Burnley Grammar School

I’m sorry that you disliked being made to do PE shirtless. Perhaps it should be optional. I disliked it for the first few lessons when shirtless PE was introduced at my school when I was 9 but I very quickly got to prefer it.

To both Ralph and Chris in reply regards primary showering;

I did this long ago!

I was at primary school in south Wales, 1967-1970 and from the moment I began at it we took a short shower after PE which we did on two afternoons each week for up to an hour. Aged 8 onwards. The school was quite small really, no more than 150 intake and just six actual classes while I was there. A new 1960's build at the time. School had three nice sized cloakrooms. We would often change in our years cloakroom before and after the lesson. We had to get changed completely naked in the cloakroom after PE and walk into a small beige and blue tiled shower room nearby, spend something like 5 minutes standing with each other getting a thorough soakdown and wet hair, dry ourselves off before stepping out into the cloakroom dried off to put our clothes back on, this often involved about 15 to 20 boys maximum, sometimes no more than a dozen of us. Girls were in a separate cloakroom elsewhere and did just the same, there was no double standard operating at my primary. Weather and time of year dependant PE took place either in the school hall, on the playground or on the grassy field next to the playground. We would do literally everything, football, running, climbing, dancing, long jump, high jump, rounders, you name it. Perhaps far more each week than modern newly named academies who don't seem to value physical wellbeing like they should. We would do some of our PE alongside girls and other things completely separate, like the football. The team game we always played together was rounders.

What we actually wore in PE was completely varied. Sometimes we wore plimsolls and vest tops, or a T shirt, sometimes we didn't. I can't remember what made the difference.

Thoughtful point raised Alan. I don't think anybody made much of it at primary school. I'm sure many quite liked getting soaked with nothing on. Is there even any real such thing as an acutely self aware, self-conscious 8 year old anyway? I just remember us all looking very much alike and being carefree and by the time we all got shipped up to the big one later on we'd been there, done it all before so nothing came as too much of a surprise. I've got a very yellowing old typed out A5 sized pamphlet given to parents and now in my possession that says school provided what it described as two washrooms, essentially what I described above. It lays out what to bring from pencils to plimsolls and says our teacher will decide on the day what we need.

I wouldn't seek to change very much about my time at school.

In answer to Chris on 6th November 2022 at 15:43. I don't think there would be as many problems if the showetr experience started as soon as you start school - very young children have far fewer inhibitions and hang-ups. Where the problem starts for many - me included - was when this routine is foist on you without warning when you are 11, approaching the teenage years with far more inhibitions and self-conciousness, and bullying becoming more rife in older boys. In short, if you are going to implement it, do it from day one, not when you are more than halfway through your school career.

Hi John

I wasn't happy being made to do P.E shirtless. A lot of my classmates disliked it too.

That's a perceptive double standard on cross country running in school Chris. That had never crossed my mind but like you I can confirm my own school did not take girls out for cross country, only the boys. The most girls did was short track running on a straight, sometimes with hurdles or on a small painted oval track on grass and that was in the summer. Boys went out running for multiple miles in all weathers, mainly in the autumn and winter term times. As you said, girls are just as capable of the longer distances, it begs the question why they seem to have been prevented from doing so while boys were thrown at it in literally any senior school in the country you would probably look at. Long distance cross country running has never stopped being a boys thing at school, it still happens just the same to this day. It came much easier to some than others. I can remember getting some horrible stomach stitches aches as I ran at times. When I think about running school cross country the weather always seems to be quite rotten and never nice in my mind but I must have run a few in decent weather but the worst ones seem more prominent.

Yee,

Thanks for posting your experience of PE, it’s interesting to hear how PE is done in other countries.
Were you happy being made to do PE shirtless and barefoot?.

I am surprised to see there is another user commenting on this site saying they are from Taiwan. I'm not sure if it is this thread or the other.

I come from there too and I can confirm that most middle schools (???) in Taiwan make boys do P.E or gym shirtless without shoes. It was this way 2 years ago when I graduated and my brother who is currently studying there told me its still the same.

A point worth a mention in response to your posts Ralph.

Some state primaries/middle schools did have the PE shower. A few months ago there were a few comments from others saying so, I don't know if you saw those, but also there was that programme shown on schools TV that was posted on here months ago, if you didn't see that, which filmed the whole post PE shower procedure and the credits at the end gave thanks to the pupils and staff at the school which was identified as a middle school. I forget the name without going back but seem to recall it was in Redditch. Whether they did that as a one off for the purpose of that programme narrative is possible I suppose but seems unlikely as that middle school quite clearly had an extensive and fully operational shower facility within its changing room. So we have it on film that some UK middle schools in the state sector were indeed sending boys into the showers after PE although what percentage this might be would be quite interesting to know. Clearly a minority though, whether this had anything to do with local education authorities or whatever, who's to know. These decisions are intriguing in themselves. I wonder if the girls at that school had to do the same as the boys and shower, as it was a mixed middle and they shared the lesson, well at least for the purpose of that film, and most middle schools like mine shared the same lesson with everyone boys and girls together.

In terms of my own education some of the double standards seem to relate not between the girl/boy thing but between just us boys ourselves and those who were more athletically able and those less so, the confident performers against the less so.

If you had to push me on the girl/boy double standard then for me the obvious one is that girls never knew what a cross country run was, they never did them. Now why were girls exempt from cross country running when they went outside. Why do I get the feeling that was not just my school like that. Yet girls can run long distances just as able as boys, the marathons prove it, albeit with slightly slower times.

Damien, there was definitely a girl/boy double standard concerning showers at my secondary school in the early 70s. We boys were always made to shower after PE lessons while for the girls it was optional.

Grant said "I've never heard of anyone having to take showers in primary before, that seems very unusual."

We didn't have showers or even a gym in primary school. We all just changed in class into our PE uniform of white shirt and white shorts and did the PE lessons in the schoolyard.
There could have been some private or boarding schools where junior boys had showers, but I never knew of any state schools that had them.

Hi John, my apologies. I completely see your point there. I have to say I didn't see anything unusual happen. Was at school until 1997

Very well made points Ivan.

Me and my sister both went to the same mixed comp 45 years ago, she was just 16 months older than me. She told me many things including that the school didn't do showers after PE, before I arrived a year after her. Great I thought, that suits me just fine. Except when I went there and joined her in the year below I found out that the school did do showers, only for boys. For some reason she hadn't twigged that the boys in her class took showers. Sis told me none of the girls ever showered after PE lessons and they were never put on and their girls PE teacher never suggested using them. But you should have been in the boys changing room at the same school with me where shower evasion was given what was called a 'level 1 PE misdemeanor' which I think was a possible detention or some deprivation of your free time to some extent. The level of strictness on compulsory school showers compliance by every single PE teacher that took us was interesting to me. Quite a lot of the time none of us genuinely needed to go in the showers after PE and many days on the long walk into school I arrived through the school gates with more sweat on me than in some PE lessons. The strictness about it seemed more about making us parade our communal nudity ritualistically after PE rather than the demand to clean. Quite how they could be so demanding and strict with boys at school on the issue, yet girls like my sister never got troubled to shower even though we both went to the same school at much the same time. A blatant unfathomable girl/boy double standard.

The BBC clip was a perfect illustration of what my own school football pitch looked like by the end of every winter forty years back. Some like getting thrown about in mud and others try their best to avoid it as much as possible. For me getting muddy on the school pitch and having to shower it all off afterwards wasn't the biggest deal, it was having to take my absolutely wrecked footy boots home and clean them in a bowl of water with fairy liquid and an old toothbrush until they looked spotless again, then dry them off, only for them to instantly get wrecked again next lesson stepping out in them. There's just something so much more real and authentic about seeing those footballers in that state on a pitch like that, so similar to school games, compared to now. Real men and boys!

Re: "What's the score with school showers and soap exactly? Middle school only let us use the water alone to get wet for about 90 seconds and out" by Neil Crisp.


Ahh, we think alike Neil, the no soap mystery of school showering was something that crossed my mind when I did this at my school in Northants through the mid to latter 1980's.

For the whole five years I was at my comprehensive school I took a shower after both PE lessons each week, very rarely in all that time did we miss doing so and get dressed immediately and away, and never did we shower with anything other than the just past lukewarm water that came out of the wall at us. Nobody ever mentioned soap, gel or anything and nobody ever used any actual cleaning product other than the plain simple not especially hot water. But I remember them stressing the importance of us having to take these group school showers and making us do them. But if they were serious about it and proper cleaning up why did nobody suggest soap! Water in itself is not adequate enough. Nobody showers or bathes at home without some sort of product.

I've never heard of anyone having to take showers in primary before, that seems very unusual. I suppose these things were a bit of a postcode lottery.

In my previous post, I stated that as far as pe went there were some aspects I liked and some I did not. Rather like in all our school years and life. there are some things we enjoy and some we do not.
However not wishing to detract from the original idea of this site I do agree with the comments by Oliver jones recently where he wrote
" This illustrates even from 1977-80 that our lady teacher was allowed to do that with the boys at school but any man in the same job would never have been allowed to sit in on the girls and would have had to stay out of sight."
It does seem one-sided. However I write from my experience as a former cub Scout Leader in the era when it was all boys in the pack. Assisting me were two ladies who were mothers to two of the cubs. there sons and the other boys all attended the same school and as well as knowing them by their pack names they also knew them as mothers of two of the cubs.. When we went to camp the Cubs never worried about undressing in front of the lady leaders because they knew that they were mums. That may be why the ladies were allowed to be present when the boys were changing or showering after pe/games, as in Oliver's comment.
However as has been written even if a man was a father and had daughters he would not be present when girls were changing.
As I say the ladies helping with the pack I knew very well as did the rest of the cubs parents, but during my training as a leader we were advise to when appointing to "be aware " if a lady who we did not know offered to help with the pack because even ladies could have unhealthy interests in boys just a some men do.

When I was at school in the 1970s we wouldn't have been allowed to be 'traumatised', we were taught just to get on with whatever life threw at us and I think we did a pretty good job whether it was shirtless PE, communal showers, cross country in the rain, brutal teachers or the cane. We took it all in our stride and I think we turned out pretty well. I can't say I was stressed or bothered by any of it.

On Izal medicated bog roll, it was what I think all schools had but my grandmother also bought it because it was cheap and you didn't need much of it to wipe if indeed you got any sort of wipe at all out of it. The nearest thing around now I can think of to compare with is greaseproof paper, imagine trying to use that. When on leaving school I joined the army Izal was what we got there too along with soap that never produced a lather of any sort but it did have the crown embossed on it.

I survived and am pretty happy and healthy today!

Yes Mike, many times I came off the playing fields at school from football and rugby looking just like those players from 72, and even the occasional cross country could do so due to the terrain we ran. Showers in school were not some luxury but absolutely essential. I fail to see how so many schools nowadays can operate proper PE lessons outside during the darker, wet and windy months with team games like that and no longer have showering options available. How are they meant to get clean exactly or do they make great efforts not to get dirty like the old days nowadays, does anyone actually know?

But if I'm not mistaken and I'm sure I read it somewhere that every single school with an intake aged eleven upwards, mostly the secondaries, have to by provide on their premises fully functioning, working shower and washing availability for those who attend even if they are not used constantly like the old days of mass nationwide compulsory school showers for all.

Great timing for this comment Neil, you said;

"If you look at old football or rugger games from the 70s you'll see how poor the pitch can be over the winter season, especially when very wet, almost a mud bog, and the same for the players collecting much of that pitch upon themselves. Same at school sometimes."


Well, this has popped up on the BBC News site this afternoon after the passing of a footballer, Ronnie Radford, who made his name back in 1972 over a goal and one of those tiny team take downs of a top team in the FA Cup third round.

A rather good three minute video which shows the absolute state of a football pitch back in the early 1970's, an absolute mudbath and the players smothered in it at FA Cup level. As you stated Neil, quite a normal situation for that time. Such a dramatic contrast to today where they'd probably consider it unfit to play on and when did you last see any footballers plastered in mud like this eh.

Imagine the state of the bathwater after the team got out of it.

FA Cup 5th February 1972.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63489122

You mean that oddity that was Mr Dando I think John. If you go to the Hesketh chat he was taken to task in a brilliant way by the PE teacher Graham who's been on here in the past and since he laid his feelings out to him Mr Dando has not reappeared to the best of my knowledge. Worth taking a look if you've not seen it, back at the start of March this year on the Hesketh thread which has had very few subsequent comments.

I agree that the use of the word traumatised does seem very over the top. Surely even those who admit to being very shy about these aspects of PE, the no shirts or showering involved would not go as far as to say they were actively traumatised by it. It's a very strong word. Feeling uncomfortable is one thing, or worried a bit, or self conscious, but that's a long way short of trauma, unless there was any sustained bullying and physical aspects involved around it which would be different of course. It may be possible that Mr Dando faced something like that which has coloured his judgement but I've never seen anything that says so.

Neil Crisp - who can forget that vile school issue bog roll. Perhaps it was cheap to produce and that's why all schoolkids had to put up with it rather than actual tissue like we had in our homes. There's a story about that to be told I'm sure. Going onto soap and my memory is that sometimes we used it at school and other times we just went under hot water by itself and came out, depending on what we'd done, how sweaty/dirty we'd become, but I did have some soap in my kit bag along with my towel, comb bits and bobs etc.

Although we never had showers in my primary we did go swimming for a few weeks during summer and same here, a couple of women teachers took us and one of them often stood with our class of boys as we changed before and after swimming. This was where some boys in class learnt the art of the towel dance, wriggling away putting on and taking off trunks. I remember what seemed like an even split with some boys behaving like this and the other half of us just not bothering with that desperation to hide. I didn't and used to just turn to the wall for instance, I wasn't too concerned that teacher might briefly see my bare behind, although I suppose the fact I turned to the wall suggests I was concerned about the front, thinking about it. This illustrates even from 1977-80 that our lady teacher was allowed to do that with the boys at school but any man in the same job would never have been allowed to sit in on the girls and would have had to stay out of sight.

Jimbo,
I was referring to the likes of the guy that clearly didn’t like PE and posts details of present day schools PE kit and to others that make out that they were traumatized by being made to do PE stripped to the waist and imply that their PE teachers may have acted inappropriately. I never experienced or witnessed any inappropriate behavior from my PE teachers.

Hello John.

Can I just back up what Jimbo asked you. I saw your comment on here a couple of days ago and almost raised the same question but left it but as it's now been raised I may as well ask out of pure interest. Were there any actual comments you had in mind that you'd like to point out on the subject that you specifically found ridiculous?

I knew boys in upper 'big' school who ranged from acting all bold and super confident to indifferent on the bare chested issue right through to some who were plainly unhappy and in one or two cases terrified. But each to their own. I was halfway along the spectrum I think. Typical of changing pre-teen or actual teenagers at that age.

Just to show how times have changed, I was one of those who went to a middle school with shower facilities (others mention doing showers that early I saw in earlier pages) back in the 70s, but the thing about middle schools is they were, or mine was, overwhelmingly staffed by female teachers. Mine had just one man out of about a dozen teachers I remember. Both genders shared the lessons together, had a separate room to change in, both genders had to shower after PE but we only ever had the one teacher take our lesson, most times our actual class teacher, a woman, who seemed about late 30s I guess. One teacher having to dart between changing areas and when I was 9/10 she would be popping in and out while we did so. Boys being boys at that age she did seem to spend most of her time observing us to get on with things. A lady teacher keeping an eye on boys showers in middle school seems totally outrageous now but if I'm honest it passed by as nearly normal back then even if there was some coyness and private joking about it behind her back. What one or two of my class should have realised was that if they'd actually behaved a bit more she might have left us alone and not felt the need to stand watch.

What's the score with school showers and soap exactly? Middle school only let us use the water alone to get wet for about 90 seconds and out, so not to take too long despite it being a far more relaxed environment with less time pressure than at my next school from 12 upwards where time was tighter on the timetable yet we got encouraged and often told to make use of provided soap in the showers and watched as we used it, it was often something small like a freebie hotel style bar soap thing, it was a brown coloured transparent looking thing which lathered very fast, I wish I knew the name of it. We all used the same.

If you look at old football or rugger games from the 70s you'll see how poor the pitch can be over the winter season, especially when very wet, almost a mud bog, and the same for the players collecting much of that pitch upon themselves. Same at school sometimes. How and why did it all become much cleaner in recent years? Anyway, one daft guy who took our PE had the impertinence to complain about the state we'd left the shower in after washing half the school field off ourselves one afternoon when he'd set up a diving practice session in goal which led to such mess to get rid of. We'd been set up for a muck splattering by him and then he complained when we washed it off! There really was no winning with some of these guys at times.

So soap or no soap in the school showers? Does anyone know if there was a school issue soap for us to use in the showers at school if we had a school that allowed it, a bit like that unique and dreadful shiny grey toilet roll everyone used to endure too that made anyone half sane avoid at all costs a sit down trip to the toilet in school hours. I think I went my entire school life without doing that once by the way.

Thanks.

My apologies John, Why do you think some comments about barechested PE verge on the ridiculous.
My personal experience was gym always performed barechested and we were pushed hard to to sweat as quickly as possible and most of us did. We were always reminded "if we didn't sweat up we weren't working hard enough" Outdoors it was either cross country with a coin toss determining which team would strip to the waist while the others kept their vests.
Football (we never played rugby) was played with one team wearing rugby tops while the other team were expected to run to the nearest sideline and quickly go barechested. This was the way it was from 9 through to 18.

Jimbo

What makes me say what?

John, what makes you say that?
I absolutely agree about your comments about sweating, it was something out teachers kept telling us too

Some of the comments on this site relating to doing PE barechested verge on the ridiculous. Most lads myself included quickly got used to doing gym stripped to the waist and found that it was more comfortable when being worked hard than having a hot sweaty vest or t shirt stuck to your back. Also when doing exercises like push ups it’s easier when shirtless to check your body alignment when barechested. No one seems to have mentioned that in the present day the majority of male gymnasts choose to train shirtless.

Hi Harold,
Though the school was mixed PE/Games were always done separately but as the gym had reinforced glass running nearly the full length it was easy for them to get a good look at us. They wore a yellow t-shirt with black shorts or skirt and trainers which like ours had to be white
There was an emphasis on PE and although I ended up barechested a lot more often than most, the teachers were always really good, strict yes but in a good way and encouraged everyone not just a few..

Robin, were the classes mixed or did girls do PE separately? What did they wear?

I'd been told by my sisters what to expect and though the official school kit stated vest and rugby shirt in practice we were either all stripped to the waist or half the class would be picked to strip off with the other half in vests when we were outside. Obviously being a mixed school it was normal for girls to see you regardless and it wasn't uncommon for them to see boys showing sweat in the gym. A favourite during autumn and winter was to take a class out onto the field and keep one team with their rugby shirts on while the other stripped off on the sidelines. I was "good" at sports and was one of the first picked out to strip off but it was noticeable some lads definitely stripped off more than others despite it being "random" We also did laps of the field in just shorts.

I remember those white nylon shorts which we also wore outdoors not good if it started raining whilst we were outdoors. We did wear plimsolls but no socks were worn. When having pe lessons indoors we had to use the vaulting horse (which I did not like) climb ropes (I was good at ) and various other exercises. Circa 1961 to 1966 all boys school

twenty years after this photo taken our shorts were those horrible nylon things. and footwear was banned