of pints in the Wheatsheaf.

[Felicity, I guess so]

At Madras College in St Andrews there was definitely a pub-going teacher contingent, but more dangerous was the marathon-running german teacher (he ran in the 5 or 10,000 at the Olympics once) who'd go for long runs at lunchtime and you'd just be hunkering down in a shelter at the beach to avoid Maths and he'd come trotting past in his vest.

Found him: wikipedia no less. It was actually a marathon he ran, at Munich '72. Nice fella, good teacher. Didn't know he was a lib fucking dem, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald...egor_(athlete)

[Benjm]

It was very difficult to skip classroom lessons at my school so we had to make do in later years with requesting inventive games options that they'd let you off the premises for; cycling and weightlifting at the municipal baths and gym were two such euphemisms for record shopping and hanging around coffee bars.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

my dad taught in my school, so this wasn't an option

[Gerontophile]

My brother-in-law taught in my school, and even taught me for English, so there was little option.

(His nickname was 'Drill', 'cos he was really boring. Hi Pat. I know you read this occasionally.)

[Artificial Hipster]

The telephone ring.

"Hello?"
"Hello is that Artie?"
"Yes, who's this please?"
"This is Miss Weaver, would you like to tell me why you aren't in my French class aright now?"

To be fair I was revising for my O-Levels at the time.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Kids still do it a lot, but rarely whole days. I teach at a massive school and kids will bunk a lesson and hide somewhere. You've got a fairly decent chance of that not being picked up by SLT, because messages home are only for first and final period. I had 2 girls doing this for a couple of weeks towards the end of last academic year and it took ages for sanctions to be implemented. I guess the thing is that it will catch up with you if you do it more than once.

Sixth form is tightly controlled to prevent movement on/off site, but they all try and bunk the supervised independent study time they have timetabled in. The only substitution slot I dread is supervising independent study, as a general rule, I can't stand sixth formers.

Bunking a whole day is quite hard to get away with, but they still do it. Other than that, you've got kids who are school refusers, but that's a whole other issue.

[steveeeeeeeee]

I think the days of patrolling the streets looking for kids bunking and then dragging them back to school are over. There's not much you can do other than report it and contact the parents then implement sanctions. I saw a couple of our kids vaping yesterday, they were in the distance and definitely not kids I've taught, there was just no way I was getting involved in a confrontation. But if I knew who they were I would've also ignored it, but then grassed them up once back at school!

[The-Reverend]

Once at 6th form for me it became a free for all, regular trips out to go to the golf range or just get away from school. In my last year they introduced swipe cards in an attempt to stop this but we just gave the card to an accomplice.

Prior to that I only ever bunked off once, for the Pakistan v England Cricket World Cup Final, as it was on Sky and hardly anyone had a dish back then my mate who did invited me and another lad round. Was brilliant to be honest, think it was a 7am start so we left our village at half five to walk to his and his mum had made us all bacon sandwiches. We then watched England lose and skulked back to school mid afternoon, bumped into our form teacher who saw us and just said "Well I knew where you two would be so I've marked you down as being here"

Good old Mr. Hurley.

[San Bernardhinault]

I only bunked off from lessons, not from full days. And only a very small handful of times, and it was always pointless lessons. RE mainly, and I think there was some bullshit "personal development" thing. I did occasionally show up to gym class with a lie about an injury. Not coincidentally, this happened only during cross-country days. Because we only did cross-country on the days with the worst weather running through icy puddles and mud next to the river.

Nobody gave a crap where we were during 6th form when we weren't in lessons, so we often went walkabout, regularly spotting all the teachers pouring out of the Dewdrop (and occasionally joining them in there).

[Jah Womble]

I wasn't inclined - or brave enough anyway - to bunk off an entire day, but can remember evading individual classes. I think this happened a few times in the fifth form, by which time I was so utterly disenchanted with (my) school that I just didn't want to be there. (But obviously had to be, with 'O' levels approaching.)

It's four decades ago now, but I still occasionally shudder at the memories.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Our school admin team has been tidying up the marks on the register, which means kids who've truanted a couple of periods have had that wiped. I found out because my marks had changed and I decided to screen shot them. Being a legal document and it being changed I believe this is forgery and would result in the school being put into special measures. Unfortunately not many people care or see it is a problem.

[adams house cat]

Didn't knick of skool much. Occasional class apart from one whole day to watch England v West Indies at Trent Bridge.

[Sits]

It was called "skiving" at my school; I was too scared of teachers, parents, bullies from other schools I might encounter*. I was also a boringly compliant child. The nearest thing I managed was Latin with "Piggy" Wells, a kindly but useless teacher from somewhere in Lancashire. The only phrase I recall in Latin is "Flavia est puella parva" in his broad Lancs.

Anyway this was probably in the ridiculous summer of 76, we were in a ground floor temporary classroom - probably about thirty years old by then. Piggy had opened the rear double doors to provide some ventilation, so those of us in the back row gradually dropped pens etc. and crawled out to sit in the sunshine.

*we were the ex-grammar and 90% of the pupils were terrified of the kids from the nearest comprehensive. I got smacked in the mouth by a big kid on my way home once. But on another occasion I did at least give his details to the police after witnessing him kicking my mate's head in.

[Various Artist]

It was called "skiving" at my school; I was too scared of teachers, parents, bullies from other schools I might encounter*. I was also a boringly compliant child.

This is me to a tee. I never skived off – or "mitched off" as the South Walian slang had it – a single proper lesson, that I can remember. Even cross-country runs were done properly, following the entire course and actually attempting to run all the way – in that sense it was one of my 'better' events, as I was endowed with virtually no athletic ability yet due to persevering with a legitimate jog I would overtake loads of people who'd given up and were walking, and thus come in in a semi-respectable finishing position.

We were allowed off the premises at lunchtime from the fifth form onwards, which felt like a thrilling and scary enough prospect to the extremely sheltered 15-year-old I was, and there was one nasty run-in with a gigantic violent type from the 'other school' down the road that put me off for a while. A bunch of us later got into the habit of going out for large chocolate purchases, or occasionally chips -- there was one chip shop down the road that did the best onion rings I've ever had to this day, I swear.

In the sixth form there was the joyous prospect of free periods between the relatively few scheduled classes. I never once used the Sixth Form Common Room, which was where the cool kids hung out doing whatever cool kids did (I have literally no idea, but it probably involved talking to girls), and instead spent my free time in Years 12 & 13 in the adjacent Sixth Form Study Area – a similarly-sized room but where you sat at tables instead of lounging insouciantly, and with a teacher at least theoretically overseeing from a desk at one end of the room, where they were in fact presumably also enjoying some quiet time. Needless to say no actual studying ever got done, but it was great just to be out of lessons and be able to chat with my friends, draw, play 'categories'-type word games or write songs for our 'band'. The existence of the latter went surprisingly unhampered by our almost complete lack of musical know-how, existing more as a theoretical construct, but it was nice to while away free periods doodling logos and producing lyrics that were literally sixth-form poetry.

The most radically rebellious thing I ever did was spend a few of these periods in one of the little side-rooms at the back of the Study Area, which had language-lab type of hardware around the walls and an empty central table where we played an invented sort of 'hand ping-pong' named Paperball. Oh, the thrills and spills.

[Sits]

VA's cross-country experience was as per mine. I was a useful maker up of numbers in the school team; the county champion ran for us and invariably won every inter-school race we entered*. But he needed us cannon fodder slogging around in the middle ranks to garner a big enough points tally. We ran in heavy rugby shirts.

*in each and every race he would vomit during the early miles. Not that I ever witnessed this being so far back.

[Janik]

It strikes me that it's much harder these days to get away with it, given schools' propensity for ringing parents or getting in touch via mail if little John or Mary is so much as ten minutes late for class.

There was this in South Cambs a couple of days ago. Bunk off, and the police might be searching for you with a helicopter!

[Janik]

As for me I never skipped a lesson and don't remember ever faking an illness for a day in bed. But then I enjoyed school. The academic subjects were easy, and the non-academic ones were an opportunity to lark around and not take at all seriously (which must have irked the teachers of those no-end).

We were meant to stay on site in Sixth Form, but that was never policed at all. So I just turned up for my scheduled lessons and wandered home or into town (slightly closer) in between.


And on the tangent of Cross-Country running, I think I've mentioned this before, but I was similarly selected as team bulk for one County Championships. The race started and the first corner was on quite a steep adverse camber, on grass, after rain, i.e. very slippery. About 20-30 of the field went down. I was one of them. I think most of the fallers gave up, but I got back to my feet and started trying to chase the pack, dead last and completely dropped. About halfway round the second and final lap a spectator gave me some advice to focus on the heels of the sole straggler I was by now chasing. Good advice as I began to reel him in, and overtook on the final corner, about 100m left. I sprinted for the line to make sure I wasn't the last finisher and turned around in mini-triumph on crossing it to check where he was... the git had given up when I passed him! #stillbitter

[Benjm]

How often were OTFers sent off on the dreaded cross country run? I went to one of those time warp state grammar schools and it was an annual thing, not regular enough to have any sporting value but just enough to make the point that this was the sort of thing that was done.

At primary school we'd lug a four foot plaster statue of Mary around the town once a year, to similar effect but with a religious bent.

[NickSTFU]

I used to love cross-country running, but I'm weird.

In fact I loved all sports, but that's because academically I was unengaged/poor/thick/stupid/bored depending on your point of view.

Even though I utterly despised school, I never skived.

Told you I was weird.

[Eggchaser]

Never skipped school. Scheduled clarinet lessons during CDT (Craft, Design, Technology) because I hated it.

When I bust my back in the Lower Sixth I wasn't allowed to do contact sports for most of the year, so I ended up on the cross country team. Hated it.