Environment Day

There is nothing worse that a visionary Headteacher with a Bright Idea ! Those who remember “Environment Day” at a certain school that shall remain nameless still wince at the thought – even though it was probably 40 years ago !

On the afternoon of Environment Day the normal timetable was suspended and every class assembled in its form-room to wash the floor, scrub graffiti off the desks with sandpaper, mix Polyfilla to bung up holes in the plaster and clean the walls and windows
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There was even a specially-composed song to encourage the troops. Set to a well-known harvest hymn, it went:

“We scrub the floor and polish on School Spring -Cleaning Day
And from the desks graffiti indecent scrape away.
With loads of Polyfilla we’ll bung up every hole.
A spotless, shining splendid school must be our goal !”

There were two more verses in the same vein, one of which included the immortal lines
“And now we’ve seen the effort the cleaning will entail
Although we’ve got a bucket, we’re feeling rather pail”.

All very worthy tasks, no doubt – but the mistake was to have thirty over-enthusiastic pupils engaged in these tasks at the same time and in the same confined space ! All over the school ! Chaos reigned. It did more than reign, it hailed and thundered !

By mid-afternoon I was trapped in the geography room with my Year 8 class as waves of scummy water lapped against my feet. The noise was horrendous. One boy grabbed a bucket full of water, mixed with Polyfilla and desk-lid shavings, went outside and flung the contents at the windows, producing an interesting streaky effect which remained on the glass for at least two terms.

My classroom was somewhat remote and, stuck there for an hour or more, I feared I was alone in losing control of the situation and feared the worst when I emerged. I need not have worried. When the bell rang for the end of school and I escaped into the corridor , I saw what a trail of damage and destruction had been wreaked throughout the school. The caretaker was surrounded by an angry crowd of cleaners, all threatening to resign on the spot. The building took months to recover – if indeed it ever did !

We never had another Environment Day.