Leaving my personal faculty bubble rocked my confidence

As I sat on the bus, I could hear the teenage boys around me talking about the fight they were going to have with their rivals.

Knives were mentioned. I shrank into my seat, terrified. Later, in an ungainly attempt at chivalry, these same boys would show the ‘posh’ girl — me — which school entrances we needed to use to avoid the ‘dangerous’ pupils.

This was the early 1990s and the thought of a knife was shocking. Especially, perhaps, to a naive former public school-girl like me. Like anyone, my school days shaped me for the rest of my life, but I had a sudden plunge from sheltered childhood into rather rougher waters.

Today, as a romantic novelist, I create my own worlds where I have power over the environment in which characters play out their lives — but in real life, I don’t always feel so in control.

Not everyone is defined by their youth, but I had a particularly harsh coming-of-age. While other pupils from my sedate all-girls’ private school in North London went on to finishing schools in Europe at 16, I was plucked out of my privileged bubble and sent to the local comprehensive.

As Labour plans to levy VAT on private school fees, pushing up to 40,000 pupils from private schools into state schools according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, mine is a distinctly cautionary tale. From 11 to 16, I learned in small classes, taught by lovely teachers who gave every impression of wanting the best for us.

It wasn’t perfect. Set on a residential road, there weren’t any playing fields, and we had to go to the local cricket pitch to do sports and Alexandra Palace to ice skate. There was some low-level meanness: when I was awarded the title role in Oliver! aged 11 there was some sniping from my classmates. 

But it rapidly resolved when I told a teacher, and I never feared the consequences of ‘telling on’ a classmate as state school kids later told me they did.

Then disaster struck. My parents, who ran their own retail business, were hit by the recession of the early 1990s, and ran out of money for private schooling. The fees jumped up, too. There was nothing for it but to send me to a state secondary a 35-minute bus ride from our home.

I cried on the last day of school, and over the summer, the nerves began to kick in. But it wasn’t until my new school handed me a map on the first day that I truly understood how different my environment was.

The place was vast and the crowds of children felt overwhelming. There was no way I could ever know the name of the kids in my year, let alone the whole school.

Every time I walked into the sixth form building, I saw new people. Obviously, there were boys, too, which was a whole new dynamic. I had brothers, so I wasn’t intimidated, but the barging in the corridors unnerved me every time I walked from class to class.

The school was one of those old-ish buildings to which they’d added lots of bits, piecemeal — shabby and temporary pre-fab classrooms which then became permanent. It wasn’t so much that it was unfriendly, but newcomers were viewed with a detached curiosity. At my old school anyone new was assigned a mentor.

Nobody was actively mean here, but it was very impersonal. I quickly lost any sense of being special.

With so many children, it was hard for teachers to focus on individuals or even, it seemed, to muster any sympathy for them.

I remember breaking my finger and having it strapped up, and then getting into trouble for not taking notes in class. I felt indignant; I was a conscientious student, but I couldn’t write. Even so, the teacher snapped at me for not participating.

I think what surprised me most was the attitude to learning. I assumed everyone wanted to be there, but there was so much messing around. Our media studies teacher was straight out of training and only lasted a couple of weeks because of the humiliating teasing he got in his classes.

I couldn’t believe pupils would be so rude to a teacher, or show such a lack of respect for authority.

The worst thing was having to do my Law A-level at another school. I was the only girl, travelling on the bus with the boys.

Teenage boys are cocky, and they took great pleasure in telling me about a gang who wanted to have a Montague/Capulet-style fight with them. This second school was in the same borough as my home, but it could have been in a different universe. It was in a rough area, and the buildings were shabby and tired, with rubbish blown into every corner.

At break time the corridors were heaving with pupils pushing and shoving, and on one occasion I was knocked into the wall in the rush and banged my head quite badly.

I’d never experienced anything like it. I was used to politeness and standing aside. I’m not quite 5ft tall, so it felt genuinely unsafe.

The most frightening thing was going to the loo. I was told to ‘get the key’ from the office. It was baffling, but they told me it was because of vandalism.

I was petrified — this was the 1990s, when everyone knew of that episode of Grange Hill where Brian’s head was flushed down the loo! It never happened to me, but every time I went, I was terrified it might.

One girl was constantly late because she was working as well as going to school. In my naivety, I thought: why are you working instead of attending class? I now wonder whether perhaps she had to help support her family.

These days, I find it incredible anyone can afford to send their kids to private school. It cost my parents about £600 per term in the 1990s; now it’s ten times that.

If you haven’t been to both private and state school, you can’t understand the huge differences there can be. It has affected my outlook on life; I am a very reserved person, always wary of new environments and aware they could become dangerous.

I am quiet until I’ve assessed a situation — you don’t forget the threat of a knife fight easily — and I’m cautious around new people.

With fees as high as they are today, private schooling wasn’t an option for my two boys, now eight and 16. But I spent months researching the right school, studying policies around behaviour and fighting, asking other parents about the prevalence of knives, and safety in the loos.

Looking back, I’m sure I was strongly influenced at an impressionable age by the change from private to state. In some ways, yes, for the better. I certainly became more aware of those who weren’t as fortunate as me. I learned that bad behaviour isn’t always the result of innate character, but frequently tied in with economics and background.

I learned that many kids in larger classes simply don’t learn as well as those in schools where numbers are kept down.

But it also made me more timid. The wariness I felt stayed with me. In adult life, I get anxious and panicky quite quickly if I hear shouting or boisterous behaviour around me (particularly in confined spaces). I am aware a situation could turn at any moment.

I don’t blame my parents, and I don’t blame the teachers. Children simply needed a thick skin in the London state schools of the 1990s, and I didn’t have one. Today, I suspect they need an even tougher one, which is something to remember if you find yourself doing the school fee sums and wondering whether they’re worth it.

• As told to Alice Smellie