Burnley Grammar School

Good to see someone of the old school, Pete, standing up for mandatory shirtlessness in school gyms for boys. How can anyone be against such a thing? A large PE group of shirtless boys look fine and well presented.

Of course a lot of physical education in gyms should be done shirtless, why do you need a t-shirt in a gym at all? Sensible schools mandate this, just like sensible schools mandate that all must shower after PE lessons. As I read an old Christine post, these schools are higher achieving with PE if they do this. It doesn't surprise me, shirts off for PE shows you mean business and expect to work hard, that's how I felt it was when I did this at school in my day, topped off with a shower at the end and a good bit of naked camaraderie as we got the sweat or dirt washed off. Communal showers naked with your classmates had their fun moments, all part of growing up. Kids in school were made not to fear group nudity and forced into accepting it, for most of us it worked well. My teachers never let boys wear tops in the school gym and always made us shower whether any of us liked it or not. If you didn't like it then it was tough, they were determined to make you like it by doing it over and over and over again. That's not cruel, it's just tough love of sorts that makes boys grow up.

Good to also see Jack say he got used to it and doesn't mind it. I'm not sure why schools should feel guilty about telling boy pupils to do PE lessons shirtless, yours Jack clearly doesn't and you admit you don't mind. Four years of such PE sounds like it has had a confident effect on your self image. When I was 12 or 13 I was quite a chubby kid at school who was clearly rather overweight drinking too much cola and eating too many Mars Bars. By doing shirtless PE at school in our gym I wanted to shape up and look better and it made me do so and when I was 16 I had lost the chubby overweight appearance and was taller and average to good shape, and I think being told to do my PE shirtless was a big reason for that. I never felt hard done by getting told to remove my top for PE just because I was a bit plump around the middle. Seeing the better shaped boys each week exposed gave me a great reason to do something about my own fitness and shape.

Pete Higham post.

Twenty one years until 1991 so that covers the whole of the seventies and eighties decades, a time many here went to school and speak about.

I appreciate your honesty there Pete, why pretend otherwise if that's what you think. You actually sound just like many of the PE teachers most of us in those decades had and if I'm being honest I wouldn't expect you to change your mind.

Comment by: Matthew S on 8th April 2025

Matthew, that's interesting. Reading back through this discussion, there appears to be a noticeable correlation, at least among the generation brought up to wear vests as regular daily underwear, between first encountering bare-chested PE and permanently discarding those vests as daily wear.
I should perhaps add that from the time that I entered my teens, my usual night attire was just vest and underpants, so for me, and I suspect many other boys of my age, bare-chested PE led naturally and quickly to bare-chested sleeping.

Comment by: Pete Higham on 8th April 2025 at 19:32




".....I've been a state school comprehensive PE teacher in the past, for 21 years until 1991 and most PE classes I took this was the expectation. I have no reson to doubt those decisions were sound.......

There are no excuses for boys to be silly about being a bare chest top in PE in any circumstance. I apply the same attirude to showering as well......"


Mr Higham. Sir, You were no doubt one of those teachers who were in the "if I'm happy then everybody is happy" brigade.

Clearly you had no empathy, but that was usually the way with teachers of your vintage, however, where I do want to bring you to task is your rather snide sign off " being far more mature than one or two oldies on here are who seem to feel hard done by"

Two points: 1) Some of us had reason to feel that way and.2) By your own admission you left the business 34 years ago. A bit rich referring to men younger than yourself as "oldies".!.

Thank you for your reply, Gerry. I did stop wearing vests completely.

(I had nothing against the garment as such - I just took up my mother's suggestion).

Comment by: Matthew S on 7th April 2025:

Matthew, it sounds as though we both had "sensible" mothers as far as vests were concerned. Did you stop wearing vests completely on your Mum's suggestion, or only on PE days?

The young man's comment just goes to show that boys should be expected to do PE lessons without any requirement to put a top on.

I've been a state school comprehensive PE teacher in the past, for 21 years until 1991 and most PE classes I took this was the expectation. I have no reson to doubt those decisions were sound.

There are no excuses for boys to be silly about being a bare chest top in PE in any circumstance. I apply the same attirude to showering as well.

I'm pleased to see the young man, his friends and school fostering a healthy attitude and being far more mature than one or two oldies on here are who seem to feel hard done by.

Comment by: Jack on 7th April 2025 at 18:23
Hi there
I'm just 16. We've done PE at our school shirtless since I began, it's a secondary academy school in Lincoln. We have to if we go into the gym for PE. It's been like that since I started four and a half years ago. Some boys go down the town together to a gym to keep in shape and look good ready for PE at school. I'm naturally slim but happy with how I look shirtless and don't mind being like that in PE for an hour a week. I was shocked at first though as a fresh eleven year old.





A short but very interesting young point of view here. So because you are asked to do PE shirtless without tops in your school it makes some boys keen to make themselves look as good as they can and has given them motivation to do something gym related away from actual school. I suppose that's got to count as a positive. As long as you're all happy that's what counts.

Not all gym's are expensive Alan, you're just thinking of the major chains. There's one in my area that offers very good discounts for students and you can just pay on the day for a set time rather than take a full membership and it's quite a small local place mostly used by casual users before or after work rather than committed enthusiasts. It stays open until 10pm in the week, opens at 7am.

Eric you have asked me why it was legal for female teachers to supervise boys when they were undressed, even at secondary level? And when was this inequality rescinded, if it has been?

My answer to this question is quite straightforward, it is not a case of whether it is legal or not, it is not illegal let's just say that. Things like this are based more on social norms rather than legalities like you suggest. So there is nothing to rescind as there was nothing formal in the first place. It's about practicing common sense and respect which most teachers are expected to have, not all do I know that, like in any other job.

Technically speaking it would have been quite possible to have had a group of sixteen year olds supervised in a changing room, and showering, by a trainee 25 year old female teacher, or even vice versa but of course this would create a storm of protest, quite rightly and the social pressures would see to it that it would not happen and I'm sure it has not done so.

So at secondary level we can be sure the genders are separated properly on the teacher to pupil situation and nobody would actively set out to create situations like I mentioned above. It would not be illegal but would be unacceptable and rightly so.

At primary school age and lower the situation is less clear cut. In these schools the female to male staff ratio is strongly in favour of female staff as a general rule and has largely stayed that way over recent decades and I think it is seen as socially much more acceptable for 'ladies' to stay with boys at primary age while changing, although not for men with girls I will concede. I note that I have read at least two comments on here from men who say they had their female teachers with them at these ages while changing, mostly it seems through sheer practicality because there was nobody else available. For normal changing I think this is alright at ages less than ten or eleven, although I did also note that someone has mentioned a primary school shower in I think it was the 1970s and being kept an eye on by the female teacher at the age of ten or so. Social norms were different then, that would not happen now or be expected to. Almost no primary schools shower nowadays anyway, legally only schools with pupils aged over eleven have to provide such things.


Stuart, you asked me whether the two well dressed people you saw in your changing room in the late 1970s with your teachers might have been school inspectors at that time, as you mentioned them with notes. I can't possibly know of course, but it's very possible they were, yes. They would have had immediate access to anywhere on request and been expected to have that facilitated for them. Should the pupils be told, no, because the teachers themselves might have been unaware until the immediate moment of asking, although all teachers would be aware that inspectors are in and around the school. Observing the correct workings of the PE department would be expected, although I'd like to think that times had changed by my time and that most of us would have not chosen to impose quite so directly into a situation until everyone was decent. I would not seee it as relevant to see the daily workings of the school changing room quite to that degree and would expect a level of respect for pupils to be observed, but that's Ofsted from the mid 90's onwards, I cannot vouch for some of the older style HM Inspectors before 1980 many of whom will have been brought up with different values from the 1940s and 50s. In your situation Stuart I think it would have been courteous to acknowledge who these gentlemen were, whoever they were, it they were standing observing in your changing area like that. I'm not happy hearing your story as you say it, and having access all areas should come with a responsible attitude and not be taken advantage of. If they were not inspectors they could have been school governors Stuart, but they would not have had any right to be in that room, just a thought though.

I hope that's all been helpful.

And Alan, if you think your teacher may still be alive, tell someone of your thoughts that can investigate him. You owe it to not just yourself, but others too. Give my advice a good think but you do what you think is best, and I'll say no more on the subject.

Comment by: Jack on 7th April 2025 at 18:23

Lincoln must be a very affluent area, Jack, if a group of school students can afford to attend private gyms. The cheapest are not exactly pocket money prices!

Gerry, please don't mind my mentioning a small detail, in case it's of any interest. I wore white cotton vests next to my skin until I started at secondary school, as late as 1996 (my mother then suggested I stop wearing them for ease of changing for PE).

Incidentally, I remember having additional PE lessons at infant school, on my own, with a middle-aged female teacher - I was not the most physically capable child. I would be taken out of my class and the two of us would go down to the main school hall (which was in a Victorian building), or sometimes in a small empty classroom just off the hall. Boys' PE was in shorts only (apart from sometimes also wearing plimsolls) and I remember this lady barking at me, "Vest off", owing to my reluctance to remove the garment.

I should add I was fortunate to have the guidance of a kinder lady for PE activities at junior school.

Oops, my typo two posts down. Blame it on my clumsy fingers on a phone screen!. The date should have been late 1950s. I don't think many kids, or adults for that matter, even owned vests by the end of the 1960s.

Hi there

I'm just 16. We've done PE at our school shirtless since I began, it's a secondary academy school in Lincoln. We have to if we go into the gym for PE. It's been like that since I started four and a half years ago. Some boys go down the town together to a gym to keep in shape and look good ready for PE at school. I'm naturally slim but happy with how I look shirtless and don't mind being like that in PE for an hour a week. I was shocked at first though as a fresh eleven year old.

Count yourself lucky you were allowed to keep your knickers and pants on in those lessons Emma, they didn't have to let you I suppose!

I relate completely to the type of lesson you are talking about. At the time you're so young you don't question any of it, that comes later.

All my shirtless PE came in my schools up to the age of eleven, our middle school for instance would not let boys wear tops in PE lessons and we all went shirtless whoever took us, male or female teachers, including outside in summer term too, with bare feet. Our middle school sports day in June was done shirtless (no choice) for boys with our mostly female audience (mums) watching annually from the age of eight to twelve. All I remember of those events is a lot of running about followed by a lot of sitting about watching a lot of others running about.

I never did very much shirtless PE at comprehensive school other than the occasional skins and shirts situation playing basketball or volleyball in the gym and that didn't bother me after going through the entire middle school being told shirt tops of any kind were simply not required for boys.

At my comprehensive school they took showers very seriously and were often threatening us (detentions mostly) if we didn't take one and do it properly. Christine you said people in your job had access all areas, is that true, because there was one time at my comprehensive school when two of our PE teachers were with us after PE as we were changing and the showers were running, with us all coming and going from them, and there were these two other well dressed important looking men (not teachers at our school or anyone's parents) with our two teachers who seemed to have a lot of notes with them. Nobody explained to any of us who they were and none of us thought to ask, but they seemed to be observing what we were doing but said nothing to anyone other than the teachers, and had no apparent concerns over our personal privacy as a group of naked teenage boys showering away after PE. This will be somewhere around about 1978 or 79 time, do you think they could have been these Her Majesty's Inspectors of School's standing with our PE teachers watching us in such a private sitiuation as that, and if so why did nobody tell us if that's what they were, and if they were why would they need to do that in the first place. It's one of those things that has had me wondering for years.

That picture could well have been my own secondary school gym in the late 1960s, apart from the PE teacher's garb - ours generally wore T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Until I was 13 or so, we always wore tops, usually our underwear vests, which almost all kids wore back then, with the occasional round-neck T-shirt. This all changed the year I moved up to Form 3, as it was called in those days, when the powers-that-be decreed that henceforth all PE would be done topless. I don't remember anyone having any issues with this. I certainly didn't, probably because I had spent much of the preceding summer holiday playing out without either a shirt or vest on, along with my similarly-clad mates, and we had all developed quite a liking for topless freedom.
An unintended consequence was that Mum decided that as I wasn't wearing a vest for PE, then perhaps I didn't need to wear one for the rest of the week, a dispensation that I rapidly adopted.
Although PE in the gym was mandatory topless, tops for outside activities were optional, and mandatory for Sports Days.

Hi Emma,

Welcome to the forum.

I got that idea from my own secondary school where the girls' shower block had curtained partitions whereas we boys had the inevitable, universal communal set-up.

I did know that girls had to do communal showers in some schools because I have met one or two women who cited memories of them and how horrible they felt. But it still seems to have been far less common than for boys. Also numerous people on here have stated how at their schools the girls were not even made to shower while it was rigorously enforced for the boys.

'The only difference being that we girls worried about our developing bosoms and boys were all probably worrying about their developing willies, and whatever gender we were, they put us all through that communal horror show just when all our sensitive bits are growing and it's just about the cruellest age you could do that to anyone, girls and boys, when all are highly sensitive to what we looked like and how we are growing. The last thing most of us wanted was to be "displayed".'

I completely agree with you that even if communal showering was a necessary experience it ought to be implemented later, not before sixteen say, and making developing teens do it was just thoughtless cruelty.

I know that the last thing you need during those first few weeks at 'big school' in which you are probably struggling to process it all, is to be forced into a communal shower naked among loads of other boys, most of whom you don't know and several of whom have already started to single you out for bullying, watched over by a glaring, fuming PE teacher who seems like a bigger bully than the lot of them.

'For many girls just being in the PE kit was bad enough.'

I sometimes wonder why the girls at my school didn't seem to mind their PE kit, which was the standard one for the time of brief gym knickers and tight-fitting aertex polo tops. I don't remember any of them ever complaining about their kit and queuing up for their lessons they always seemed to be laughing and giggling like all girls that age. They just seemed to take it in their stride. Maybe it just depends on how much personal confidence you have.

'It doesn't surprise me to learn a lot of boys had problems doing their PE without tops on. At secondary school in the lower years I remember a number of PE lessons we did that involved boys in the school gym, trampolining stands out as one for some reason. I can remember that most, and probably all of them did not wear any top in those PE lessons and I think I remember some looking less than thrilled by it, or perhaps it was just because we were with them.'

I would have utterly hated to be stripped to nothing but a pair of shorts and then shoved into a room with a load of girls who were wearing a lot more at that age. I don't know what these adults were thinking. I was painfully shy with my clothes on!

'When the boys were much older in secondary school I did wonder why they were not allowed to put on tops for PE and went to gym like they went swimming.'

Well, exactly! There was a recent poster here who said they had to take all their PE lessons like that even to the extent of cross-country, and in the summertime, athletics out on the playing fields and even their sports days, in front of the whole school and all the assembled parents. The girls by contrast were allowed to wear this, that and the other, even to the extent of jogging bottoms outside if they chose. This continued even in to the sixth form where he said one boy was actually expelled for refusing the spartan PE dress code. The school actually derailed his education and his future because he refused the white shorts while at the same time they were allowing the girls to dress in a way they felt comfortable with.

I think you are around the same age as me. I can also remember PE lessons in infant school in our underwear, although we were also allowed to keep our vests on. We were also allowed footwear, plimsolls and socks, if we had it, which just seems odd given that they wouldn't allow us PE kit. Me being the slightly odd child I was I felt comfortable with the undies - everybody else was in the same boat, after all - but I hated having to get my feet out, even at that young age. This continued the whole way through until we turned seven and went to junior school, where we were allowed any t-shirt and shorts.

'Nobody I have ever spoken to has ever been able to explain to me why we were doing PE in our pants and knickers in those days and nothing else'

We never received an explanation either and our parents just seemed to accept it without challenge. Perhaps the rationale was that our school had a lot of children from low-income families, which was true, and that they did not want to force our struggling parents to splash out for PE kit items that at that age would very soon have been outgrown. But I do know that in the 1970s teachers had far more autonomy than they do today and definitely took advantage of it. I even remember being forced strip to my pants and nothing else on a school trip to a public park, in front of whichever passer-by, at the age of six. And that is is a true story.

There is a damn good reason that the pendulum swung so far the other way and that today's teachers are so severely micromanaged.

Anyway, Emma, thank you for your contribution. I appreciate it.

A couple of points for you Yours Truly from a middle aged female first time poster.

First, you said these words - "that boys were made to shower publicly in front of each other while our female classmates and sisters were granted privacy doing the same."


Where did you get that idea from? Take it from me that's not at all true. When I was at school in the latter 1970s and early 1980s as a secondary school girl there was no girl privilege compared to the boys. We girls all had to take showers communally in groups of about 30, every one of us totally naked and under the watchful gaze of a lot of various female PE teachers over time who all behaved much the same in that situation. None of them ever let the girls go from PE without entering the communal showers. That all sounds identical to the boys to me.

The only difference being that we girls worried about our developing bosoms and boys were all probably worrying about their developing willies, and whatever gender we were, they put us all through that communal horror show just when all our sensitive bits are growing and it's just about the cruellest age you could do that to anyone, girls and boys, when all are highly sensitive to what we looked like and how we are growing. The last thing most of us wanted was to be "displayed". For many girls just being in the PE kit was bad enough.

It doesn't surprise me to learn a lot of boys had problems doing their PE without tops on. At secondary school in the lower years I remember a number of PE lessons we did that involved boys in the school gym, trampolining stands out as one for some reason. I can remember that most, and probably all of them did not wear any top in those PE lessons and I think I remember some looking less than thrilled by it, or perhaps it was just because we were with them. When the boys were much older in secondary school I did wonder why they were not allowed to put on tops for PE and went to gym like they went swimming.

But perhaps the ultimate in male v female equality of treatment must go all the way back to my first school and some of my earliest PE lessons when our teachers in first school couldn't have had a simpler PE kit for all of us - pants and knickers, that was it. So really it wasn't what you brought to school in order to do PE, it was just a case of what you took off to do it, which in first school, aged 5 to 8 in my case, was everything you were wearing bar the undies. So for a couple of years I was on parity with all the boys and did PE topless like them too. I remember doing this so well.

I remember these very early lessons so well, the teacher always seemed quite detached, just standing there in full normal day wear, giving instructions and watching us follow them. No proper interaction as such. I also remember these early pants and knickers PE lessons for the amount of physical touching girls and boys were told to do with each other, piggy backs, holding and linking bodies, arms and legs and touching of our feet with one another, lots of skin on skin contact. We also used to do a favourite of mine and bring out the coloured hula hoops and wiggle them about and try to keep one up, then two and maybe even three at once. Sometimes it was hard to keep my knickers up doing that if the elastic was a bit loose on a pair and I remember laughing at little boys showing the tops of their bottoms by accident in PE.

Nobody I have ever spoken to has ever been able to explain to me why we were doing PE in our pants and knickers in thsoe days and nothing else, but at least we were all doing much the same, so boys just remember many of us girls did just as much as some of you did.

Comment by: Gary on 6th April 2025 at 18:26

Thank you for your advice, Gary. By the same token, I would remind you that you do not have to read what I write, if it distresses you.

I have explained my reasoning.

To Alan 5th April
Sorry Alan. The staff at my secondary modern and then grammar school were always very straight with us - even if some were very strict and strident in their criticisms.
An example being the dragon of a senior mistress who asked us all at the start of our 6th form what A levels we were taking. My reply of maths (her subject), geography and woodwork was met with the scathing remark, "Well that's the most stupid combination I've heard!" No explanation was asked for. However, after the Christmas of my upper 6th year, when I had been unconditionally accepted into teacher training college to study heavy crafts, she sent for me and gave me a rather expensive spring bow compass still in it's presentation box. Was that an apology for her comment? I certainly wasn't much good in her maths classes.
Going back to our anti-bully gang Alan. As 13 plus transfers to grammar we were OK at every subject except French. One of the timid brigade we had saved was very good at it and spent quite a lot of his lunch times trying to get us up to speed with the subject. Perhaps that was payback.

To Christine Sanderson
Can you tell us why it was legal for female teachers to supervise boys when they were undressed - even at secondary level? And when was this inequality rescinded - if it has been?

To Yours Truly 5th April
I enjoyed my time at primary school and liked my teachers even when they were in a bad mood. The deputy head who taught me as a 9/10 year old was a deadly shot with a board rubber or Gloy glue top if you weren't paying attention. But then he had 50 (yes 50!!!) of us in his class. The next year, when she was trying to get us to pass the 11plus, my teacher had 48 of us to teach. No wonder I failed! The only one who we knew to be cautious of was the Head, who used to sit the girls on his knee for a chat in his office!

Not being unkind to you but it's time to put up or shut up Alan.

Christine gave you some good advice. Heed it. Act on it if you want, but if you choose not to, don't keep coming here going on about the same issue around your school. It's time to call a halt to this. If it's such a big deal you'd act properly and do what Christine suggested. Nothing further is served by continuing the never ending repetition about your teacher on here.

I would fully support you reporting your teacher, I do not support you keeping on here though, nobody here can do a thing about it for you.

Hi Terry,

Wow. That was just blatant.

The girls are covered from their collarbones to their ankles but the boys are completely stripped. Let me guess what happened here. 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 PE kit.

I don't know if any of the boys complained about being made to do PE nearly naked in front of the girls. But who cares? They were just boys, after all. They were made to shut up and get on with it. This is Susan F's anecdote over again but this time put to celluloid.

I mean, really. This is offensive.

As you say, Terry, these two boys seem very shy and I thought as well that that was the exact reason they were selected for this humiliation - because the teacher and film crew knew they would be easy to control and boss around.

At my secondary school we never did mixed PE lessons. Never. And we boys were always allowed/ made to wear tops. I was extremely shy at that age. And that was with my clothes on. What was filmed here would have been my worst nightmare. I can't believe that any school anywhere actually did this for real. I can't believe that any school harboured such callous indifference to the feelings of the young, vulnerable boys in their charge. But I have just viewed the evidence of exactly that.

Hi Susan F,

I was one of those commentators. You sound a bit peeved. Please believe me that it wasn't my intention to offend or irritate you.

I had never before heard the phrase 'full-length-leotard' and have just now googled it.

How can you not see how demeaning and unequal that was? To allow the girls to cover up from neck to wrist to ankle whilst at the same time the boys were made to strip almost naked? If the boys had been allowed leggings and sweatshirts while the girls were specified bikinis, would you still be fine with it?

And yes, of course, both genders experience various inequalities throughout life, but a school should be striving to set the example of fairness to all of its students of either sex.

'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.'

Look. You cannot claim physiological differences as a universal get-out clause if you are serious about equality. It is because of physiological differences that previous generations of men were subjected to the front line and military service. It is because of physiological differences that endless generations of boys were beaten at school even for trivial things while their sisters only received detentions and lines even for their worst misdeeds. It was because of physiological differences, apparently, that boys were made to shower publicly in front of each other while our female classmates and sisters were granted privacy doing the same.


I absolutely agree with you that double standards fall both ways. But as regards adult athletes I kind of both agree and disagree with you. I think women athletes are made to show too much. If you ask me, women athletes are made to wear kit that unnecessarily exposes and sexualises their bodies, with items that barely cover their backsides and look like they can only have been shrink-wrapped onto them. That is a glaring double standard and I always feel vaguely surprised that these young women, intelligent and empowered as they are, never seem to want to protest about it.

But it still feels to me that whenever a female poster on this thread justifies PE kit inequality invoking such platitudes as, 'it's character-building', or 'they need to learn that life isn't fair', it always seems to be insensitivity towards boys that is being justified.

Boys have feelings too and are just as sensitive as girls at the same age. Of course we cover it up under layers of brashness and bravado, which I think makes us seem more hostile to women teachers especially. But teachers should be well-trained and wise and aware enough to be able to see through that veil.

'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 absolutely agree with you. Children need to be made to challenge their boundaries, otherwise they will never learn anything new. But there is a fine line between challenging children and just being plain mean to them or even worse.

Since you mention shorts. I absolutely was uncomfortable wearing shorts in infant school until my sinister teacher forced me to. She did it because she enjoyed tormenting me and saw another opportunity to be cruel. I did indeed learn several lessons, good and bad. I learned that not all adults are to be trusted. I learned what discipline was - you put whatever feelings you had at that moment aside and got on with what was expected of you. Most essentially of all I discovered that sometimes those things you fear just melt away when you face them. And of course I learned to enjoy the sun of those wonderful 1970s summers on my skin, like every other lad my age.

But it was still galling and degrading that when my sister started school two years after me she could wear absolutely anything, including long trousers, whereas I would have earned a sore bottom for doing the same.

'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.'

Just one detail you do not acknowledge - if it was after all safe to wear t-shirts during gymnastics then the boys could have been allowed to do so as well. Especially since several of them had voiced their shyness about being topless in front of the girls.

I absolutely agree with you that children have to be challenged. But please, please, let's have fairness.

Comment by: Terry on 5th April 2025 at 13:06


"Alan so you think there is something very cruel about pursuing very elderly people though the courts but you didn't think there was equally something very cruel about pursuing very young people through the school?......."

I genuinely do believe that children should be better protected, Terry. I don't know if I am alone, but when I left school, I automatically believed that, as the world was changing so much (the use of the cane ended the same year I left - our school applied it to the last day it was legal) that things would get better, but, clearly, teachers who were frustrated found other, rather more subtle means of humiliating the pupils.

Just last night yet another MP for example, embarrassed his party by being charged with child abuse and rape - The greatest hypocrisy is that this man was previously a teacher and a Child Protection Officer.! The mind boggles.

I will say no more about this case, as it is probably sub judice, but just look at any front page of a newspaper this morning if you want to read more.

It seems disgusting to me that not enough background checks are made on people who apply for jobs involving children - clearly things have got no better - perhaps even got worse, in the past forty years. I genuinely believe instead of medically examining these people, as they do, they should have psychiatric examinations instead.

But, as I have said before, I am a pragmatist - even if you got a 90 year old offender into court, if he wasn't genuinely gaga, his defence lawyer would advise him to portray himself in the most pitying light. I know many people get upset with me constantly mentioning a certain "Mr Q", but when the local press finally tracked the vile old coward down last year, he had equipped himself with a walking stick, trying to make him look every day of his 70 plus years. A private prosecution has been bought against him by several of his victims, but if the court finds against him, which is highly likely, all he will pay is a fine. I just know money would not make me feel any better for the five years of misery Roberts put us through. Q shows no sign of remorse, by the way, when the paper caught up with him he answered no questions and just shambled away, I am just surprised none of his former pupils have ever wanted to "discuss" his behaviour towards them. with him. It says more for them than it does him. I would have no qualms about imprisoning a man in his seventies, it is just the over 90s that I have problems with. If you reach that age you are probably in the final decade of your life.

It is amazing how many judges fall for the frail, pathetic old man routine - probably the most famous case being that of a certain Ernest Saunders, found guilty of several financial crimes, who, having been sent to prison, managed to convince a judge he had Alzheimers. That was over thirty years ago - Mr S is still alive and remains the only person to have recovered from that terrible disease. There is something as suspect about the legal system as there is the education system.

What a lot of people don't get is that PE isn't just about physical health but about getting you to gain in confidence. That's the theory anyway but it rarely plays out that way, for some reason the teachers thought making kids more body confident involved packing us in like sardines into the school showers naked or taking the shirts off our backs. In a lot of cases it had completely the opposite effect. I spoke on facebook to an old PE teacher of mine about a year ago and he gave me all that confidence stuff as an excuse for showers and our own school going fully shirtless for gym while I was there in the early eighties. He was hit upon by about eight former male pupils on facebook to account for the things we used to get made to do, including running the school cross country without tops on a lot under him. He hasn't been seen on our facebook group since someone asked if he liked looking at us in the showers!

How does forcing a lot of shy kids to strip naked and shower together make them confident about themselves and their bodies exactly? When I was made to do shirtless PE all it did for me was make me very self conscious and highly critical of myself and what I thought I must look like to others, and I feel I was a perfectly average normal kid. This teacher actually made boys run down the residential streets in summer with no tops on, I even remember him saying something like it was 'for our own good'.

I only started at secondary school in 2002 and our P.E teachers made all of us use the showers then and made clear to us they were mandatory and we were not allowed to refuse to take one unless they told us we didn't have to, which was never! There were six shower pole things made of silver stainless steel and each one provided four blasts of water out of it so you could have four of us to one pole. Quite flashy I thought, but the school was a new build from the mid nineties or so. Most of our P.E classes were about 20 to 24 boys so it was the perfect fit!

The experience of showering like this with a large number of others was interesting to say the least, and they were even less private than more traditional looking old school shower rooms where you just face the wall, we faced each other. The school budget even provided Neutrogena soap sitting on a shelf in the shower area which we had to pick up and they also encouraged us to deodorise afterwards by bringing a roll on anti-perspirant, not a spray. I last took a shower after P.E in school like that in 2006.

The teachers used to really nag sometimes about using the showers after P.E, I think most of us would have skipped them by choice, most people unless committed naturists don't exactly volunteer to get naked with each other very easily do they. I knew I would have to shower at the school before I arrived there as they had told us in a briefing we got, and I had a chat with both my parents about it who told me not to think too much about it because it will be alright and they'd done just the same because everyone did. If you are seeing the exact same people a couple of times a week in the nude beside you under the shower stream I think it all becomes quite normal and even mundane quite quickly after the awkwardness and shock to the system of the first couple of times.

Being frequently told to do bare-chested P.E was also commonplace in our lessons, either with skins and shirts, or the whole class going bare-chested sometimes for reasons unknown to me now but accepted at the time.

The P.E teachers were generally pretty O.K with us all even if they did nag us all to strip and shower or do the whole bare-chested P.E thing quite a lot. Me and my P.E teacher once played tennis outside and both of us were bare-chested, I still don't know why!

Alan so you think there is something very cruel about pursuing very elderly people though the courts but you didn't think there was equally something very cruel about pursuing very young people through the school?

I disagree with you on this. Age should be no barrier to justice, especially with very serious allegations. You are obviously showing your own inherent decency in saying that but I wonder how much decency some of these people showed for others, take your Nazi one for a moment, every one of them whatever age should feel justice. During the war many of these people probably killed many very frail and elderly people over the age of 90, why should they now get a free pass if found and the evidence is there to implement justice against them. I'd feel the same about someone like your teacher and others like him, and like Mark has said, I agree with it, just knowing a chap like that had his collar felt by the law and realised people knew what he was up to would be a form of justice even if there was never a conviction or court appearance and just some questioning. He could go to his maker knowing those old school pupils were onto him and never forgot. That's how I see it.


Nigel, your Miss Pagett seems like a right old bitch doesn't she. That's one for Yours Truly's double standards list. Can you imagine the male teacher who sometimes took you for football standing watching the girls doing anything similar, never in a million years was that happening even as far back as 1972 in any school. It doesn't even surprise me what you say. The girls at school always seemed to be trusted more than the boys for some reason, and they shouldn't have been, I saw more girls in groups taking a sneaky drag at break times than any boys ever did as one example. As others have already stated here a number of times, boys learn at an early age that their own privacy is not as important as the girls, your story illustrates this to perfection.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

You are quite right, secondary schools can be a breeding-ground for rumours. Even as a former cripplingly-shy and socially-challenged young person I can remember hearing plenty.

There was the male teacher I remember my late sister gloatingly telling me was into BDSM. I suppose that all seems so anodyne nowadays, doesn't it? If he was it was his own business. But it did provoke one or two mental images that it took time and effort to get out of my head . . .

I have already mentioned Towel Lady. She might have escaped a disciplinary hearing for that act but she didn't escape the inevitable rumours concerning her sexuality, which were still circulating in my time at that school, some ten years later.

There was a woman teacher who had been a nun before she went into teaching. So the rumour went, she had been kicked out of her order for alcoholism. But the girls, with the finely-honed instinct for cruelty that all females seem to be born with, started a better one - that she had been kicked out for falling pregnant (this woman was, to put it kindly, a plain Jane).

There was the languages teacher who, it was whispered, was obsessed with a South African folk-rock act called The Bundhu Boys and who would without the slightest provocation, bore vulnerable and helpless teenagers to the point of coma with endless tales of their brilliance. Unfortunately I discovered through personal experience that that one was definitely true. Maybe one day I'll be able to talk about it openly.

Alright, that last one was facetious. But it brings me on to a genuine point.

I can remember darker rumours from my primary school. Such as the teacher who was alleged to have broken a boy's arm in a fit of temper. Having spent a year in his class and found myself on the receiving end of his mercurial temper and hard hands for little and nothing at all I can fully believe that that incident really happened.

(I once on Radio 4 heard the observation expressed that angry people experience a spurious sense of their own entitlement. As if, because they have anger, they are entitled to lose their temper and behave however they feel like doing in the moment. I certainly witnessed that from this man.)

If this man really got away with an act of such grave assault against a primary-age child he can only have achieved it with the active collaboration of our headmaster. Which was the man who was rumoured once to have strapped a boy's bare bottom.

Our primary headmaster was a large man, tall and bordering on obese. He always seemed to be dark red in colour, what I can still remember as being termed as a choleric temperament. There was always the impression of him that he was stuffed up with anger, which might have spilled over at the slightest opportunity. Critically, I cannot cite a single memory if him making any effort whatsoever, not one single time, to suppress the aura of menace he always seemed to project, and this is a grievous thing, in my opinion anyway, for a man who spent his professional life working with young children. My little sister only told me some years back how he once rapped his knuckles on her forehead because he caught her not paying attention in assembly. He was just a bully.

I once was sent to him. As shy and timid as I was I still ended up receiving the ultimate sanction. I think it was because my academic performance had slipped.

He made me come around to stand beside him at his side of the desk. He then proceeded to berate and belittle me for I can't remember how long. All the while I was there beside him I could feel his huge hand, ever so gently, slapping my backside, while he fulminated at me, again and again and again. The implied menace could not have been more unmistakable.

This being 1981 instead of 1971 he wasn't able to draw out his cane and settle it that way. But I was left with the unmistakable impression that that was exactly the way he would have preferred to deal with a troubled child.

Basically my primary headmaster was as twisted and bullying as my class teacher. My question to you, Christine, is, what was your practice for flagging up abuse when you suspected that the head teacher was corrupt and untrustworthy?

Comment by: Mark on 4th April 2025 at 22:05



".....Would you ever consider her suggestions Alan, such as formally reporting the things you write about on here. As I see it, you can keep writing on here about your school and certain teachers and your view of them and what they did but it won't take things any further. But you could take Christine's suggestion and think about it and do something and see what comes of it. If you don't do anything you guarantee failure, but if you try you may just succeed in some small way......


"I suspect your teacher had many victims during his time teaching and if there is still a chance he is alive and kicking I'd want him to face the music even if it was just to be questioned and put the fear of god into him and make his past come back to haunt him........"


That is a very fair and good question, Mark. If Roberts is still alive he would now be well into his nineties, and I think there is something very cruel about pursuing very elderly people though the courts. The pragmatist in me tells me, even IF he were alive and IF a case were bought against him he would be treated very leniently. and the shock might kill him, and stupid though it might sound, I wouldn't want another man's death of my conscience. Though what they did was in excusable and repulsive, it always makes me queasy to see, for example, elderly Nazi's go through the court system. I remember a year or two ago an old man of 98 was convicted. I frankly think that when a man or woman attains 90 they should not be prosecuted. To see old relics in the dock , many of them no longer in full possession of their faculties, is abhorrent. That is revenge, not justice. I wouldn't want to see a 90 something Roberts locked up. Does that sound contradictory?. Probably - but it would make me as big a bully as he was, and though I can be verbally aggressive. I am not by nature a vindictive man. Believe me, if the internet had been around in the late 80s or early 90s, I would have done something then. In fact, I could kick myself because in the old days of Friends Reunited I do remember one man actually made similar complaints about Roberts,(he didn't name him but as we only had one P.E. teacher, it was obvious who he meant) but sadly the site got taken down and nothing remains. I think our school only garnered about four references, mainly about the decrepitude of the building, not the equally decrepit staff. I only saw it shortly before the site just suddenly packed up and became unavailable. The other punishment seems to be a fine, and I wouldn't want money - it is like those people who sue well known personalities - are they suggesting that a six figure sum will take away the misery and anxiety they went through?. Not in my book. You can't put a price on that sort of thing, and to take money seems to suggest you have a price at which the unacceptable becomes acceptable.

I genuinely believe though, that teachers caught abusing their "power" ought to be dealt with in the most severe way possible. It seems inexcusable that a certain teacher, who I have named before and will not name again, served 22 months for his first offence, and a decade or more later caught at it again was then given a suspended sentence. the man now is 74 and he was 54 at the time of his second conviction, a five year term of imprisonment might have taught him the error of his ways, and he was still young enough to face the full vigour of prison life . But - let's face it - he got away with it. That should never be allowed to happen.

I wish there had been a few Eric's around at my school - I wonder what he would have done about our lecherous old bugger?.

These posts on here are getting longer and longer and better and better.

Nice one Christine!

We had a horrible school shower bully at my comprehenive school in my class going all the way back to 1980 now. I've never forgotten this rather timid, slightly built young lad we had in our class we called Milky Bar, although his name was Rupert, a somewhat posh name for a boy at our school, there were no other Rupert's about. His name and his looks stood out. He was absolutely fine as someone to know and friendly but I always wished he had more confidence to stand up for himself.

I remember he used to wear his round national health style spectacles in the school shower sometimes and this looked funny as he would try to avoid getting his head wet. The shower bully in our class nicked them off him one day while we showered. Our teacher didn't mind him wearing them in there. The bully took them and threw them down the line of boys and they fell to the floor beneath all our feet and we tried not to tread on them and break them. He was one of those nasty ones who then dared anyone to pick them up and hand them back, so we just moved aside and Rupert got down and picked them back up. He was then kicked in the backside by the bully and fell forward. The teacher wasn't looking and didn't seem to hear over the sound of fast running water. The most serious attack occurred with this horrid bully another time after that, he was a bully who broke the boundaries others would never cross, even normal silly bullying boys you can get. Rupert had been getting some stick from the shower bully over what he looked like and while the teacher was absenting himself he took hold of Rupert between the legs, holding his balls and penis and didn't let go. The lad was screaming in pain and this horrible bully was laughing and looking around for everyone else to laugh along with him too, and I'm afraid many did. I was so disgusted, because Rupert was a nice lad and alright by me, so I punched him straight in the chest and all of a sudden the laughter turned to cheers on me for doing it and he ran out, the shower bully that is. He had bullied other boys too, often in the showers when a teacher wasn't about. After I'd hit him he went very quiet and never mucked about like that again and didn't dare even look at me, I was actually bigger than him anyway. So I relate to the story Eric told quite strongly. The moral is always stand up to bullies, they often have glass jaws, and it's good to look out for others too.