Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: Chris F on 1st April 2025 at 17:10



I agree with, and entirely sympathise with your situation, Chris. I was one year behind you, and agree with what you say. It seems that we were invisible to those P.E. teachers, who, if they knew anything about psychology would have realised there was a reason for our reticence - I went to a very tough school in a working class area (we were considered fodder for Fords or "the army", and anything else was too way out to even think about) and you would not have dared to admit who/what you were, because there would have been physical violence as well as name calling and what is euphemistically called "teasing". As regards swimming, I think that being in water is a bit like being covered by a blanket - it is only psychological, I agree, but you feel less exposed. In a gym you feel like you have a spotlight on you.

Comment by: Roger Chappell on 1st April 2025 at 22:14


Again - thank you Roger. I think the fact that inspections are announced in advance is totally wrong. If they had come to our school (they never did), I know the first thing our headmaster, poor old devil, would have done, was to ensure the school lavatories, which was outside in the yard was repainted. It never was in the five years I was there, the white emulsion becoming greyer each year (the school was under permanent threat of closure). Very occasionally some synthetic disinfectant was poured into the filthy urinals, (every other Monday I think) and the word "F***" had been written in permanent ink markers, too many times to be erased. I never once entered into one of the two cubicles, because those that did, did so at their on risk, but I can't imagine it was any more sanitary than the more used facilities (which I only used in extremis)

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 1st April 2025 at 22:37



Christine, provided I knew the interview was in camera so to speak I would have told you of my concerns about our P.E teacher, who was homosexual and was far too interested in watching boys close up showering and changing as you got older - when you were 11/12/13 he was content to shout and threaten, but when you got to 14/15/16 it was like having a camera on you when you got to the lesson and especially after it. I myself was a homosexual (and have always wished I wasn't), so it was a case of taking one to know one: we all have a "type" in my case, I had come to my terrible realisation very young, before secondary school, as we had a neighbour who was a policeman - he was straight of course (I don't think canteen culture would have allowed anybody who wasn't to have admitted it) but this man had a beautiful wife and two children to prove it - he always looked immaculate, clean, well groomed, and looked and smelt as if he had just emerged from the shower. He was my "type", very masculine. Roberts type was tall, wiry, confident, very sporty lads. As I wasn;t that tall and wasn't very sporty (as were quite a few of us), he would be contemptuous (one of his favourite, cleaner knicknames for me was "Tin Ribs"). Whether you like somebody or not is that the way to inspire either confidence or respect?

Roberts was able, to some extent, to disguise his interests because he was an ex-Army rugger-bugger type, and as Roger, in the previous, very honest, message suggested, I think, in our case, some of his fellow teachers had suspicions, if not evidence, of his proclivities. In fact one of my ex teachers, who came to see me play when I was in my early twenties (as a matter of fact, it was the concert I mentioned yesterday - our leader , who always had one eye on the cash register - had arranged an evening of early Basie and Glenn Miller for the then emergent "nostalgia" market). I had received a name check for a solo, and he must have remembered me - I will never forget he came up and told me I had played well, he had no idea I played the trumpet because our school had no music in it all, and they didnt care what you did outside, and when I told him what a misery my life had been at school (by then he was retired), he actually mentioned Roberts by name - BEFORE I did - and he told me that at least things had worked out for me. Until that night I don't think he even knew I had a forename!. I learned from him Roberts had "disgraced" himself on a school trip to Snowdonia the year BEFORE we left - I daresay drink had been taken (how it got hushed up I will never know), but I already knew how vile he was because one of my friends at school with me, played football very well, and was taken under Roberts wing, and that included out of school "training" which included intimate massages. Graham never told me of this until two years after we left school, I was sworn to secrecy and he told me that Roberts had told him (at 15/16) that their sessions "had to be secret and not mentioned to anybody" his excuse being it would have made other boys "jealous" (he really did fancy himself!). He was very ashamed (he had been drinking, and sadly that would continue for many years), and though I suggested he made an official complaint he wouldn't hear of it. I would have backed him up knowing of his behaviour in the school changing room and showers. I doubt men like Roberts even care about the damage they do (Shakespeare again "The evil men do, live after them"). Perhaps a spell in prison might have concentrated his mind?

Now, Christine, you couldn;t be expected to know about this paedos behaviour, but surely there is something wrong with school inspections, if the probity of the staff cannot be checked up upon. Corrupting the 'normal' is disgusting, but teenage boys?.

Inspections, if they are to mean anything, should be carried out without prior warning. It seems to only be in the NHS and School system where these things are pre-arranged and orchestrated, a place serving food, for example or industrial premises can be entered without warning., and the business named and shamed in the local press.

In short, Christine, I probably wouldn't have told you at 15/16 I was homosexual myself but I most certainly would have told you about Robert's behaviour. It does seem to me that P.E teachers are especially excluded from proper scrutiny - I have mentioned - to the point of repletion, I admit, about a teacher called Michael Quinlan who having served a prison sentence for indecency towards boys was allowed back into the profession to do it all over again, and we also know that at least two cowardly old men, former P.E. teachers, are hiding in South Africa, fighting deportation to Scotland to face charges of gross indecency and buggery against boys who were at school with broadcaster NIcky Campbell, and a recent Radio 4 series "In Dark Corners" also revealed the journalist Alex Renton was subjected to indecent acts at a boarding school, and at least one of those teachers was a member of the loathsome (now happily defunct) Paedophile Information Exchange.

Do you feel - and I mean you no personal disrespect, - that male inspectors ought to inspect all boys schools?. I know at 15 I would have felt more comfortable talking to a man about Roberts than to a woman - also, of course, at that age, you do not have the command of language or gravitas to point out the seriousness of the situation

Sorry to go on at such length, but what would you have done, if you had received information that a teacher was a practising pervert?

Hi Alan,

I feel you are too harsh on Christine Sanderson, although I admit I also find her seemingly total lack of concern for the feelings of boys rather triggering. You rather contemptuously described her former career as a 'box-ticking exercise'. Well, with no wish to be insulting or dismissive', I suggest that that was exactly what it was.

You seem to be suggesting that OFSTED people should be tasked with rooting out the deviants. I can see why you say that and in fact I think I made a similar remark in a previous post to her.

While I was lucky enough never to cross paths with any perverts I wasn't so lucky in other ways. While there was no formal corporal punishment at either of my schools there was a great deal of informal CP, smacking, shaking, shouting and even screaming. I was an exceedingly shy child who struggled to fit in and socialise and had problems with concentration.

Or. As teachers saw these things in the 1970s: I was a troublemaker.

I experienced the ruler across the knuckles, the ruler across the backs of my legs with my shorts pulled up and was even threatened with the slipper. I was once 'made an example of'. That was the exact phrase the teacher used. It meant being made to stand on a chair in the middle of the entire gloating class, feeling naked in my shorts, while the teacher denounced me to them, telling them about all my misdeeds and how they should all try never to be like me. I still remember this experience as worse than the physical punishments and as one of the the worst, most shocking experiences of my whole life.

And all this was before I reached my sixth birthday.

And it wasn't just me. I have posted before about the teacher who locked a boy on his very first day at school in a cupboard because he wouldn't stop crying for his mum. This woman was absolutely vile, with a hair-trigger temper and an apparently uncontrollable loathing for distressed children (especially boys. I know I keep harping on this but this is because in my experience it was true that boys just always seemed to be treated worse.). There was the teacher who, it was rumoured, had once broken a boy's arm whilst hurling him across the classroom. There was the rumour about the junior headmaster that he had once thrashed a boy across his bare bottom with a leather belt. There was our deputy headmistress, who looked like Leo Sayer in drag and dressed like the catholic equivalent of an ageing hippie with her floral dresses that looked like my mum's curtains and ghastly jesus sandals, and who had an seeming obsession with corporal punishment, although she couldn't practice it on us. (One time she told us of how sailors were flogged in the Royal Navy in the old days. It was the first time I had ever heard that word and I can still remember the peculiar, exultant glee with which she enunciated it: "F-ll-ogg-ed!". )

I think I would have been extremely appreciative if Christine Sanderson or any of her cohorts had swung by and outed these twisted bastards before getting them dismissed from the profession.

But here is my question to you, Alan. Are you happy to leave such an important issue as rooting out the deviants in the hands of box-tickers?

Did you ever hear of the so-called 'Cleveland witch hunt' of 1987? It was started by a senior social worker who had this seeming morbid obsession with nasty stuff. I shan't go into details on here because I have put a lot of heart and soul into this one particular post and don't want it to be moderated. Google it. If you must. My point is, this deluded woman was literally taking what she deemed 'evidence' from a checklist. it all fell through in the end.

In my last post to you I mentioned Towel Lady. There is that incident. And there is also my own experience of her. On the school's traditional annual residential week trip up in the Lake District, our (male) dorm teacher found out that me and another boy hadn't been showering. He sent us to shower on the spot. Which is fine. On the way there we were intercepted by this woman teacher who proceeded to give us a roasting which she concluded with the dire threat that if she heard of us not showering again on the trip she would stand there and watch us while we stripped and showered. And as twelve-year-olds we really believed she could and would do it too.

Do I think she was a deviant? No, I do not. I do think she was overbearing and something of a bully, and that, for a teacher, is surely bad enough. But she might well have registered as a deviant on some lazy, catch-all checklist, which is something untrue and which she did not deserve.

I am very sorry to hear that that stuff happened to you, Alan. But, as I always have to remind myself, it's a new day and you are not what happened to you.

Private school, parents paid a small fortune, 1961, swimming was stark naked in the indoor school pool, I remember the deep end was an astonishing 9ft deep, the shallow was 3ft. We often did dives into the 9ft end. One teacher would often get us out the pool doing push ups at the edge or running laps of the pool whilest still fully completely naked. Our parents had to pay for this kind of education at the time, and we had to be brainy enough for it too. Character building they called it. I can think of other words.

I've digested the comments with great interest.

I know it's a bit late in the day Alan but if I rewind the clock about 30 years and you do the same to the time you were in school to the particular time that is relevant to you, I'd like you to indulge me with an exercise. Tell me what you would have said to me if I had approached you directly, with anything you say to me being treated in confidence and not reported back in your name, especially if you wished to go somewhere private to speak rather than in the full glare of a class situation. It was always possible to take both written and oral pupil comment.

Once you tell me what you think you would have said to me I will try and do my honest best to answer you as I think I would have done so at the time. The question is would you have been honest with me, or like many children end up doing just answer quite predictably or not wishing to say much.

I did speak with many pupils during my job and we are aware of what was called coached answers, especially by teaching staff. I approached many pupils randomly, some are keen to speak, others are not. I did not elect to ignore the actual pupils, I sat in many classes with them, observing their teachers, the behaviour and the atmosphere. A lot of the job is simple observation, which is inspection after all.

Let me tell you about schools and the inspections we got from someone who spent over forty years in the classroom because it might prove interesting. At one of the comprehensive schools I was teaching at which was of a generally good standard we got sent notes to inform us of an upcoming HM Inspection, previous to Ofsted, this was in the late 1980's. It was about a month's warning that the school was going to be receiving HM Inspectors, quite absurd in my view and during this time some money was found to "do up" the school reception area and buy pot plants and a few other clean up jobs here and there, including a new piece of carpet in the staff room too. This was all the head teacher's doings and it received a lot of mutterings I can tell you from the staff who wouldn't have minded a few extras in the actual classrooms. I also remember the school cleaners working overtime in the week before the inspectors came. It was like a Royal visit when something suddenly gets spruced up that nobody cared about beforehand. I always thought it was taking inspectors for fools and I bet they could smell the fresh new carpet or paint a mile off.

However, our head on this late 1980's inspection had his "official staff notice" of this specific inspection, I think it lasted the entire week. But unofficially he had all his staff in the staff room one afternoon when the children had all gone and amongst many things he made it clear to all of us to try and prevent any children talking much to these inspectors incase they say too much and let the school down and wanted us to keep a close eye on who if any in our classes might say something to any if approached. I found this very foolish as the school had a good reputation anyway and the children were the only reason any of us had a job in the first place. These inspections make teachers very touchy indeed and in the case of that head teacher I had he didn't trust his own school roll not to rattle off a list of grievances, and a few staff had plenty of their own. I believed in honestly answering any question I might be asked and not saying what I thought might be the right answer they wanted to hear.



I worked at another secondary school a few years later and that had an Ofsted inspection and it was completely the opposite and that head teacher was keen for anyone to have their say quite openly and for any children who wished to speak with them to do so, and I think many did so actually. Even in the previous school many children spoke directly to HM Inspectors and I was not going to stop them doing so. I trusted my own pupils to speak sensibly to these people and show maturity, and they did so, thus making my own classroom look well run and disciplined. I never made the mistake of thinking I could fool an HM Inspector or Ofsted but even some heads that should know better think they can do so.

I remember that the male PE teachers at my last school didn't seem popular with many of the staff and one complained during an inspection that they were getting in the way and putting him off doing his job the way he normally did it. I recall some of us having a staff chatter about that and suggesting he was probably having to behave himself a lot more than normal, he had a firey and short tempered shouty reputation that could be heard by many staff who found him intimidating to be around so the children must have been even more so.

In some schools the staff are at each others throats even more than the pupils, so said a friend of mine who worked at another school in my area who I'd frequently meet up with and compare notes.

Comment by: Alan Noble on 1st April 2025 at 17:35
I think I might be in that picture - 14 at the time at BGS.

That's lovely Alan, would you care to say a little bit more, such as who you think you might be in the picture and what the school was like. Most people on here didn't go there and only talk about their own school based on the picture which brings up many memories of everyone else's school gyms.

I think I might be in that picture - 14 at the time at BGS.

Many adults don't know what the whole trans thing is all about and transphobia, so expecting a small five year old to do so is the antics of the madhouse, but then many of those people are literally fruitcakes I'm afraid. Isn't there are massive irony in such people that would suspend a tiny child for something they could not possibly understand. These very people that do that claim that they are the ones who are understanding and reasonable and inclusive and kind. No they are not, they are completely the opposite to what they claim, they are the ones with no tolerance of others! When it comes down to small kids they are just wicked.

This madness will end sooner or later and when it does our next generation will look back at some of these people with complete and utter disgust and shame. They are setting back mainstream gay related issues for both men and women, most of us are actually quite regular men and women who consider ourselves quite normal, because we are and we are not looking at everything through sex/gender tinted glasses. I almost never mention my gender or sexuality to anyone because it's not important enough. Saying so here to me is the exception but only because I find it relevant to the discussion. In my early secondary years it loomed large though, and PE lessons magnified it with all the naked showers and bare chests for PE.

I'm gay and went to secondary school in 1978 where I was immediately thrown into a situation of PE for gym being done only in bare chests for the boys there and showers, all of this I found quite intimidating and difficult to adapt to. Having my shirt off was just not me. See my comment of 6th Feb this year for details if you missed it.

Even if a school inspector had come up to me or even taken me for a one-to-one interview in an office and grilled me I doubt I would have said anything about how I felt about having to shower, remove all my clothing or do PE without any top on. I didn't even broach the subject and my feelings at the time with anyone at home either, it was just my own quiet discomfort that simmered along within me, and I remember thinking I was the problem because I was the one who didn't like taking my top off for PE or stripping right off for the showers and being seen by others like that at close range. Now I'm learning how others felt too and it seems a lot of us were thinking similar thoughts. A general look across the web can see many examples of such discussion drawing similar conclusions. The answer at my school to boys who disliked showering and were a bit more obvious in showing it was for the teacher to grab them and pull them towards them, one lad in my class was once lifted up by his ears off the bench and pulled into the shower for ignoring a teacher telling him to get in for about the third time of asking. Nobody actually paused to think why are some of these boys reluctant. It wasn't because they wanted be dirty and sweaty! For myself I just jumped in like I was told to and removed my shirts when told I could not have one on. We didn't even need telling most of the time, it became automatic.

Although there is a lot to be said for treating everyone the same at school, and all of us had to do these things, we are not all the same.

When I saw the recent discussion, including video evidence, on the boys being filmed in the showers at school for television done right at the time I was at early secondary school I just thought, yes that's about right showing all that, by definition of being born male, even young ones in school like me and you were conditioned to accept a certain way about things and never to confront those who did it to us. A school shower was/is an enormously big deal to so many children of both sexes, and for many boys taking our shirts off was quite a big deal too, maybe that's because I was gay and starting to know it, I don't know, although it looks like there are a lot of straight men on here who felt similar. Some people say they felt a bit different when they went swimming at school. I still felt much the same, although it felt a bit different to the normal PE, at least swimming was a bit more fun and you forgot yourself easier. The swimming pool we got taken to for lessons had a large communal changing area and communal showers and we had to use them there as well after leaving the pool. We used to be allowed to walk into them with our swim trunks on to remove the chlorine off them but then had to take them off and thrown them aside and do things properly. There was a soap dispenser we had to use there, quite posh actually. At the pool we were sometimes even watched by a male member of their staff there who was nothing to do with our school, incredible as that sounds because sometimes we were taken swimming by women teachers. This was only in the first and second years, age twelve and thirteen. Boys and girls areas were separate but we could all hear each other and if you were not careful it would be easy to be seen by the other side.


Regards the school inspector, I hope you don't mind me saying this but you are far too harsh about Christine though Alan, and I think I find Yours Truly the more balanced viewpoint on her comments. Although I've said what I've said, I do try not to be angry in life about things and towards other people. Even now I tend to think it was me who created the issues not my school.

Hello,

In response to a couple of comments below on my earlier comments, I do understand the point being made. I'd add it wasn't just a matter of listen to the girls, ignore the boys. At first we changed no one's kit - it had always been full length leotards for or girls in gymnastics, just shorts for boys in gymnastics and fitness drills (girls wore t-shirts and shorts for fitness drills), t-shirt and shorts for everything else. But we had to review the kit anyway (the supplier went under I recall correctly), and the leotard was an extra expense, and also slowed things down, so there were lots of arguments on top of girls' complaints leading to us to change the girls' gymnastics uniform to shorts and t-shirts (which had to be tucket in at all times).

More generally, while I do sympathise there might have been some discomfort, and it was different treatment, of course there are physiological differences too, and the idea of double standards goes both ways - it is society that has decided women are forbidden to show as much of their bodies as men, and in sports such as swimming or gymnastics that might reduce the comfort or practicality of what they must wear.

Ultimately, some discomfort is inevitable growing up. Not just on this matter - many students feel uncomfortable wearing shorts, or when I was a student I didn't like the blouses and gym skirts we had to wear in gym. But growing up is about overcoming fears as well. I recognise it wouldn't be normal nowadays, but if I were setting the gym uniform from scratch ignoring outside opinions, I'd probably stick with what it was back in the day in the 70s and 80s. Practicality, safety, simplicity, at the expense of some initial awkwardness I'm sure would be overcome.

Comment by: Nick T on 31st March 2025 at 22:40
Comment by: Terry on 31st March 2025 at 18:06
Terry, no it was not. But it could’ve been. Poor guy.


Exactly my point I think you understood. I didn't actually think there was any chance it really was you, that would have been truly coincidental! But many of us were Nick there for sure.

Well, my last post seems to have taken flight, snaffled perhaps by the moderation fairies or the broadband gremlins. So here goes my second attempt.


Hi Terry,

Wow. I found that offensive just to watch. Words fail me to be honest. I suppose that after everything I have read on this forum I shouldn't be surprised but I am surprised. I'm still surprised that any school would practice such blatant gender discrimination regarding PE kit but I am more surprised that they would be blase enough to publicise the fact by throwing the girls and boys in together. Didn't any of these people have sons of their own? Didn't any of these muppets realise that boys have feelings too?

PE lessons were always separated at my mixed secondary school. I can only recall one single mixed session in the gym due to staffing shortages and the odd girls-vs-boys rounders game out on the playing fields in summer. I don't remember any of us having any problem with them. This will have been because we were not forced to strip almost naked beforehand, unlike those poor boys in that clip.

I suppose it's just yet another demonstration of that universal double standard that boys don't/ shouldn't have sensitive feelings and that where they do they are to be made to disregard them.

I am guessing that some of the girls complained about the embarrassment of leotards in front of the boys and so they were allowed to add leggings to their kit. There's no way of knowing if any of the boys complained about their kit but plainly if they did they were ignored, which was exactly what Susan F stated a few weeks back in the school she taught in. She too seemed utterly oblivious to the sexism present there.

Not only are the girls covered up from their collarbones to their ankles but they are also allowed to fade into the background, with the focus of the clip on two stripped boys. In the viewers' comments one or two posts claimed the minimal kit was to teach the boys body confidence. Those two boys look anything but confident, they seem very shy and subdued. So would I have been. I was painfully shy at that age. And that was with my clothes on.

There was also a comment from a woman stridently asserting that the clothing disparity was absolutely, positively NOT sex discrimination. (Of course it wasn't! Only women and girls can ever be victims of that, this is an indisputable law of physics, as we all know.) So there you go, guys, that's us lot all told.

And it is always, always, always boys on the receiving end of these inequalities. Boys are just shown less consideration overall. Maybe there will be women reading this and inwardly triumphantly sniggering and thinking, 'suck it up, boys, suck it up'. But this sort of thing is a problem when boys are expected to develop into men who respect women. These things fester.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 31st March 2025 at 22:55


Hi YT. No I didn't take the band remark as offensive - the most offensive thing that ever happened to me in my big band days was having to play the Bobby Hackett solo (note for note) in the horrible Glenn Miller tune "String Of Pearls" - for that dubious pleasure I had to borrow a cornet (I was depping for somebody else who usually played that abomination). I preferred the flugelhorn or trumpet, and being able to improvise solos, on more contemporary material,

I have to say that I think our Christine has made it manifest that she rather favours the old fashioned approach of shirtless gym and compulsory showers, and has no regards for shy boys or boys who had their own particular set of problems. She clearly knows every rule in the book, but, like most civil servants gives no thought to the people who are affected (in the same way a person dying of cancer is simply "a case" to the doctor)..She is more concerned about the measurements of the room than the feelings of mere boys. I do still get concerned to think there might be PE teachers like mine running around, especially now they have older lads forced to stay on at school, many of them, no doubt, forced into P.E lessons. Our Mr. Roberts loved watching the 15/16 year olds - God knows what he would have been like with 17/18 year olds.

Comment by: Michael on 31st March 2025 at 21:25


"....Will you pull up the comment where she said she did not speak to any actual children in schools please Alan because I don't remember reading that. My problem with the way you factor your arguments is that you often seem to go out of your way to misinterpret what others say to fit nicely in with your own agenda driven narratives......."


My pleasure old chap.

The message is very long, so I am sure that Ms. Sanderson and yourself will forgive me if I only print the relevant passages (it is akin to somebody requesting A Love Supreme by John Coltrane on a forty five minute request programme - the piece lasts for 40 minutes so you can only reasonably play an extract) . If you wish to read the whole piece, then it is currently on page 15 on the site. On page 16, by the by, she makes an extraordinary assertion that endorses a study by Essex University who claim to have discovered (no doubt at public expense) that boys who shower after PE are fitter than those who don't. No wonder I am a dab hand at manoeuvring large metal boxes filled with electronic equipment around!

The gravamen appears in the final three lines of paragraph 2 in this message:

"
Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 23rd November 2024 at 19:17




...........In the days of HMI's before Ofsted was established just over 30 years ago, the government education inspectors had wide powers and could access any part of a school at any time of day and speak to any member of staff or a pupil. Go through the sek of the head teacher, eat the school dinners and look around the kitchen, and even stand in a PE changing room and observe the working school environment. There could very well be men here who might have seen a PE teacher of theirs standing with a complete unknown figure as they slipped in or out of the PE kit or even having a shower. This practice was before my time but was common before 1992. An inspector may appear in a class situation, or a PE situation and just quietly observe, along or in a group, saying nothing at all to anybody including the teacher, or they may engage with questions...............

.....As this is a forum largely based on PE in schools, I'm well aware of some of the previous comments here and how many pupils viewed their PE in school. But one thing an inspector would not go around asking to individuals are things like, do you like doing gymnastics, do you like football, do you like swimming, etc, or do you like you PE kit, do you like a shower or wearing no top for boys.......


It seems clear that Ms. S and her ilk are more interested in the buildings than the pupils - a wall 6 inches too short is more important than the ritual humiliation of students - another case of preferring the box to the chocolates.

I say this - offend or please - schools seem to take far too many liberties in inflicting their screwball ideas these days, on young impressionable minds, as they seem stacked to the rafters with left wing loonies. This was published yesterday - had it been published today you might assume it was a sick April Fools joke:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/toddler-suspended-transphobia-nursery-b1219768.html

I wonder how many of you will defend THAT?.

I have said it before, and I say it again, any person entering the teaching game ought to be analysed by a psychiatrist, as a pre-condition of employment, because it seems to me far too many dictatorial and unbalanced idiots are let into schools.

Hi Alan,

Thank you for your support. Snarky internet comments don't worry me, I'm perfectly capable of them myself.

I hope you didn't think my 'Arse Against' reference in my last post to you was a homophobic dig. I only realised after I had posted it that it could have come across that way. It was not meant as one. It was actually a pun on a real-life brass orchestra called Brass Against who do brass covers of metal, alternative and punk anthems. I got to see them two years ago in London supporting the almighty Tool.

It was not and is not my intention to have a go at Christine Sanderson. Or anybody else on here. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Her contributions on here are valuable and as a former OFSTED inspector she has a particular and niche insight into what we discuss.

It is just that her detachment often feels more than just professional and the rationalisations she gives for certain unpleasant practices often feel like the type of bland, diplomatic platitudes trotted out in public life by politicians and PR bods and sometimes she seems not to be addressing the point under discussion. Plainly it was just a job to her. Then again I think I can remember her explaining before that the inspectors' remit was to make sure that the compulsory stipulations were being upheld and not to question those stipulations themselves. Although I did point out to her that the pupils would have been the best people to ask to ascertain whether proper procedures were in place because they would be the most likely to give an honest answer.

I saw that headline. As the old song goes, 'Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss'.

Looking back I must have gone to a pretty unusual catholic school. Not only was there no corporal punishment, not only were we taught about other religions than catholicism/ christianity but I honestly never heard of any pervy teachers there or even a rumour of one. As I have said before even our PE teachers made a point of turning the water on and immediately vanishing into their broom cupboard of an office, none of this standing and watching us that so many other people, both men and women, cite bitter memories of. Looking back now it makes me wonder if this was observation of new guidelines that might have been laid down following some sort of incident. But this is nothing but idle speculation.

The only dubious anecdote I ever heard of was Towel Lady snatching that girl's towel from her as she exited the showers. Twenty-odd years after leaving that school I saw this incident confirmed as real on the now long-defunct Friends Reunited website by a woman some ten years older than me who witnessed it at the time. I feel inclined give this teacher the benefit of the doubt and presume that she was trying to encourage this girl not to be so sensitive and shy. But that was not the way to go about it, even in the long-ago culture of the 1970s. Today I imagine it would almost certainly land her in a disciplinary hearing.

The lenient sentence handed out to the teacher you describe is the fault of the court. Christine and her colleagues were not social workers or mental health professionals.

As regards PE teachers with an overweening sense of their own power, well, funnily enough just yesterday this clip cropped upon my PC, from Jack Black in School Of Rock:

"Those who can, do. Those who can't teach. Those who can't teach? They teach gym class."


We have now seen this from several women posters. The lack of any concern when it is boys on the receiving end.

Comment by: Terry on 31st March 2025 at 18:06

Terry, no it was not. But it could’ve been. Poor guy.

Will you pull up the comment where she said she did not speak to any actual children in schools please Alan because I don't remember reading that. My problem with the way you factor your arguments is that you often seem to go out of your way to misinterpret what others say to fit nicely in with your own agenda driven narratives.

You mention the lady as being an apologist for the teaching profession. Why would you expect someone to come on here and rubbish their profession and not defend it?

You don't like people judging you but my goodness you are incredibly judgemental of others, and in this lady's case I fail to understand it much like James has already said.

I think you could have a disagreement by yourself in a lift with your own reflection or shadow.

If I may also say, how many comments on here have you now mentioned the name of that school? Give it a rest eh.

Comment by: James on 31st March 2025 at 17:27


I suggest you re-read what she said about her not communicating with the pupils when doing her job. You don't get a rounded picture by only talking to one side. She comes over as an apologist for the teaching profession, despite the odd mild stricture. Did she ever convey any of her unease to the teaching staff?. Frankly I doubt it.

Comment by: Nick T on 31st March 2025 at 16:38

This wasn't you by any chance was it Nick? Shirtless boys, no footwear, in a mixed gym. (It's been posted before I know)

https://youtu.be/l_gb0CUzwX0?si=XZn5A3OeWB-u1qsO

My takeaway from this excerpt is that the school gym we see here looks very low energy, lethargic and tediously dull. The boy "Nick" here looks like he'd prefer to be anywhere but in this gym, and probably would like to have his t-shirt on and not be dragooned into presenting his key stage three shirtless gym techniques among the girls and most certainly not be in front of the camera in this way. He looks so unconfident and shy, so that's why he was obviously picked, or for not being up to expectations. I remember boys like him very well at school in PE.

I wonder how many times he's needed to roll head over heels in his adult life since he left!

On this forum time and again you have spoken of how badly you were treated in your schooldays by teachers and pupils alike Alan.

So why then are you attacking without any good reason a lady, Christine Sanderson, who has posted here and are now trying to inflame others to do the same, saying things like you expect a lot of negativity from Christine if she responds. That's a bit rich coming from you, everyone has to put up with never ending negativity out of you and it just never ceases.

Someone previously mentioned how you attack women quite often when they appear on this forum, but it's also noticeable how you seem to attack anyone who has any kind of education background as well. But why?

For the life of me I cannot understand what Christine has said that would rile anyone, she actually ended her last comment by saying the following;

"I think many PE teachers in the past could have done far more to ease any discomfort their pupils may have felt around the communal showering requirements they implemented and also with the shirtless PE for boys for those who it caused anxiety. The question is the style of approach you take."

Just what more do you expect out of someone? Explain yourself.

It might seem like no big deal for some boys, but having to wear just shorts can be very uncomfortable at that age when many are worried about how their bodies are perceived.

Boys had to do gymnastics in just shorts when I was at school in the 80s (for most sports we wore t shirts as well). Being very skinny I found it very awkward, and it was uncomfortable that there were girls in the class as well.

By far the worst aspect of it was that I was gay, closeted, frustrated and confused in myself at the time. So being surrounded by boys in just shorts, while I was also forced to wear as little as that, was a very tricky situation to deal with.

I’m glad this has mostly been consigned to history.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 30th March 2025 at 20:16



I am going to put in a word of support for you, YT, as I suspect you will be getting a lot of negativity to your post, not least from Ms Sanderson herself.

I entirely agree with your views. It has always seemed to me dear old Christine was very much the teacher's friend - she reminds you of one of those loyal backbenchers who turn up on the BBC to defend benefit cuts to the disabled at the same time as defending MPs like this one:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/34138863/taiwo-owatemi-expenses-dog/

All animals are equal, as George Orwell said, but some are more equal than others. I remember Ms S on one occasion on here saying that when she was doing her "inspections", which are, I imagine tick box operations - have they got the uniform shade of Magnolia on the walls in the staff room?, are the chairs nice and comfy?, she said that they did not, or were not obliged, to speak to the students, and frequently didn't. So it encourages a very one sided view.

If these inspections were thorough and totally unbiased, the sort of behaviour that went on at the Royal Liberty School, for example. could not have happened. It was totally egregious that a P.E. master was allowed back in the profession after serving a 22 month prison sentence for indecent behaviour with boys, only to go on and commit other similar offences a few years later. Proper inspections, including conducting confidential interviews with pupils, don't happen and we continue to this day to see pests int he profession.

You do have to wonder why boys are made to "shower" without soap and in cold or lukewarm water, especially when the school day is finished, I assume in MOST cases it is the overweening sense of power some teachers feel they have, but I know, from personal experience, that there are worse, and much more sinister reasons, that SOME teachers enjoy watching boys shower, especially the older ones.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

So school showers were actually about fairness? So, not sanitation like they told us? You argued in a previous post that the realisation of unfairness is an essential lesson for schoolchildren to learn. Now you change your tune.

You need to read Simon's post more closely. You talk of 'fairness'. There has been much talk of unfairness on this forum, specifically with regards to boys but you have never been moved to respond to any of those posts. By keeping those boys in and making them do something they were unwilling to do after the specified remit of their authority over those boys had ended for that day those teachers were overstepping the limits of their authority. Explain to me please where the fairness is in letting adults 'professionals' throw their weight around and rule by their whim rather than by the stipulated rules.

Where was the fairness in keeping certain pupils in while the rest of the school was allowed to saunter out the gates at the regular time? Where was the 'fairness' at all the schools where they forced boys to shower together but allowed the girls not to bother at all? Or at the schools, like mine, where girls did have to shower but were allowed to do so in private while we boys were made to get our bollocks out and go in all together at a young and vulnerable age?

'Many schools actually consider that their pupils are still under their guidance before they reach the school gates into school and leaving their school gates after school, especially while in uniform until the point you reach home and take it off. So if you walked half a mile home and got into mischief in your own road the school could technically sanction you in many cases if they saw fit, or if pupils made a nuisance in a shop on the way home.'

You are not really addressing the question. Which is where the threshold lies in a school's authority over their pupils. It might well be elastic as you state but that limit is there. It has to be. Teachers cannot hold children at school indefinitely. A bell or buzzer might only be an advisory guide in law but it is also the law that teachers are not and never were empowered to hold pupils in school indefinitely after the end of the day. That would be abduction, which is an offence that potentially carries a substantial custodial tariff.

'I think many PE teachers in the past could have done far more to ease any discomfort their pupils may have felt around the communal showering requirements they implemented and also with the shirtless PE for boys for those who it caused anxiety. The question is the style of approach you take.'

Well, you and me both. It's just, you never come across as if you actually care.

Hi Samantha,

Thank you for your input. It's good to be reminded that girls sometimes got a raw deal too.

We men don't 'get' most of anything. Everybody is free to post here. I think the reason it's mostly men posting on here is simply because boys were more likely to be treated badly. Not just in PE lessons either. As boys we were to be inculcated with a stoical, manly disregard for our own feelings. There have been several previous female posters who stated that they were never made to use the showers while showering was absolutely enforced for the boys.

You mention seeing boys covered head to toe in mud. Well, there you go. Presumably those boys had been playing rugby while you girls were doing netball or something else civilised and sanitary. Our own games lessons were never that rough and ready but I can remember our old bastard PE teacher having a go at me at the end of a session out on the playing fields for the precise reason that I wasn't muddy, which was something he equated with a lack of effort.

I always thought it must have been worse for the girls because of periods. One or two women posters have stated that their PE teachers actually kept a diary recording every girl's cycle so that they couldn't use it as an excuse. Girls were forced to announce their situation in front of a class full of their peers. There was even one poster who said girls were excused swimming lessons but only to be made to run laps of the playing fields. Which sounds like a punishment, doesn't it? Not only that but the boys doing football or rugby would see them and know exactly who was having their time.

As regards things sticking out, well, you raise the vital point that boys are naturally just more cruel and unfeeling to each other than girls. Which you might just naturally assume means that boys deserve more consideration that girls, especially in such vulnerable situations.
Nope. I got teased in the showers. To be honest by that time I was so used to being teased for something or other I just took it in my stride. Well. Until the other boys, seeing I wasn't bothered, upped their game by telling the girls in my year . . .

I never had to do PE without a top on. I think I would have hated it. But numerous other men posting here have stated how they had to undergo topless PE and sometimes in mixed sessions with the girls. Often they mention feelings of unease at having to do this but beings boys these were not taken into account by the teaching staff. There was a recent poster, Susan F I think, who told of how when PE lessons at the school she was working in introduced mixed PE lessons for gymnastics the girls complained about how they found their leotards embarrassing. in front of the boys As a result their kit was changed to t-shirt and shorts. At the same time several boys spoke up about feeling embarrassed having to be topless around girls. Their feelings were ignored and they were made to get on with it. The usual kit for boys at her school was t-shirt and shorts. The boys were only made to go topless in the gymnastics classes, presumably for health and safety reasons, which is understandable. Your t-shirt falling down over your face could lead to an accident. Yet the school allowed the girls to wear t-shirts in the same class! Was it a health and safety issue or not? Susan F made no comment on the differing dress codes imposed in the boys and girls. She may have been oblivious to them. After all they were only boys.

There was a woman poster quite a while back now who told of how during her first year at a mixed grammar school then girls were made to take PE in nothing but their knickers - this despite the fact that there was an elaborate list of PE kit items specified in the school's prospectus. She didn't go into any detail about how the girls felt about this imposition but she didn't seem scarred by it.

There was also a recent post by a woman who had been a young teacher in the early 1980s during the golden age of teacher strikes. She found herself roped into taking a boys' PE class. The male teacher who usually took them advised her to make them take off their tops - something they weren't usually made to do. The point was to make them more biddable by making them feel embarrassed and vulnerable and it worked.

An almost identical situation in my case to Simon here.

In my secondary school years, early to mid nineties period 1991 - 1996 virtually the lot of my own PE was taken as the last lesson of the school day on two days a week.

Exactly the same as in Simon's school, we could only go home once we had taken the expected shower and the PE teachers all made sure we did this, there was no slipping quietly out the door hoping to be the one that got away without doing it, their backs never seemed to be turned, they saw everyone and everything.

Our changing room must have been designed with all this in mind actually. The shower area and the exit door were quite close to each other so all the PE teachers in my case had to do was stand guard beside the door and nobody could pass unless agreed to go, whilst at the same time getting the perfect view a handful of feet away straight at the whole lot of us showering, and changing of course.

We also had teachers that took us in some cases way beyond the final school day finish. I remember one occasion we were playing football or rugby out on the school field away from the building and the game was quite exciting and our teacher totally forgot what time it was. None of us were allowed to wear a time piece so had no idea what the time was, we were dependent on him for that. School ended at 3.30pm and it was 3.45pm when he looked at his watch, and he only did that because another teacher was bounding across the grass to us wondering why we were still out there which made our teacher check his watch. I don't think he said sorry though! Even though we'd had an extra quarter hour tuition due to his bad time keeping he still made us all go into the showers back in the changing room rather than just hurry ourselves and leave school as quick as possible. There were lots of other times when they all knew the time and we were showering and dressing after the school day had actually ended, like you Simon.

We did not have any of our teachers share showers though. When I started secondary school in 1991 I had a conversation with my parents about showers in school and I'm sure he told me he had PE teachers who took showers with him at the end of class in the sixties.

Hi Simon P,

That's absolutely outrageous that you were held back to shower after mandatory school hours. Didn't any of you complain to your parents? Didn't any of your parents complain to the school?

At my first parents' evening in secondary school the teachers drew my parents' attention to the fact that I wasn't mixing or easing into school life. To remedy this they suggested I should get involved in an extracurricular activity so I could socialise more.

Unfortunately the two activities they mentioned as examples were the two facets of school life I loathed the most. Drama club? I was shy to the point where it was an informal disability and I have written on here before about my thriving aversion to school plays. Football? Oh yes, really. Turn up to school on a day when I didn't have to (football practice was on Saturday mornings)? Run up and down a muddy field chasing after a ball with a bunch of other boys who mostly already hate me? With our seething old bastard PE teacher glowering and barking at us?

Yeah, really. The school knew which hole that one was going up.

Your account only reminds me yet again how lucky I was to have gone to secondary school in the 1980s, when a lot of these rules and customs and practices had been relaxed. And I still hated the whole experience.

Were the girls at your school held to the same showering tyranny? Or was it an all-boys school?

Hi Ian D,

In my last post the first was meant to be addressed to you but I put Alan's name by mistake.

You ex school boys get most of the say on the dreaded PE showers here. Me and my sister absolutely detested showers at school in the eighties. I don't think I knew a girl who didn't always find it something of an ordeal. Some girls used to cry in our changing room in front of the PE teacher at times and plead for avoidance. It was not seen as a nice experience for any of us to be thrown into against our will, and I've no doubt none of us would have chosen to shower by free choice unless we had been rolled in liquid mud and were brown from head to toe. We used to see boys almost like that at our school. They could quite often look like they had no choice but to shower, but us girls were not like that.

I always thought it was even worse for boys having to shower because of the obvious bit of anatomy that sticks out easy to judge and impossible to hide. I wouldn't have wanted to be a boy in that situation, I can't imagine what it must have been like for you boys forced to judge each other so openly. Girls didn't really do that, even with our developing breasts. Our period was also a big deal with showering too.

I never had to worry about doing any topless PE thankfully, but I am interested to know that boys did so much of it. They did quite a lot at my school. I saw a topless boys class through a window once and wanted to stop and stare but couldn't. It did seem quite normal for the boys to be seen doing PE without tops on though in their bare chests.

Perhaps some of you boys from back then can explain what it actually feels like to do a school lesson without your top on for PE especially if you don't like it. I can certainly understand why boys would be nervous about it. What is the sensation you felt in PE, I would hate anyone to tell me to take my top off against my will.

I think this is the kind of result at the top that gives my former profession a bad name and I see no justification for it. A peerage for the boss of Ofsted. I was very unhappy when I read this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crknkkx21gvo


Simon, while I fully understand your schooldays frustration with your last lesson of the day and desire to go home there will have been a very good reason for insisting on a shower before you leave and that is quite simply to maintain fairness, what one has to do, all have to do, to avoid any sense that some people are receiving special treatment. That's why they insisted you completed your lesson properly like the others earlier in the day before you and showered after PE, even after the close of school. On that, whilst you are still on school premises under the supervision of your teacher they continue to have responsibility for you, whether the formal end of school time has passed or not, so they were well within their rights to insist. The bell, buzzer or any other way the school announces the beginning of the day, the end of the day or breaks and lunchtime is only an advisory guide and not a legal definition to hold by.

Many schools actually consider that their pupils are still under their guidance before they reach the school gates into school and leaving their school gates after school, especially while in uniform until the point you reach home and take it off. So if you walked half a mile home and got into mischief in your own road the school could technically sanction you in many cases if they saw fit, or if pupils made a nuisance in a shop on the way home.


I really like the sound of your group Craig, good luck later tonight with that. I don't think I will be allowed to join anytime soon will I. I like your positive attitude. People with such an attitude in classes I observed were easy to identify with moments of first meeting them. I think many PE teachers in the past could have done far more to ease any discomfort their pupils may have felt around the communal showering requirements they implemented and also with the shirtless PE for boys for those who it caused anxiety. The question is the style of approach you take.

I'm looking forward to the next week when our bareskin whatsapp group has got four bareskin runs planned with various people, including a midnight run tomorrow night, Saturday, for about an hours duration with four takers so far.

One of the newer guys on our bareskin runners group showed me this YT video last week and I thought I would share it on here with you guys. He's one of these people we've got who heard about us from his friend and chose to join and see if it did anything for his confidence, and it has. He's a nice, slim guy in his early thirties and he told me he relates to the thin guy in this video which he showed me on his iPad before we ran one night. I actually think he's got a really great body, but he refuses to see it like I can. In this video there is a thin lad but when you see his body I think he looks lovely and has nothing to be hung up over. Obviously the chubby young man here could do with losing some weight for his own health, never mind the looks aspect. We've got one or two slightly overweight men who run with us.

Take a look at this, and just remember that we now have men volunteering to run shirtless 'bareskin' out and about who relate to these young men here and many of you on this forum.

For teens who keep their shirt on at the pool - https://youtu.be/phRQmEWw9Fk?si=Msdyh0fUklspJ2zA

Hi Yours Truly.

Many of my senior school PE lessons were final period of the day running from half two until nearly four o'clock back in the late 70s, early 80s. When I got my timetables and saw this I was quite pleased to have PE at the end of the day because there would be no rush for the next lesson and pressure to get sorted. I also thought it was great because we'd just be able to come back, get changed and clear off home and if we wanted to clean up back home we could do so there.

None of that happened though.

It became clear to me that there was no advantage to having PE last period, and there were a few disadvantages. Firstly, being last lesson before home time didn't give us the right to clear off without taking showers. We were always made to do so and nobody was allowed to leave the changing room unless they had done this, and properly. A couple of us lived within a 2 minute walk of the school gates and could easily have slipped home and done that. Infact we all could have done.

Another thing with final period of the day PE was how most of my teachers ran the lesson clock right up to the final bell school ending time, so we'd be going back to our changing room and seeing the rest of school walking out going home. Someone actually brought this up with one of our PE teachers who was making us shower rather than just going home, and mentioned that by the time we were back in the changing rooms getting told we must get in the showers the actual school day had formally ended and it was now our own time again, so technically he couldn't tell us to shower. They made quite clear they could insist whatever the time was on the clock while on school premises.

So this had no effect whatsoever on any of our teachers and so last period PE meant we were forced into showering in our own time past the knock off time and that really p*ssed a lot of us off, and I don't just mean because of anyone being shy about it.

I always thought there were three different typoes of boys in my school PE class when it came to the mandatory showers we took. There were the obviously shy and less confident boys among us, then there were those like me who just quietly got our heads down and got on with it as we were told and created no issues, and there were another group who were obviously more confident and showy offy and seemed to like the attention it gave them.

We were also expected to shower beside any of up to six different male PE teachers as well if they decided to come in with us, which happened from time to time at the end of the day and on some occasions there were two or even three PE teachers, grown men, in the communal showers, completely naked, alongside us young teenage boys, also all completely naked too. These teachers only had to wait five, maybe ten minutes more at most and they could have had it all to themselves because we would have been and gone.

That's last lesson PE in the 1970's for you!

Hi Alan,

'Thanks for saying what you did there. I've always thought there was "something else" about the reasoning for the mass school showering of us all at school years ago and the determination of the teachers to fully enforce it on everyone. They were crazy firm on it, like a forced ritual, which came at huge cost to a lot of people's mindfulness.

In one of my schools I went to we had to all shower in chilly feeling water and were not allowed to use soap or any other wash product on ourselves, so it was effectively like getting caught out in the rain without your clothing on. That's not cleanliness, that's just getting wet! But at least we all got naked and that seemed to be the most important bit for some reason.'

If you were forbidden to use soap, well, I rest my case.

I'm not suggesting any kind of conspiracy-theory level bullshit, just that it was a universal belief that boys needed to be toughened up and that an essential part of this was forcing them to become indifferent to their own emotions, especially feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, vulnerability and discomfort. This was what they did not have enough respect for us to tell us to our faces.

Eleven years of age is too young to be made to shower naked with other children your own age. I was already starting to attract the attention of bullies, some of them in the same shower room, by the occasion of my very first secondary school shower. If learning to be naked with your peers is so essential then it should be implemented later, not before the age of sixteen.

Only - it isn't essential at all, is it? Public, communal nudity is simply not a feature of adult life. So why was it necessary at all? Yes, we got used to it. But I never grew to accept it and on Mondays the knowledge of what was to come would fill me with a sense of dread that stayed with me all day.

'at huge cost to a lot of people's mindfulness.' is such an eloquent phrase.

I have stated before how in first year my Games lesson was the last lesson of the day which meant they could just have let us go home and bathe/ shower in private. The school could have shaved essential pennies off their expenditure by making us use our parents' hot water instead of theirs. But this was not done.

The most basic, most essential agency you have is over your own body. it takes children years of growing to learn to trust their world, which is why this particular violation should never have been allowed.


Hi Alan,

'If forced nudity created such "close bonds", why not go the whole hog and live in a naturist camp. When I was in a big band, perhaps we should have all played stark naked!. After all you can get quite hot and sweaty reaching for the high notes. Not this brassman - red in the face is one thing, red anywhere else is a no-no.'

Maybe you could found a naked brass orchestra that played covers of alternative rock anthems. I suppose you could call it Arse Against.

I am relieved, but not surprised, to read that you have no inclination to get your own slide trombone out.