I came in here to mention this. Although they are in “college”, which obviously means something different there than here.
In British schools, do students move from one classroom to another (the do in the US), or do they spend most of the time in the same classroom, with the teachers moving?
In Spain students spend most of the time in the same classroom; we never had lockers but we had desks with space for books (no locks, but then, you weren’t supposed to have anything stealable in there).
Recently, some schools have taken out the lockers completely. Rather than have the students lug around their entire set of books to every class, they are told to take the books home and leave them there for the entire semester or school year. The schools invest in just enough additional copies so each room has one additional classroom-sized set of each book.
I don’t know what they’re doing about coats, though.
Here’s a google search that hits on several articles about school districts doing this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=lockers+removed+school+books+classroom+set
I had a locker all through school, inculding elementary school. We weren’t allowed to put locks on the lockers in elementary school, though. My kids had elementary school lockers, as well.
In middle school, the lockers had built-in locks, and we were assigned a locker by our homeroom and given the combination, which was supposedly changed each year, but you could always go back to last year’s locker and open it. They were the half-height lockers.
In high school, there was a combination of full-height and half-height lockers, and you were allowed to pick your own. There was always a rush on the first day to get one of the full-size lockers. We supplied our own locks.
We had lockers all during middle and high school. These lined every hall in the school, since there are a couple thousand students. They were big enough for books, boots and coats.
Lots of students decorated the insides of the locker, during they year. Wrapping pager covering the inside of the door was a big thing, as was a mirror hung there, to check makeup and hair. It was also standard to make a platform that would sit inside, on 4 legs sitting on the floor of the locker, to double your shelf/floor space.
My HS was a large H shape, so lots of students had lockers that were a long way from their classes, so it was pretty common for several friends to all share their locker combinations, and then everyone would keep their science books in the locker closest to the science rooms, and their history books in the one closest to the history rooms.
I should add that our lockers were assigned alphabetically and according to class. Freshman and sophomores (first and second year) were on the first floor, juniors and seniors (third and fourth year) were on the second floor. We had to provide our own locks, but the locks had to be American brand combination padlocks with a black face. Any non-American padlocks or non-black-faced American padlocks were cut. I should know, as I had a black-faced Master brand padlock cut from my locker. This was a Catholic high school on the South Side. No, I have no idea for the reasoning behind the rules. These were not the sort of locks that had keyed bypasses on them, either.
When I was in primary school, I couldn’t wait to get to High School so I could have a locker. I’d grown up watching Leave it to Beaver, Mr Novak and other assorted US tv programmes.
I got the locker but what a disappointment it turned out to be. Ours were stacked three on top of another, so not a lot of room. There was never enough time between lessons to change books and the locker was inevitably located in another building entirely from the building/s in which most of my classes were held. Mine ended up being a repository for bandaids, tissues, paracetamol and spare sanitary products so I (and my friends) didn’t have to go to see the Girls’ Supervisor if we ever got caught short.
I’ve had a lot of my childhood dreams shattered in one way or another. Schools lockers, Oreos, Pringles. The list goes on.
Nope, no lockers at my school for ordinary students. There were some outside the music room and some near the administrative section for people in student government, but that was it.
We had three stories and about 3,500 students. The school was very safe but the neighborhood was not, so we didn’t bring much to school anyway, just money for lunch.
We had small lockers in gym but were not allowed to use the showers (the rooms were locked except for after team practices. It was a godawful poor time in the NY schools in the 70s and 80s and I guess they couldn’t afford towels.)
I went back for my 25th reunion two years ago and there’s now a lot more lockers and for the moment they are gleaming, but there’s not enough for the students and maybe they’re reserved for seniors or something.
When my son was in middle school there was a burst of political correctness embracing the idea of “act like everyone is honest” and in short the principal wouldn’t let anyone put a lock on their locker.
So, my son said he just he just had an “er”.
UncleFred, one of the Christian high schools in my town doesn’t allow locks on the lockers either, and they too call them “ers.”
(When they hosted an Academic Decathlon competition, some students from other schools, say perhaps the ones that didn’t have lockers coughminecough opened up a lot of the “ers” out of curiosity.)
We had lockers in Jr High and High school.
The location was always right outside your homeroom class, so it sucked it you had Homeroom in the music or shop areas. (They were on long concourses that were at least a half mile both way walk from the rest of the school, so you couldn’t make it there and back in a normal class break.
The locks sucked. Most people just slammed their locker shut, which knocked the dial about 4 numbers to the left and didn’t reset. So about 80 percent of the lockers you could open by turning 4 numbers to the right. and lifting hard 
I did lock a kid in his locker once. It wasn’t really bullying or anything, just a prank. He got in to show he could fit, and I shoved a broken pencil into the hole the padlock would normally go through (most of us didn’t actually bother to lock them) so he couldn’t get out. He had a pocket knife (this was back before anyone would go apeshit over bringing knives to school) and eventually managed to “saw” through the pencil and get out, but it made him late to class once too often and he wound up with detention. He wasn’t mad or anything though, he was able to laugh about it.
Graduated HS in '99
I had a full size locker from 1st grade on. Kindergarten I can’t remember; I think there was a cloakroom. Elementary school lockers could not be locked, Middle School and HS used a padlock. Full size lockers are highly useful, as has been pointed out, in northern states. I was in Wisconsin. On a given winter day you might have a heavy winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf, and snow boots. No way the boots would fit in a half locker.
Got a separate “gym” locker from grade 6-8. Half size. Kept gym clothes in there.
The HS locker room was oversized, so you just carried a padlock in your gym bag and grabbed any empty locker on days you had PE.
Also got another (!) locker for soccer (wire mesh type) and another (!) for the basketball team, the years that I played.
The school district I went to school in growing up removed all their lockers in 1989. They started to remove them in 1986 with locker privileges being removed by class with seniors having them last in 1989.
Graduated high school in 2001. No such thing as a locker in elementary school, but then again we were in the same classroom (as a general rule) all day every day for the whole year. I believe all the lockers when I was in middle school were actually 1/3 normal heights. High school was either 1/2 or 1/3 height, probably 1/2. We also got one for band to hold instruments and equipment. I very rarely used my locker, generally because the time between classes and the distances, not to mention the crush of people, made it quite difficult. I believe my general coping mechanism was to either swap out half a day’s worth of stuff at lunch or to leave unneeded textbooks at home or in the locker and just put everything for the day in my backpack. The twice-a-week “block” (half as many classes for twice the time) scheduling in high school made the latter easier.
It also got easier later on, when classes like English that had a single big honking textbook in the first year or two became classes with actual books. I’ve had bigger textbooks, but not in high school and definitely not that kind of crappy English textbook that’s mostly selections and excerpts from other works.
For me, though, the biggest problem was the time. We had all of four minutes to get from class to class in one middle school on a fairly large campus. All the lockers were in this large main hallway which was also the main conduit for a lot of classrooms and areas. Four minutes really wasn’t enough. When the tardiness got too bad, we’d get crackdowns and stupid rationalizations from the principal along the lines of “I can make it from one end of campus to the other in four minutes, so you should be able to too.” It was obvious she’d say this without thinking out what the implications of being the principal instead of just another kid among probably a thousand does to freedom of movement.
My HS had full-height lockers (1996-1999). The charter HS I work at now does not have lockers.
Both I went to, didn’t. Did you got to a ‘private’ as opposed to state run school?
Heh! I was about to post “did you go to my high school?” Then I looked at your user name. Duh, you actually did go to my high school.
From as far back as the early 1990s there’s been a small trend toward removing lockers to prevent vandalism, storage of contraband, etc. I suppose there’s some sound logic there, but I can’t help think that this sort of brilliant inspiration comes from the same people who think we can solve all our school-related problems by forcing the kids into uniforms.
Through my years in LAUSD middle and high school, 69-75, we always had half-height lockers. I don’t think I used mine all that much; it was easier to simply carry the books than to run back and forth between classes. And this was well before backpacks came into use. I suppose kids today aren’t even aware of the gender implications that used to be involved in book carrying. If you were a guy, youi were supposed to carry your books pressed against your hip with your hand on that side, no matter how many. If you were a girl you could carry them with both hands in front of you, sometimes held up almost even with the chest.
Our halls only had full lockers at the end of of each wall (between the class rooms.) Otherwise, they were sets of two long, skinny lockers going down for coats, bags, boots, etc, and then two cupboards up top for books and such. Nor did they lock – you had to go to the office and request a lock if you wanted one. To open the top, you pushed up on the bottom handle. There wasn’t any room for pictures, so really no one bothered, unless you were lucky enough to get a full one.
I carried my backpack around, but I’d just keep my notebooks in it – I would just go and switch my books. I found it easier to carry my pens and other general supplies.