Fictional Schools

My son has just started school and I was pretty sure I knew what to expect – he’d be solving mysteries and sneaking out of the dormitories for midnight feasts. But so far, it just seems to be learning about shapes and things. Doubtless the fact that he’s not at a boarding school will also impede his ability to have midnight feasts as well, but the whole thing is disappointing for someone brought up on traditional school stories. Of course, he could go to the new kind of school, where everyone breaks into song spontaneously in the corridor all the time but those don’t seem to exist either. So, let’s just leave reality aside for a moment and celebrate the Fictional Schools.

If it’s mad escapades that you’re looking for, look no further than the naughty schoolgirls of St Trinian’s. Starting life as a series of cartoons, the antics of the smoking, drinking schoolgirls became first books and then a series of films. We’ll ignore the recent remakes, on the grounds that they were rubbish. Typically, a St Trinian’s girl would know how to use a hockey stick (as a weapon) and how to roll up a school skirt to reveal the maximum amount of leg. As a cross-dressing Alistair Sim said in the films: “In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared” Not a school for the faint hearted.