When our son, aged four, started school for the first time he was really upset because he did not have a lift-up desk of his own. He had been into my slightly old-fashioned junior school and seen the desks we had there, but when he went to his slightly more modern primary school there were only flat-top tables. Impersonal plastic trays, in distant stackers, lurked across the room.

In the classroom my wife and I run now we have an open space with free seating (admittedly around flat-top tables). But each child has their preferred place and will head for it whenever they can.

We would not want to return to the serried rows of our childhood, but the time saved in not wandering to and fro across the room must be immense.

We all need a bit of personal space and something to call our own. My desk in school was one such place, a haven where I could keep my nice pen, my unbroken rubber, and so on.

If we were staying in education and not retiring next year we would certainly take a look at the Sebel furniture catalogue.

Philip and Barbara Arrandale

Toucan Service Children’s School

Belize Central America