But this is the way it was described when we were kids. And it’s still the way kids describe it now. There’s a truth to it.

In his autobiography, the British singer Morrissey described his experience of school in Manchester in the ‘60s and ‘70s as “an asylum of sorts”.

“There is no money to be had and there are no resources, just as there is no colour and no laughter,” he wrote.

“Headmaster Mr Coleman rumbles with grumpiness in a rambling stew of hate.

“Convincingly old, he is unable to praise.”

He added that this headmaster possessed a “military servitude” and appeared to loathe children.

“These educators educate no one.”

Morrissey immortalised his hatred for school in the 1985 song by The Smiths, The Headmaster Ritual, with the lyrics: “Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools, spineless swines, cemented minds”.

Then there was the Pink Floyd song from 1979, Another Brick In the Wall, with the lyrics: “We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, teachers leave them kids alone”.

No doubt these songs reflected the days of corporal punishment – a time of schools being harsh institutions, with teachers as dictators and disciplinarians.

But what about nowadays? Teaching may have evolved, but high school remains a tough road to navigate for many kids.

Here’s the experience of some Year 12 students this year: Some teachers don’t seem to know what they’re teaching. They clearly don’t like the subjects they teach.

Heaps of times, teachers don’t turn up. It’s hypocritical because kids get warned for not meeting attendance standards. 

My friends are falling apart because of the pressures of year 12 and their struggles. The school tries to set up a mental health program to help the kids. The teachers who signed up don’t follow through and don’t help.

There’s major projects for the HSC where students need the teacher’s support and guidance throughout, but they don’t have the confidence to reach out for help. It pushes them further down.

Some teachers tell students to drop out, which isn’t very encouraging. You don’t get any positive reinforcement.

Kids get incomplete notices for not doing their assignments, but the school doesn’t want to spend money to print out paper. Some kids don’t have printers at home and don’t have money to buy a new one immediately. They just fail because no one will help them. It brings you down when you see people experiencing that.

Looking at the flipside, I’m told schools have experienced improvements with Gonski money. It’s apparently given teachers more chance to improve their skills and engage better with kids.

And students do have some positive stories to tell. Some teachers are passionate, there’s the social life, they even learn some stuff and accept school is a rite of passage that wasn’t meant to be a walk in the park.

A dislike for school may be a symptom of the developing and hormonal teenage mind. It may be impossible to avoid some teachers becoming disaffected when faced with teenage culture and its shades of contempt.

Let’s just hope more schools can become places where students and teachers work in harmony on uplifting journeys towards maturity and rewarding careers.