Burnley Grammar School

Hi Kathy from Maine,

Your story really says it all, doesn't it? Your school was willing to let the girls rebel but when the boys tried the same thing they had to be crushed. As a male the double standard is something you have to get used to as you go through life. Everything from how many office environments will force male employees to wear a tie while their female colleagues are allowed to wear more or less anything as long as it's not jeans or jogging bottoms, through to the brutal callousness of divorce courts, and still conscription in many countries.

'Severely strong-armed' is a very telling phrase. What methods were used to bully your male classmates into accepting the shower regime?

In my opinion, to use the threat of bad grades against a student for anything other than bad academic performance is excessive and frankly malicious. Especially since PE is utterly irrelevant to the rest of your life.

I think it was Susan Faludi who once made the observation that at the exact same time that young women were mounting protest marches under the slogan, 'my body, my choice', for young men of the same age their daily reality was 'my body, no choice'. I see that you graduated in 1965. Those of your male classmates who didn't make it to university will have been faced with being conscripted to fight in Vietnam.

I can only remember one stand-off in my school days and it also concerned a group of girls. Here in the UK all schools have always had uniforms the details of which are specified by the school. My school, along with most schools back then, had a strict 'no trousers' rule for the girls. We had several violently cold winters in the 1980s and there was an incident where several girls who had turned up in trousers because of the cold weather were immediately sent home to change into skirts. Several parents complained, pointing out that skirts and ankle socks were simply not adequate or appropriate attire in sub-zero conditions but the school just doubled down, leading to a stand-off lasting several weeks. In the end the school compromised, decreeing that from then on girls could wear trousers in severe cold weather provided that the headmaster had given prior permission to do so.

I think the rationale was that trousers were not deemed 'gender-appropriate' for girls. This was nonsensical given that a) this was the 1980s not the 1880s and girls and women had been wearing trousers for decades and b) girls were still expected to wear ties, which definitely were not gender-appropriate for girls. Go figure, as they say.

I was a stereotypical small, thin, slow, asthmatic boy with glasses so I didn't really enjoy PE at all. Always skins except for rugby and football. I was not made to look good as a skin as a child. Did the teacher care, of course not. We did rugby, swimming and cross country running in summer (skins) and winter and rounders (skins), badminton (skins) and tennis (skins) in summer. I hated rugby because I don't like physical contact and it often got quite rough; I had to take off my glasses too so I couldn't even see the ball. I disliked swimming because I was sorted into the beginners group despite the fact I was actually a fairly decent swimmer (bizarrely the sorting was done as a race over a length between two of you - I was pitted against a girl who swam competitively for the county and she beat me by something like a minute and a half) and I detested cross country because I was painfully slow at running and had no stamina. Rugby and cross country were done at the school sports fields right next to the North Sea and it was always absolutely freezing cold, windy and utterly miserable. I was completely useless at rounders because I have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever but tennis and badminton were ok I suppose. We were skins in the gym with girls and did rounders skins with girls outside. Then the showers came, they forced us to use them naked with 36 others, jostled by the bigger boys and teased quite often, even grabbed in a headlock once, told to get back in if I tried to get out too soon, the dream place of the school bully.

Although asthmatic I had to climb ropes and do everything. After many attempts I got to the top of the rope and could tap the roof high up. Then I panicked about getting down safely and got halfway down, was shouted at to move myself and fell off a long way down. Hit the mat but it didn't save my arm which was fractured. Teacher called me a stupid boy. My arm ended up in a plaster cast. Unable to do PE for a while but anyone on a medical exemption was still required to arrive at PE and change into the kit just to sit it out. Spent a couple of months as a skin (no top on - bare skin) with a plaster cast sitting watching others in gym. It was hard to change like that, so pointless and cruel and silly.

Michael W, don't mind my saying, but if there were no PE staff available at all (due to sickness or other reasons) and no written guidance for you, it seems unjustified and illogical for them to have criticised so strongly.

Please excuse my curiosity - and other posters a digression - but how did your methods of teaching languages change during your career? Does the ability to speak another language alter, subtly or otherwise, how you see the world? I am intrigued by the opportunity to hear your answer; I regret knowing only my mother tongue.

Comment by: Hamish Kempster - ex parent governor 1982-4

The profession I started in 1978 was a very different thing by 2017 when I left it Hamish, sometimes for the better, rather a lot for the worse.


Comment by: Michael W on 19th January 2025

Most non PE teachers placed in your position would have done the same. Michael. I full endorse your comment about those on the PE staff.


Comment by: Spencer on 17th January 2025

I'm very surprised you got as many as four chances there Spencer. You'd have been given a second chance only in most places. A lesson learned the hard way for you.


Comment by: Danny C on 7th January 2025

Your school was not too ususual for the 1980s. I have seen such sports days take place myself. Not everyone will be happy with such requirements, obviously. I have seen drama staged in ways you describe also.


Comment by: Yours Truly on 7th January 2025

You mention double standards. Yes, these are not imagined and are real. Women were allowed to enter boys very private areas and did so, men were not allowed to enter girls.

Comment by: Carl on 19th January 2025 at 14:15


"

Alan, do you really have to bring Hitler into these conversations? You could say that same thing about many people given authority status, PE teachers or just teachers in general are not alone in sometimes being a bit keen to over assert themselves.

Michael, nothing much you did wrong in my book there. What's interesting though is that there was presumably nobody in the class that day that told you they wished to shower and they all went off. If it had been me there I would have asked to shower becasue I was always quite keen to do so after PE. I may be a rare view but I always felt totally comfortable with such things and regarded the school changing room as a private area even with many others about. My preference in PE was always to remove any top I had on if I could practically do so and I did this voluntarily many times at school when I didn't have to and others kept them on, although our own gym spent a large amount of time shirtless anyway and I think boys looked good that way in the gym....."

Carl. As Hitler has been dead these 80 years I thought he was a fairly safe name these days. I am sorry though if it cause anybody anxiety, though I stand by what I said.

I am a little confused - you regarded the school locker room as a private space even though you had loads of other people around you, you liked to remove your shirt at every opportunity, even when you didn't have to and you think "boys looked good that way"

I see. - or at least I think I do.Clearly you enjoyed displaying yourself. Others don't. We are all different.

Alan, do you really have to bring Hitler into these conversations? You could say that same thing about many people given authority status, PE teachers or just teachers in general are not alone in sometimes being a bit keen to over assert themselves.

Michael, nothing much you did wrong in my book there. What's interesting though is that there was presumably nobody in the class that day that told you they wished to shower and they all went off. If it had been me there I would have asked to shower becasue I was always quite keen to do so after PE. I may be a rare view but I always felt totally comfortable with such things and regarded the school changing room as a private area even with many others about. My preference in PE was always to remove any top I had on if I could practically do so and I did this voluntarily many times at school when I didn't have to and others kept them on, although our own gym spent a large amount of time shirtless anyway and I think boys looked good that way in the gym. I always liked removing my top outside any time I could at school and nobody told me to put one back on. When I ran the cross country I nearly always threw my shirt off and hung it around my waist from my shorts, and some others copied this.

Comment by: Michael W on 19th January 2025 at 06:10


A decent teacher, Michael!. I honestly and genuinely believe that had Hitler been recruiting in Britain for his foul organisation he would have found many willing volunteers from P.E. teachers and colleges - dictatorial bullies. They would have been more than happy to obey orders and throw their weight about.

Hello.

I'm a not long retired languages teacher.

35 years ago at one school I worked at there were often staff shortages in various subjects and too much staff sickness meant shuffling people about to just be present in a lesson. This is how I found myself being asked to stand in on a boys PE class one time when multiple staff in that subject were off school at the same time. I didn't have much to do and just sat aside watching the boys throw and kick balls about the place as they self sorted themselves out and told me what they were doing. When it came to the end I just let them change and go. As I finished that I lket the one PE staff member know the situation had been fine with them all and told him I'd just let them all go. He then got into a big row with me because I had seen fit to allow the boys to leave without showering and was really quite cross with me. I got into quite a bit of trouble over it actually, you would have thought I had just emptied the school safe of all its valuables, it really was a very disproportionate reaction to something. I hadn't let the boys away after rolling around in a rugby game outside, they were inside and clean enough. I found that these PE teachers would set themselves aside from other staff at school and be quite insular to themselves and you didn't want to mess with their system of doing things even if you were another staff member helping out doing a stand in favour. I was not asked to do that again.

Comment by: Hamish Kempster - ex parent governor 1982-4 on 17th January 2025 at 03:01



I wish more people thought the way you did, Hamish - I agree 100%. Sadly, I think schools, like political parties with their "focus groups" tend to prefer lickspittles who will toe the line. I think it is monstrous the way P.E. teachers were allowed carte blache to carry on their queer ways the way they did - even into recent years. Young lads running round a gym with no pants on, atb the insistence of P.E. teachers, teachers standing around watching boys shower close up - this seems to me entirely unacceptable and it must have been a great turn-on for pedophilic teachers. I would suggest "Nick H"'s teacher fell into this category - what on earth would possess a naked man to jump into a shower with a group of young schoolboys - but I bet he got away with it. I wouldn't fancy his chances if he did today.

I would HOPE that this is not allowed or encouraged these days. I suspect school students these days would be more aware of the proclivities of adults who get their kicks this way - "Punk Chick's" attitude seems to suggest this is the case, though, were schools easier on girls than boys?. I don't know as I went to a single sex school.

Comment by: Peter Grimley on 12th January 2025 at 22:28



Peter I would put it to you that what might have been regarded as 'acceptable' in 1959 would not be regarded so today, and the fact is at that time people were a lot more naive than they are today. You are speaking of 66 years ago. In pre-social media and 24 hour news days, schools and other institutions were able to cover up wrongdoing by staff much easier.

I think it also needs to be borne in mind that pupils who were abused both then, and, possibly, now, were less likely to complain about it at the time it was happening, either out of embarrassment, or a fear they would not be believed..

First school shower memory, tell me about it, here's mine. Unforgettable. I had friends round socially for an evening a number of years ago, men and women, a couple had been to my school like me and another couple hadn't. We chatted school and this whole school PE subject came up and got rather animated on such things as whether boys should be forced to play football or any of us should have been forced to shower like we did during a period roughly covering the mid 70's to mid 80's.

I was very resistant to PE lessons when I first began secondary school in 1976 and made a very bad first impression on nearly all my PE teachers at the time, which looking back on now I deeply regret. I felt school PE offered me nothing that interested me very much and I viewed the gymnasium in the place as a potential torture chamber of horrors to navigate, and if any of that wasn't enough they forced you to shower which worried the hell out of me, as did any prospect I might have to do PE without my top on at any time.

So on the very first day we were down to have a PE lesson I remembered to forget my PE kit for the outdoors and faked a note trying to style it best I could in the best handwriting I could manage to look fully adult like. This note pretended to explain that my family had been unable to get the PE kit in time for term in my correct sizes. This was a bit of a stretch as I was a boy of completely normal size, but I actually got away with this major deception and decided the teachers were gullible. I was allowed to sit out the lesson and was happy with that. I didn't even go back to the changing room with others when it finished and just cleared off for lunch. This was the start of my undoing because it made me decide to do the same thing again at the next PE lesson indoors with the other bit of PE kit too. I didn't do another note but simply said the previous note also applied to the indoor kit as well and they accepted it reluctantly. I sat it out reading a book in the corner but did feel uncomfortable and slightly guilty. I began wondering how long I could pull this off for, maybe a month? I'd questioned someone about the changing room I didn't go back into from the first lesson and he told me they put the showers on. Oh f**k I thought, as I did when sitting in the gym buried in my book when I suddenly heard the teacher ask boys to start scaling the framed walls and crawl up the ropes dangling menacingly. But at least the boys were all wearing a T-shirt........until suddenly half of them weren't and the lesson had changed tack into a massive team game, my first sight of anything skins and shirts at school and that distracted me from my book imagining myself as one of them and not wanting to be.

I got away with the no PE kit explanation a third time and all my class had done PE and showered, even done some stuff without their tops and I'd yet to do a thing apart from sit it out and I knew I was starting to lose even them to my cause, although another boy had sat the third time out with me which made me feel better. Meanwhile back home I'm telling untruths about my school day and what I've really been doing.

The fourth time it all came to a sudden and brutally uncomfortable end game when three PE teachers surrounded me and wanted proper answers and suggested I had been lying about my PE kit. I had been but I denied that. One did threaten to phone home but didn't and so they never found out the note had been faked by me to keep off PE. I was in the changing room alone and one teacher went out to with my class to the gym with them and the other two told me enough was enough and I would be taking part with the rest and I must immediately remove my whole school uniform I was wearing right down to my underpants and nothing else and get out the changing room and run along to the gym with the rest. I remember resisting this and saying no to it but they told me they weren't budging until I did and so I had little choice left and did this. If I hadn't they were on the verge of sending me home and making sure back home knew why I'd been sent home. Maybe I was in shock because I think I began shivering and I don't think it was cold. When I got into the gym for PE everyone laughed at me. Then one of the other PE teachers who had made me strip off reappeared and threw some tatty old shorts at me to put on over my pants. It made little difference to me as I was still without a top on which I disliked intensely, and nobody else was like that, and I had nothing on my feet either. The PE teacher that took that lesson told me that I would have to do PE this way until family had got hold of the PE kit for me. It was checkmate to them, I was damned if I was going to do PE this way again in a hurry. They clearly knew I was lying and this was how they proved it when I miraculously arrived with the exact kit next time I needed to have with me.

I still had that first shower to face though and that raced into my head as the PE lesson drew closer to ending. Could I wriggle out of it I wondered, I thought I'd try and see, but I was kept a close eye on and told I was getting in that shower with the rest of them in no uncertain terms. I was laughed at again when I got in with everyone. My face was probably not a pretty picture. I was told to borrow a towel off someone when they'd finished with it if anyone would let me. Someone did.

I don't think I ever got rid of the stain of that poor first impression I made. I've got a report here from December 1976 and the PE teacher who took me in those first days at secondary school simply says I'd struggled with a few early difficulties that had now been resolved to his satisfaction, even though I did drop out of a few more PE lessons here and there over time, but I don't think that was at all unusual and others did this too for their own reasons. But my advice now to my younger self would be don't bother, it's not worth it, it doesn't make things any better but can and did in my case make things a hell of a lot worse and humiliating when the game was up and they'd had enough of my excuses.

I know I was not unusual like this, I just pushed my luck.

There have been many comments about school pe changing rooms, and showers. I attended an all boys secondary modern early to mid 60s. showers were available but not they were not compulsory so most of us did not take a towel or use them.
I was not great at pe but at least it was preferable to maths or the other subject I hated which was Technical Drawing.
As we arrived for the pe lesson, the teacher unlocked the changing room and gave a set time to get changed and into the hall(The same hall used for assemblies etc with the ropes and climbing bars around the sides)
For the lesson we wore shorts (no pants) no top and plimsolls no socks. No problem for me as I knew from my older brother this was how it would be. (In fact I thought it was rather daring wearing no pants)
P E was always for us the last lesson of the day and as soon as it was over we were sent to the room to change and go home. The teacher disappeared immediately I suppose wanting to get home and we were left unsupervised. most of us had the same idea.
It was only two or three of the more "macho" lads who seemed to well developed that bothered with showers and they would stand around "posing" and generally they left the rest of us alone. However, sometimes they would play up and pick on us smaller lads making us feel uncomfortable because there were some of us although at Secondary school our parents insisted we were too small for long trousers and still wore the grey shorts and by the age of 12 they were a tight fit.
Whilst I understand the concerns of some of the contributors about teachers being present in rooms where lads are changing etc. I would have felt reassured if our teacher had at least stayed within a discreet distance of the changing room to listen out for any mischief.

Interesting topic this.

As a former grammar boy I have many clear retrievable memories of my time in such an institution, and I use that word purposefully.

Keeping strictly to topic though. Grammar made everyone use the school pool on a regular basis and sometimes it was tagged on to the end of the school day and we had to swim out of hours. For swimming all boys would be sent into the showers naked BEFORE we put our swimwear on and went out to the poolside and got in the water. Nobody was allowed to swim without doing this. Once out the water and back afterwards we had to shower again as well before dressing. I remember that some boys used to rinse their swimwear in the showers afterwards but we were never allowed to stand in the showers with them on, so they'd be rinsed and wrung out by hand while off. A teacher would sometimes be in the showers with us, but with his swimwear on. Our teachers sometimes joined us in the pool.

This brings me around to my first shower memory at grammar school aged eleven. Like anyone else, I was apprehensive about what showering in a large group at school with no clothes on would actually be like. I was somewhat private in my personal habits I suppose, so being forced to shower with others and lose all privacy mattered a bit. I think the first time shower I had was late in the day and the shock was not seeing so many other boys naked and being naked myself among them, it was seeing the PE teacher we had at the time jump in among us all bold as brass with nothing on and act as if he was just one of us. I found out he was 35 at the time, the same age as both my parents and even resembled my dad for pity's sake. So that was my first PE shower memory as an eleven year old. This kind of thing was all known to my parents and probably many others besides, and they thought nothing of it at all. Infact if I'd made any kind of noise about it I'd have been told to shut up and stop making a scene about it by them, I'm quite sure about that. It became a semi-regular thing over time and was rather forgotten about as an issue. There was nothing to suggest any impropriety. Some people are able to accept non-sexual nudity easier than others. I do wonder if you can ever completely 100 percent separate the two though.

My grammar school took PE in the gym and it was always shirtless there. Boys were never seen in the grammar school gym other than this way, not even in a vest. I guess it must have been mandated that way although nobody ever quite said it was. We just seemed to do it that way. There were some occasions where the teacher might also be shirtless too in PE, but this was largely outside of the gym in the summertime when boys went shirtless very many times also, mainly when doing swimming, running, or one or two field sports such as javelin, shot put or long jumping. When we did the school cross country, it depended on what it was like outdoors, sometimes we wore just a flimsy vest, other times we were all told to run shirtless, or sometimes it would be a mix of boys in tops and boys who just chose to do it shirtless. Some boys did like to run the winter runs shirtless which always amused me but nobody was told they had to at such times. There were always boys in school as I progressed and got older who seemed to like to prove their hardness and stamina and going shirtless when others didn't was such a time.

I see there are some on this site who say they were forced to run the cross country at their schools fully shirtless during winter but what are we talking about here, at freezing point because there are very different kinds of winters day we have here which can be very different. I find it difficult to credit that any teacher at any school would choose to force anyone to cast their tops off in truly freezing air temperatures whereas the better winter days they might have been.

It's striking to me that the types of subject I've identified here and that others have spoken about previous to me on this site are thought to be quite a big deal nowadays. Nothing I'vee said was ever a big deal to anyone when I did it, yes we got nervous about things but that's not quite the same thing. What changed?

When I became a Scottish middle school parent governor for a couple of years in the eighties when one of my own children was a pupil I discovered that not only did the school tell them to shower but that the showers and the changing room were not together and that teachers made boys walk about ten metres along a school corridor wearing just a towel wrapped around them so they could get to the showers from where they changed clothing. Girls did so as well, after the boys had come from the showers and gone back to change, or vice versa. One set would have to wait in the corridor for the others to finish and leave. Also that middle school boys were expected to accept the presence of a female teacher when needed in such situations. I didn't think this was acceptable and I also brought up the question at one of our governors meetings the whole question of why the school was insisting that middle school age must take showers at all. Some showering were not even nine years old. Unfortunately at the time I was in a tiny minority to raise this subject and was unable to change the policy which had overwhelming support from almost everyone else then and so it continued.

I can't say I enjoyed being a parent governor, I was persuaded by a friend to give it a go and always seemed to be on the minority view about decisions about school. I'd like to know how many others reading this were expected to attend a middle school - primary school, as pupils and face a whole class shower after school with your own gender at that age?

Forty years have now passed since a time when I didn't think even my own child in middle school was being afforded due respectfulness when it came to their PE ablutions and space. I am not a liberal do gooder by any means and accepted totally when my child became a high school pupil that he must take responsibility and shower. I was more concerned than he was at middle school in all fairness but it's up to adults to look out for children even if they are not always their own ones.

Hi Punk Chick,

Well done you for standing your ground. Your stand against open showers was more successful than mine against the wearing of shorts in infant school but then your mum supported you whereas my parents didn't want to get involved. My mum, although she could see how much the issue was distressing me, was a timid and unassertive woman and was unwilling to challenge the school authorities while my dad, who never, ever supported me in anything, declared that I was just being stupid and I should do what the teacher said. My stand came to an abrupt end when my sinister, menacing teacher threatened to have me slippered (at the age of five) if I dared to show up to school in long trousers just one more time.

In first year juniors the shorts thing came up again. Our teacher looked at us one summer afternoon and declared that all of us boys should be in shorts. She then proceeded to ask every single boy in turn if he owned a pair of shorts. Interestingly, although we had to wear uniform from seven onwards, she said it didn't matter if the shorts were any other colour but grey. My mum, seeing how unhappy I was about it, and not wanting a repeat of the drama of two years before, kept me off school the next day. Really it was the coward's way out - but hey, it worked. When I went into school the following day in long trousers the teacher wisely bit her lip and shorts were never, ever mentioned again. Round two to me.

I mean, really - what was this obsession amongst middle-aged women about making boys wear shorts?

We did PE in our vests and pants at my infant school too. In fact they always seemed to be finding another reason why us kids, both boys and girls, had to remove most - or even all - of our clothes, from PE to the Christmas play to the nasty shock of school medical exams. I can even recall a day trip to our local park where they had us strip down to our pants to go in the river (well, apart from me, I got a telling-off from the teacher because I refused to remove my shorts).

The girls at my secondary school wore gym knickers too, with white polo shirts, and they wore them both inside and outside, where they could most definitely be seen by us boys. I never heard that any of them complained or protested about it, in fact they just seemed to take it in their stride.

Your showering situation, with the open showers and the PE teachers inspecting it all, sounds quite archaic. I have heard one or two women complain of how they had to use communal showers at school but they were older women. I had gained the impression that communal showers for girls, where they existed, had been all but eradicated during the 1970s. But it is only my impression.

Re wearing the boys' kit, you're lucky you didn't go to one of those schools where they made boys do PE in nothing but a pair of shorts!

Our school said it was compulsory, but I stood my ground and said if they wanted me to have a shower then I wanted a cubicle and privacy and not the whole communal thing, but they said no. The teachers used to stand one each end of the showers and watch, no way was I going to be subjected to that. They tried to suspend me for it, but didn't suceed. Plus I manged to wear the boys PE uniform, as they made the girls wear gym knickers and tight vest tops, which I was not going to wear in front of male teachers. We did have skirts but the day they told us to take them off and just wear the knickers, I swapped to shorts and rugby shirt, again after a huge fight with the school.
Even in infant school, I refused to do PE in my pants and Vest like the other kids, and my Mum had to be called to the school, as I refused to get undressed. My Mum stuck up for me and I got to wear shorts and T-Shirt.
I have always been very private about my body, and it is my right. I will stick up for any kids I have like my Mum did for me, if this subject were to arise.
I am now a regualr gym user, and I do shower, but only because they are private cubicles.
My body is for me and my husband, and only if he is good.

First school showers memory, here's mine, this was autumn term 1977.

Twelve years old and a very inappropriate teacher attempting to reassure us in a very unorthodox manner that piled on the embarrassment of the whole situation we faced.

A bunch of new lads, most only just met and still not really knowing each other. After P.E, a low energy gym class, in the changing area our teacher told us all to get ready to shower and strip all our clothes right off, and then took it upon himself to tell us that willy's were like noses, we all had one and they came in different shapes. Cue total silence. He must have picked up on the awkwardness going on because he then lined us up and gave us all permission to look at the other willy's (his word for it) for a few seconds to get the awkwardness over and done with immediately, basically to check each other out, before heading into the showers. All this did was make matters ten times worse but we did start looking around. He must have thought we weren't going to look anyway. The bloke was a twit, but a harmless one and quite soft for a P.E teacher in those days. He never watched us shower, other teachers did though. I thought I coped quite well with the requirement to shower in school, which was always done when P.E was over, even if time was short between lessons.

The comments about cubicles versus communal were unexpectedly compelling here and make sense when you start to think more about it.

I was opposite to you Yours Truly. You describe being a 'dash and drip' boy in school. I took the view that once I was stripped off and under the showers I might as well get on and do a proper job of it rather than attempt to run back out as fast as I could. Anyway those who tried to do what you described were only sent right back where they came from. One or two thought you could have a 5 second shower while I did a couple of minutes properly. At home I have 10 minute power showers!

Hi Ben,

Yours and Austins' comments on shower stalls have made me consider this detail differently. Maybe open showers were just more convenient (although why didn't the girls have them then?). I was a 'dash-and-drip' man myself, the sooner you had showered and dried the sooner you could get your clothes back on and get out of there.

I never considered the logistical problem of number of pupils vs. number of shower stalls and I wonder what the girls did at my school. I assume they just didn't strip out of their kit until a vacant stall became available and I don't see why your class couldn't have been allowed to do the same. That is a very strange arrangement you describe with your teacher deciding who showered with who. Frankly he just sounds like good old-fashioned control freak.

Why were there stalls but no curtains? It's my guess is that your changing room were originally intended for the girls, hence the stalls, but was then re-purposed for the boys and so the curtains were deliberately omitted. It would have been no effort at all to put in curtains but they intentionally decided not to.. It just goes to show how deeply this seeming 'boys-must-not-be-allowed-privacy' thing' seems to go. Like my school making us shower right before going home, the forced communal nudity seems to have been the real point rather than any concern about cleanliness.

It's almost like some archaic 'rite-of-passage', that when boys reach a certain age they must be made to get used to being naked around each other.

I suppose it is a vestige of the ancient, universal belief that to become a proper man a boy must be 'toughened up'. The process of toughening up can take a thousand different forms in a thousand different cultures but the principle is always the same: the boy must be made to undergo something he finds unpleasant and degrading and then he must be taught to disregard his feelings of discomfort and degradation.

As I have stated in previous posts, at my school the PE teacher would turn on the showers as we were still filing in the door and disappear into the office before we were even out of our kit. There was none of this standing and watching us that other posters have complained of and certainly no nudey conversations. All the male PE teachers did this I just assumed all PE teachers in every school did it and now, knowing differently, it makes me wonderif it had been prompted by some sort of incident. Looking back I think it was for their own self-preservation rather than out of consideration for us.

'Needless anxiety and awkward feelings'. Well, absolutely. I was starting to feel I was just being oversensitive about this whole thing but you and Austin have also said you felt uncomfortable with showering. I can remember plenty of boys laughing and joking about but then, masking fear with humour and jocularity is a very human response to an uncomfortable or distressing situation. Personally I don't think any 11-year-olds of either gender should be made to shower, or at least not in front of each other. It's too young. Many schools didn't and don't make the girls shower at all while still forcing it on the boys. I bet the girls don't stink the place down, which means boys could and should be given the same consideration.

Someone earlier has asked about first time shower at school thoughts. I can do that and add a few extra bits.

State comprehensive - years 1978 - 1982. I left aged 16, not soon enough!

My memory was that the school changing room was not exactly the most hygienic place to hang around too long in. If you'd been given a council house to live in and given a bathroom anything like it then you'd refuse and want it condemned. It seemed that bad.

The showers stood there unused for a few lessons when i first started comprehensive. We'd brought our towels but didn't need them, as the teachers didn't even mention the showers to us. Yet there they were one side of the changing room kind of intimidating us. I found that weird and unexpected. Then one day we went out, got a bit dirty playing football and came back and on the went and in we all paraded our skinny naked bodies like good little boys under the watchful eye of two grown men. That was the strange bit. Not the sharing with my own age, we all looked much the same I think. I thought perhaps we would only have showers after doing football but therafter we showered after everything. There were always these small bits of white soap on the floor of the showers that we had to pick up and use, or should I say re-use, because they'd obviously been used by a previous class and been rubbed god knows where. That didn't seem very hygienic to me and bad practice, as well as leaving damp soapy bits on the shower floor all day for the next class. Another thing I remember about the showers at school is how we used to complain that they were not hot enough quite a few times and a teacher barking back about the school not being made of money, he must have been referring to the hot water bill or something by that. The school was clearly short of ready funds because much needed attention around the place. We were to be grateful we had any warmth in the water and not cold ones. It seems incredible now that our generation was stuck through PE showers and stripped of our personal dignity on such an industrial scale, although I won't claim I thought about it much at the time like that. We just knew our place and what we had to do. Doing PE at school when you were older meant you automatically took mandatory shower together just about anywhere you went back then.

My school did not have shirtless PE in the gym as the usual kit. We wore vests with a stripe and school initials. But we did skins and shirts a lot, and did take our vest off for other things I can't quite recall now, but from time to time I do recall the whole PE group not wearing any vests for whole lessons in the school gym because we'd obviously been told to do that. One of the more clear things that used to happen our teachers used to give out what they called 'sentences' for poor behaviour, lack of effort ,truancy, no notes from home or misbehaviour. I was 'sentenced' a few times and one of these sentences I got was for some kit infringement and I got sentenced to not having a vest for a month in the gym, which made me the only shirtless one in class for the next eight PE lessons unless someone else got sentenced too, and they did sometimes overlap. A clear example that my PE teacher in my time considered making boys in his class remain shirtless to be some kind of sanction. I know when this happened to me I just decided to brazen it out and not allow myself to feel bad about it, but you always want to belong at that age and not stand out like a sore thumb, especially by being shirtless when others are not. It did not affect me as much as it probably did others though. This strange sentencing thing the PE teachers liked doing with us was used in many other ways. You could be sentenced to 30 push ups for instance, and if you were given that then you had to remove your vest while you did them. Entire class got that at least three or four times for some reason long forgotten. Many times these sentences were nothing more than excuses.

Here's another thing about being that awkward age and being made to do awkward things. At home you would not expect your dad to watch you having a bath or shower in the doorway of the bathroom by the time you reach about 12 years old but at school multiple men the same age as your own father could and would quite keenly look over not just one of us but lots of us like we didn't care but I never drew a difference between my own dad and the men at school when I was that age. I didn't want any of them giving me the once over while I showered, and at least at home my dad didn't tell me when I had to and force me to and then watch me unlike the men at school in their rather grotty communal boys showers.

That's my school shower memory with some shirtless PE thrown in. Who didn't do any of these things? Not many!

I don't put as many thoughts on here as I once did but I keep reading and it's really great to see some well written pieces here lately. It's a great pity the small collection of PE teachers there were on here last year, I'm thinking of Butterfield, Coulson & Hind, have all deserted the forum though. Could they still be reading like I do though? I think what would help turnover is if comments didn't take such a long time to appear.

I saw your comment Adam and think any younger people reading this shouldn't be put off talking about their modern day PE expectations as well as older people talking about past days in school gym or out on the playing fields.

Answering back particularly to Austin on 7th January 2025 on stalls.

I left secondary school in 1994.

In that place we were required to shower after each and every gym class from beginning age eleven until GCSE year age sixteen. I spent a year at another secondary as well, I'll mention further along. The worst part of it was the design of the showers in the school changing rooms. There were twenty shower stalls, but they didn’t have any curtains. Everyone was still on show in full view. I agree fully with Austin on this.

There were forty boys in each PE class, and since there were only twenty shower stalls we had to always go into the stalls two boys at a time, just like you mentioned yourself Austin where you went.

We were not allowed to choose who we were going to share the shower with. It was on a strange PE teacher decided rotating schedule which meant that we had to share the shower with every other boy in the PE class many times each. I don't know why this was important or why we just didn't decide ourselves and just get on with it.

On days when you were sharing the shower with a friend it was less awkward. But on the days when we had to share the shower with a boy that you didn’t like, or he didn’t like you, that was the worst. And being crammed into a cramped stall with another boy meant that it was impossible to not accidentally rub up against each other. You said something remarkably similar yourself Austin, although nobody, even friends asked anyone to do their back.

We would have been better off if there weren’t any stalls. The stalls didn’t have curtains, so everyone could see into the stalls anyway. And we had to shower with everyone in the class anyway. Like Austin said, it must have made things longer.

In another secondary school I was at for ten months we were still required to shower after each PE class, but we didn’t have any stalls there. The worst part about that was that there were still only twenty shower heads on the walls and around forty to fifty boys in that class there. So that always left around twenty to maybe twenty five of us having to stand there in the nude watching to see when a shower head would become available. You didn't want to be the ones hanging around like that, so it encouraged getting out of kit and under the water rapidly after class to avoid an awkward naked wait for a minute or two, which often entailed the PE teacher beginning a chat with you, and I didn't really want my PE teacher talking to me in conversation with nothing on. Nobody ever bothered wrapping towels around our waist, most had a towel that was too small to do this anyway. I returned to my original secondary and back to stalls again after a year. Communal was better, rather than stalls, so long as you didn't have to wait to get in.

At least by the end of secondary school most of us had got over the embarrassment of being naked in front of our fellow classmates but the methods and ways we did it added needless anxiety and awkward feelings to the whole situation in the not so far off 1990s.

I was sixteen when I started my senior year in high school and one of the youngest in my class. We’d moved into a brand new building the previous school year and acquired, along with it, a fair number of new, young, energetic teachers. They were in their early twenties, which made a few of them only three or four years older than the oldest members of the class of 1965. That certainly made a change, and I suspect most of my classmates far preferred young blood to the rather nasty old biddies who, in particular, taught almost all the required sections of math and history. But I digress.

Gym class was mandatory. We had nice new locker rooms, new playing fields, new equipment, and something we’d never had in the old building—facilities for taking showers after gym class. In our senior year, the powers that be decided that showering after exercising and working up a sweat should be mandatory. We were told there had been complaints about the smell of that sweat in the classes that followed phys. ed., and that using deodorant wouldn’t be sufficient to eradicate the problem.

According to our graduation program, there were fifty-three girls in our class. There were probably three sections of physical education, although I won’t swear to that. There were at least two sections. Anyway, as I recall, almost all of us shared the same reaction to this mandate—no way! Why? Because using the showers in question would mean showering with the rest of the girls in each section of gym class. As a group. Naked.

It may sound quaint in early 2025, but in 1964-5, at least in our quiet rural community, modesty was more common then exhibitionism. We were sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls who weren’t allowed to wear skirts above mid-knee to classes and weren’t permitted to wear slacks in school at all. I wouldn’t say we were overly concerned about body shaming, although I can think of at least one girl in my class who would gleefully have pointed out flaws in the rest of us, but speaking for myself, I was a “late bloomer” and self-conscious about my lack of cleavage. I know I wasn’t the only one wearing a padded bra, but there’s a big difference between being seen in your underwear in the locker room by other girls and stripping down to the skin to shower with a large group of them.

To our gym teacher’s surprise, the senior girls, en masse, refused to comply. It wasn’t an organized revolt, but it didn’t take us long to realize there were advantages to sticking together. During that entire school year, only one or two members of our class compromised, and then only to make use of the one private shower available. However insignificant our gym class rebellion may seem, especially compared to demonstrations over much more serious matters that were taking place throughout the 1960s, for us it was a learning experience. Eventually, the mandate to shower was withdrawn.

There was even a viewing window from the male & female coach’s office into the girls’ shower, which felt creepy then and seems even more so now.

Showers on the boys side also became an issue at the same time in 1964-5 as well but there was no rebellion en masse by them like with the girls and they all folded and did it in the end, fully accepting the naked group shower mandate they were given with the new building. They were severely strong armed into accepting their lot. Most boys wanted good grades that would be affected by rebelling against the showers.

I suspect that even our gym teacher (who happened to be married to the older brother of one of our classmates) might have had a grudging respect for our stand. By the time we took the candid photos for the school yearbook she was happy to go along with the fun.

Still, there might have been consequences. At the time all this started, many of us were in the process of applying to colleges, colleges that were going to look at our grades, and at one point we were warned that our behavior could result in an F in physical education.

There were some nervous moments when the next report cards came out. An F was traditionally marked in red. When I opened mine, that color leapt out at me. Then, as I recall, I laughed. All of us who rebelled received the same grade—a D written extra large and in red ink.

Fortunately, those D’s had no effect on academic standing. Nine of us were among the top ten graduates in our class.

So ends my tale of youthful rebellion. What issues, silly or serious (but silly preferred), do you remember feeling strongly about during your high school years?

I just notice this site because on other site someone mentioend it. So I will tell about my experiance too. 14 here, east europe. we have no real kits and during sport lessons it's up to the guys what to wear. some safty rules for sure so sport in socks is no allowed. so most boys go barefoot some in trainers, some shirtless some in shirts. no biggie It's not much about choice but a matter of money or if it's important for yourself. so yes choice somehow lol. so the teacher isn't telling us to be. still not much a biggie. I'm one of those shirtless and bare feet boys. I don't know what most of the others think or feel about it. I just started to think about all this a few weeks ago.

Hello Graham.

I'm an old grammar school boy who grew up in the 1950's and 1960's. I started grammar back in '59, coincidentally the same year the picture on this site is from, and that was very much how my own gym appeared to be and how we were expected to dress for it, strictly no tops ever allowed in that place. I wasn't bothered.

But you asked about showering. It's a long time back now but we always took showers after gym, or any other activity where PE was involved. It was unthinkable not to do so. Nobody would consider not taking one when I was at school. I wasn't at all bothered by showering, much like I wasn't bothered by doing the gym stripped off above the waist. If I remember correctly I think I was remarkably relaxed and at ease with such things. This may in part be largely due to growing up in a quite big family where I had five other siblings, four brothers and a sister. This gave none of the children any private time in matters of personal hygiene for example. Even our sister had to muck in with her brothers when it came to the bathroom, and we all shared most things including the bathwater. The youngest ones would share and then the oldest, but not always. Even at 13 I remember sharing the tub with my youngest 7 year old brother sometimes. We even squeezed three of us into it at once on occasion. So doing this at home with brothers and a sister meant that going to school and being asked to shower with others didn't have an adverse effect on me or cause much anxiety, and my home life might have been the reason for this. We were lucky to have a large garden and at home we all played in the garden rather a lot without tops on, including my sister and our parents were keen photographers and left plenty of black and white memories of this kind of childhood. We happily ran around starkers with each other too even with friends around who did the same in our garden. Nowadays I'm certain nobody would dare allow their childrens friends to do that around their home when visiting them. Some people call those times over 60 years ago more innocent, that's as maybe but I tend to think they were more healthy of thought too and ironically less restrictive for the young, even if school itself was rigid and very formal.

If you came from a very small family or were perhaps an only child suddenly thrown into communal situations I can see how it might prove more of a difficult adjustment to accept. I've always considered that my own big family made me very sociable and accepting of sharing things with others.

My own three children all went to school in the 1970's and 1980's and much like me, I did not hear any major concerns about their own requirements either. They all showered at school, the boys and the girl, and I went to a sports day in their primary school once in the 1970's and the boys were all without tops on at the age of about 10. I took some pictures that day and have them at hand. The physical education the two boys did in the 1980's at their big state school was less transparent to parents and we were never invited to see anything there but I'm led to believe by both of them that they had a long standing requirement to remain shirtless during the PE lessons, and were always expected to shower like I was. My lot were purely academic and not greatly active when it came to sporting prowess but raised few objections I ever heard of and received nice comments from their teaching staff for trying hard.

School in the 1950's has this dark reputation in some people's minds but that's not my lived experience of it at all.

Yours Truly has mentioned PE showers at school, aka the communal showers. I can't believe Austin you had the luxury of individual cubicles even if you did share them. Your argument against them was very persuasive indeed and although they sound great in principle they obviously weren't in practice at school with large numbers that immediately want to shower at the same time and quickly get on with it, and offered no privacy anyway thus rendering the point of them useless.

I had to take my first school shower on my 12th birthday, my school's present to me as I saw it. What a way to celebrate your birthday. I was one of the oldest in class and developed fast.

I'm interested in this subject because I've never spoken about it to anyone before and have always wondered what other people were really thinking about these things. I remember in my school time looking around at everyone else as we all took our clothes off and headed to the showers like obedient little lambs and wondered what they were all thinking and if others might be thinking thoughts like me. Yours Truly you've described it like being cattle, that's correct in my view, I felt like we were herded animals sometimes being coerced into our pen, or in this case the showers.

I'm interested to tease out some thoughts on this subject. Do most of you on here remember the first time you had to shower at school after PE and how you felt about it? Someone I knew was so nervous about it that they didn't turn up for the PE lesson at all and threw a sickie. At our school, unlike you Yours Truly, we had to shower at the end of outdoor and indoor lessons. It made little difference. Not only was it the group nudity at issue here but space. It was very crowded and there was a total lack of personal space involved because our teachers had everyone in at the same time and out together too. There was a lot of unavoidable skin on skin contact.

I started secondary school on Wednesday 3rd September 1980, and my first PE lesson topped off at the end with a communal shower was the following week on the 8th, my birthday aged twelve. We hadn't been outside, we had just been doing some mat work in the school gym and rolling around on the ground a bit. Nothing too strenuous and nothing that worked up a great deal of BO. We were shirtless so any body odours would have been noted I think. Shirtless PE was a thing at my school like many others report. Not always, but nearly always when it came to the gym. We had all come with our towels, and as I packed my towel that day I was nervous just putting it in my schoolbag knowing what it meant.

I remember being desperate to keep my birthday secret and not telling anyone it was on that day. I'd heard stories about how you could get treated at secondary school by others if they knew it was your birthday and I didn't want anything to happen to me, and having a shower after PE I thought might present some kind of opportunity for something. There was someone who knew my birthday but they said nothing. When I was having my first shower I tried hard not to face anyone directly at all, which was quite difficult and I certainly didn't want the teacher to see me but he stood at the exit and watched and looked us all up and down as we finished. What went through my mind when I was first made to shower in school was not embarrassment as such but more a feeling of disbelief in the moment that I was actually doing it and that they could make me do that, and that I would have to keep on doing it for quite some time to come.

I wonder if any of us really needed to shower at school quite so religiously as we did all the time. I get all the mud and outside issue but most of the PE I did resulted in no such need to remove mud from legs or elsewhere anyway. Younger boys who sweated less were made to shower more than much older boys who would sweat more. By the time I was in my O level final year and doing PE the teachers often turned a blind eye to anyone not showering at that point and I often walked away without bothering and I never gave off BO or noticed the classroom reeking badly of post PE odours!

Posting from NYC where I currently drop in as a cabin crew for BA.

Comment by: Matt C on 10th January 2025 at 23:18



"....One PE teacher everyone seems to agree was a little Hitler and another is frequently named as a peeping tom too much in the showers at school........"


For all those gullible people who think that PE masters (and other teachers) were pure as the driven snow they ought to listen to this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00272c5

The series, 'In Dark Corners@ is being transmitted on Radio 4 on Wednesday mornings, 0930-1000 on 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th January and 5th & 12th February. It is then available on the BBC Player for a limited time., I think for 30 days after the original transmission


The Paedophile Information Exchange was a vile organisation that operated in Britain between 1974 and 1984 (and endorsed by a couple of famous politicians, believe it or not), some of their members advocated the age of consent be lowered to 4 (FOUR!). Plainly they were sick, and disgusting, but quite a number of their members were in the teaching and education sector.

In the above recording at approximately 14 minutes there is an especially egregious example of the actions of a P.E teacher, but for context, I would advise listening to the whole programme for context, despite that annoying practice of including dramatic "music" on the soundtrack.

As somebody in the programme says, it is surprising that nobody queried what sort of "information" they were exchanging. It is also surprising that such an organisation was allowed to exist for reasons of decency and child protection. I might mention that both the (women) politicians I have mentioned, then "advisers" to the National Council For Civil Liberties, are still alive and kicking, and both have recently been elevated to the House of Lords. (Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman)

Shirtless cross country running like I remember doing in school done by modern boys last year, 2024, so the current lot aren't too unhappy to go shirtless to run, although in this case I'd imagine they are doing so with free will to decide for themselves whereas the boys at my school and me had these kind of choices and free will removed from us and were told we must be shirtless to run the cross country in fair or foul weather. Teachers are probably more open to negotiation on things nowadays but in the past they didn't negotiate with us they just informed us what we were doing and wanted it done, even if it made someone very uncomfortable.

https://youtu.be/Ffg_mZnTR_Y?si=XU4rFMoPkY0ecYXO


A note about sports days as they got a mention.

Our secondary school had a number of these events and many boys took part shirtless. I was in school doing this at the turn of the 70s and start of the 80s. The school gym was always done shirtless in secondary school in those days and tops were hardly ever a feature in them at all from anyone, and that is roughly my gym memory from the age of eleven to fifteen. But like Danny mentioned, our sports day ended and we all just dribbled away. We didn't have to shower though, the one time we could just clear off at the end of the day, although proper PE last thing you had to shower before leaving or else, even bus children had to shower so often held up the coach home and had to explain to an unhappy driver why. Many of us at the end of sports day in summer would just pick up our stuff and walk home as we were, in some form of PE kit, as it was June and the weather was nearly always great on the day. Lots of boys used to just walk out the gates having collected their bags, slung them over their shoulders and gone home shirtless if they had been doing the afternoon that way. Even some of the bus guys I saw sat in the school coach this way. I can't remember whether sports day shirtless was compulsory, I think the rule was relaxed on that day because sometimes I wore a top, but it was a must to be shirtless in normal PE through the school week.

But on one occasion the day after sports day we got called into the assembly hall and the deputy head teacher had assembled just the boys and informed us all that he was most displeased that large numbers of boys had let the school image down by walking home 'half naked' as he put it, by which he meant shirtless. But we had all been given permission to leave for home in our PE kits, and shirtless was our boys PE kit! So if it wasn't okay for some pupils to walk home in PE kit shirtless on a nice day because it didn't keep up appearances for the school leadership, why was it okay for us to be compulsory shirtless in the school's PE lessons then? Such unbelievable hypocrisy at times, hidden behind the school gates they had no issue with what we looked like, outside of them some of us became a problem because we hadn't put a t-shirt over us to walk home in.

On my school facebook memory page for ex-pupils many talk of PE lessons and things like being forced to take showers together and shirtless PE as well as a few comments about what we really thought certain teachers were all about. One PE teacher everyone seems to agree was a little Hitler and another is frequently named as a peeping tom too much in the showers at school. People don't seem to forget school easily and can recite situations at the click of a mouse.

Hi Danny C,

I appreciate what you say. The more I read on this thread the more I have come to realise that I got off comparatively lightly in terms of school sports. If I sound constantly sour and negative about it, it is because I hated the whole secondary school experience and had a very bad experience of it, rather than PE and games specifically. I don't remember any activity where we were worked till we sweated like dogs like you and others have described, it was mostly just football and rounders with athletics in the summer months. The only truly challenging one was cross country which they only made us do once a term. I soon developed a strategy for football: loiter on the fringes of the pitch, run vaguely the same way the ball is going but don't go anywhere actually near it. Nobody was regarding me anyway because I was one of those nerdy, uncoordinated, unathletic kids that nobody wanted to have on their team (and I didn't want to be on their team anyway).

Talking of mud I can remember the senior games teacher, yes, that same old bastard again, having a go at me in front of everyone because he saw me rubbing the mud off my neck after I had taken a turn at shot-putting on a drizzly afternoon. I reiterate: I was a painfully shy, timid kid who tried to keep himself to himself but this one teacher seemingly couldn't contain his anger and contempt around me.

We had three weeks of rugby. Ever. This was third year, so coming up to our O level options, and I think the PE department had all these other sporting activities that they needed to cross of their checklist as having taught us. Suddenly, after two years of mostly football and rounders and gym activities we were doing all these other sports, but only ever for a week or two, as if we were sampling them. I employed the same strategy as for football and in those three weeks I didn't even get dirty. I wasn't going to throw myself into mud, risking possible injuries, diving for a ball that wasn't even shaped like a fucking ball. Fuck that one forever.

On sports days, we only ever had one the entire time I was at secondary school. Plenty of other kids complained about that but it was absolutely fine with me! I even managed to dodge out of getting involved in it at all. I don't think they were making the participants shower after it because I remember seeing half the kids busing it home still in their sports wear. I certainly would not have been okay doing a sports day stripped to nothing but a pair of shorts in front of girls who were permitted to wear way more, not to mention crowds of parents, the way you say you were. I think the discrimination of that was frankly disgusting.

Hi Austin,

I do have a real name but prefer to keep it to myself.

I appreciate your comment. There is always another perspective on things. And I do remember occasionally hearing of girls who hated and resented their shower set-up too.

I can remember some boys wrapping towels around themselves before setting off for the showers. That seemed nonsensical to me given that we all had to strip and shower in front of each other and there were bare balls and bums everywhere you looked. I favoured the 'get 'em out, get in there and get it over with' approach. The sooner you had showered, the sooner you were safe for another week.

One last detail I remember. We only had to shower after Games, which we did out on the playing fields. We never had to shower after PE, which we did in the gym. Evidently at my school the showers were there to wash the mud off, not sweat. Did anyone else have a similar rule?

Goings skins and shirts was very popular in my school years. The main gym teacher who took us would snap us to attention when we assembled down in the school gym and announce he wanted half the class to be skins and the other half shirts for the lesson ahead. It was up to us who. He would then turn around and face away from us all and give us 20 seconds to decide and place ourselves into either the skins side or the shirts side. The first couple of times he did this it all descended into arguing well past the 20 seconds when he turned around and lots of us hadn't agreed which to be, which was mainly resistance to being a skinny top bare chest shirtless one. I gravitated to being a shirt automatically. About three skins and shirts lessons into it he told us he wasn't going to tolerate any nonsense about deciding and we now had only 15 seconds to agree to pick our sides so I just jumped onto the skins side a few times after that just for a quiet life about it. He expected to turn around and see about 15 of us in each skins or shirts side. After a while it was obvious that the same boys were always being skins and the same others were being shirts in PE so one afternoon he turned around after we made our decision and he flipped it so everyone who had chosen to be skins became a shirt and those boys who chose to become shirts had to strip off shirtless, making all the boys who thought they were safely shirts forcibly remove their tops on the spot. After that we could never be sure if he would flip the decision, which he did now and again just to keep us on edge I think. Individual boys were often pulled aside by another teacher who took us and had their vest pulled over their head if they did something wrong or incompetent and would be the sole shirtless one in our class which was a sign you'd mucked up somehow. We had one black kid in our PE group and this happened to him a lot.

Danny C I was convinced the gym was deliberately kept cold and yes I remember that fresh blast of cold air when you walked in. Throughout the year we did at least one lesson a week outdoors with either all lads told to strip to shorts or occasionally with half the class in vests.