I was there for a bit in the mid 70s, for my sins.
Had John Honey as a teacher in junior 4. He was a right showman; I remember him teaching us a hymn and singing the first line, sweeping his hand into the air like he was doing opera.
One day he took our power ball and spent some time throwing it against the wall of Junior 3, closer and closer to the top until it went on the roof, while he was on playground duty. Then he shrugged and wandered off.
Mr Honey was so-so to get on with, Mr Walmsley less so. Mr Bartrobe (sp) looked like Martin Lee out of Brotherhood of Man. Mrs Flannagan was headteacher and pretty good, but you didn't mess her about – command presence or what.
Mrs Jones was very kind; I think she looked after what we'd call Special Needs today? There was also Miss Bodenham, Mrs Cronin whose names I remember. The pianist was Mrs Reardon, who came in for the evil that was Singing (the boys mostly hated it) and School Mass. She also dragged in for the class plays at Christmas and summer; having listened to my own youngsters' classes singing, I hope she was well paid!
There were prefects from Junior 4 who the teacher would get to keep an eye on a class for a few minutes if they needed to duck out; perfectly normal at the time, but there was a right fuss about 25 years back when the school down the road tried the same thing – putting two eleven-year-old kids in charge of a class of eight-year-olds.
If you messed about in the playground at lunchtime, the dinner ladies would send you to stand against the wall while they stood chatting; I reckon they had Mum-sight and could keep an eye even while you thought they were paying you no attention, but being grassed-up was also a possibility.
There were good kids and bad kids, same as anywhere, and kids who just 'needed' picking on, apparently. There was an English kid (that is, English Catholic parents not Irish Catholic like lots of us were). He was a bit odd but I reckon that was down to his folks not having a telly, but one day one of the lads (John or Paddy?) called him a nose-picking Englishman. I was there thinking there was going to be a scrap; he didn't argue about the English bit but said he didn't pick his nose and anyway always used a handkerchief – he got an apology!
I used to like watching the trains go past on the railway line rather than doing lessons; when I was 17 and started going to the pub we'd sometimes duck onto the tracks to walk home at night. Often thought it would be good to do the kids a favour and drop a petrol bomb on the roof from there! Mind you, the place got closed down a year or so after and I was dead annoyed because it hadn't been such a bad place – we'd dug out beds and grown veggies in the patch of grass at the back of the kitchens by the windows of Infant 1, after all, and that was special.