Most children begin school when they are five years old, or just before, but Matilda's parents forgot to send her. She was five and a half when she went for the first time. Crunchem Hall School had about two hundred and fifty children, and the head teacher was called Miss Trunchbull. She was a terrible woman who frightened the children and the teachers. When she came near, you could almost feel danger coming from her; and if four or five children got in her way, she crashed straight through them, pushing them right and left.