Burnley Grammar School

I totally agree with Adam's post on 21 Mar 2025 17.47. I was a shy kid and not keen at first either with shirtless pe in just shorts (shorter than in the photo) & pumps or naked showers. Seeing other boys just getting on with it made me realise we were all in the same boat and that was the uniform for pe so I had to get used to it. We did have some mixed lessons with the girls and that felt slightly awkward at first, but we also had swimming lessons together anyway. I thought the other boys always seemed more confident than me & had better bodies. I think they probably had the same feelings. I did enjoy the freedom of wearing so little especially outside in the summer . The pe teachers we had were strict, but I think they were more concerned with safety more than anything else. Corporal punishment was around at that time. I didn't experience any of Alan's issues, I think he was unlucky. I enjoyed my time at school. I was at a mixed grammar school 1961-66

Alan, whilst I somewhat agree with the thrust of your argument with Adam, the trouble is that at the ages we are talking on this forum, very many impressionable youngsters will and do believe the idealistic sights they see in magazines and on influencer YT channels, pornography and TV.

If you ever stumble across any of those superficial airhead style TV shows on ITV like Love Island, the men are always getting shirtless, probably the producer insists on it, and they all have gym honed torsos that look nothing like the normal regular guys their age you would pick off the street, who still have good and healthy looking bodies, but not with all the definition and all that, plus fake tans. When you see shows like naked attraction, the bodies seem more varied and some are quite normal but the majority seem to be all inked up, but most people are not inked up like Beckham, or have any at all, but media promotes this idea.

Comment by: Adam on 21st March 2025 at 17:47



"Unwanted maybe by some, but even so, I think it is an important part of learning and developing, to be naked with others, to become accustomed to it and not hideaway prudishly, and also to understand that everybody is different, otherwise the thinking would be only airbrushed models are normal and body dysmorphia will become a problem even more, being openly naked does lead to a more friendly cameraderie and the want to be fit too....."

I'm sorry, Adam - I have heard some fairly weak arguments for enforced showers and bare chested P.E. in my time, especially on this site, but this takes the blue ribbon for all time.

Do we really need to get naked to prove that the painted and powdered models we see in adverts. are typical of most men?. I remember when the footballer David Beckham, not satisfied with the enormous salary he got from Manchester United, modelled undercrackers for pin money, and then enjoyed displaying all his tattoos that he had defaced himself with. Some people are natural exhibitionists, and good luck to them if that gives them some sort of weird satisfaction. You could make the same argument for nudity with girls, in glamour magazines, just so they can prove that not every woman has a 40" bust and staples down their middles.Surely we all know that?.

Anyone who believes that models, and advertising in general, in any way reflect real life must be very naive.

Meanwhile, why should those who dislike disporting themselves naked - especially when you have a teacher gawping at you - be forced into doing something against their will, just to prove a point that doesn't need making in the first place?

Unwanted maybe by some, but even so, I think it is an important part of learning and developing, to be naked with others, to become accustomed to it and not hideaway prudishly, and also to understand that everybody is different, otherwise the thinking would be only airbrushed models are normal and body dysmorphia will become a problem even more, being openly naked does lead to a more friendly cameraderie and the want to be fit too.

It was compulsory to never wear tops and be barechested in my secondary school gym where being barefoot and no flashy trainers was also the rule, and fully naked with the whole class in the compulsory showers. It may seem hard to some modern kids but was it really so bad? Despite all the close up nudity of our own and others we all were made to confront by our gym teachers and barechested lessons I don't remember very much open and obvious discrimination about what we all looked like in our various states at that age, although it was obvious we were all looking at each other and taking it all in.

I am certainly glad that during my time at school in the 1970s -1980s we had open changing rooms and showers.

At games lessons at my secondary school (in the 1970s), the changing room (an outide hut building) had low benches with coat hooks at eye level above them, all boys got changed together. I was very shy in those days and didn't much like being naked in front of others but like everyone else in those classes we just knew it had to be done.

The showers were in a tiled room about 10' by 8' with doorways (but no doors) at either end of one of the long walls. The short walls each had three shower heads, I think they were all controlled from one stopcock so would all be on or all off at the same time. So there would be a queue of boys, all naked, waiting for a turn at a shower head. We were made to wait naked for our turn without holding a towel against us. I still recall the awkwardness of how to stand there naked with no clothes on and where to put my hands/arms. The last thing you wanted to do was make it obvious you were sticking hands over your exposed genitals, so I think I just folded my arms defensively.

On occasions, the head teacher himself would take a games lesson if there was nobody else available. He was keen on what we used to call 'physical jerks' so a session with him would often be 30-40 minutes of aerobic exercise in the gym. He was strict about making sure that boys were not wearing underpants under their shorts. The regular games teachers didn't care about this and we wore our underpants with those.

He had a curious approach to showering that I will never forget. As each batch of six boys entered the shower he would instruct them to stand under the shower head, facing the wall for 30 seconds and then turn and spend another 30 seconds with back to the wall, full frontal in his view. The next instruction was most bizarre! He would tell the boys to stand in the middle of the shower room - away from the water and jump up and down for 10 seconds, legs apart and waving arms! I presume this was to shake off excess water before drying. On reflection, jumping on a wet soapy tiled floor, was inviting accidents to happen and there were slips ups. None of us really needed the head teacher to tell us how to use a shower even if not many of us had one at home.

If he took the boys rugby lesson and we were especially muddy he would insist that everyone must wash our hair if we'd been throwing each other on the ground. There was always a bottle of shampoo hanging about for this purpose and we'd have to line up naked, hold our hand out and be given a dab on the palm of our hand and use it. We already had to use soap during our shower anyway. I remember the head teacher saying he would not be sending any of us back home to our parents looking worse than when we had arrived at school that morning.

Games lessons and gym in PE at my school were ridiculously bare chest heavy in terms of amount like that we did. Most gym was done this way and there was no choice about it, much the same way there was never any choice about taking showers under the close watchful eye of the teacher and even the head teacher and his instructions on how to do it.

I was one of those boys who instantly felt a sense of awkwardness the moment I revealed a bare torso for PE and took my top off. I used to think I was the only boy in games who ever felt like that. I always had this feeling of being completely at the mercy and whims of my games teachers and my head teacher and often feeling quite unsettled by some of it, like jumping up and down to dry. We did have towels with us, or the head teacher insisting when he took our games class that all we required was our shorts and nothing else, not even our pants, as if we were swimming, meaning we had to be naked to change for games while he watched us.

Dennis, I quite agree with you. On the last line, if you've seen the film Kes which was out when I was starting comprehensive school (1970) you've basically seen my own PE lessons and the kind of teacher I often had, right down to the relcutant lad pretending he's showered so he doesn't have to because he doesn't like doing so, we had a few of those types with mandatory communal showering required for the whole PE class at the same time. Our PE teacher would also frequently send boys to the headmaster to be given corporal punishment, depending on what you'd done it was either the full cane bent over a couple of times or a smaller one or leather belt across both hands.

I was in a group of troublemakers in my day who got sent to the headmaster for mucking about, our pE teacher just packed us straight off to him as we were and we waited to see what the headmaster would do with us, in my case it was immediate belt across my hands which was very painful indeed and stung furiously. The three of us were in his office as we'd turned out for the school gym, white shorts, nothing on our feet at all and a bare chest, our usual gym look. Standing in the heads officed like that was punishment in itself.

I once beat the teacher to the ground in a really great tackle during a rugby practice and he got up and slapped me across the face like a woman does to a man, just for showing him up, then he congratulated me on doing well all the same.

Comment by: Tony on 17th March 2025 at 18:58

Good lord that boy is too perfect. No thirteen year old should be that level headed and mature even if he's the most sensible boy in the class. Did he hit puberty at 8 or something. He has the good looks, the nice body, a great personality, is sensible, looks intelligent, has great parents, a mum who makes all his food, a dad who shares his own interests, a nice home, makes you sick doesn't it! Good luck to him. Ironically there's a good chance he might never have done any shirtless PE at school. I watched a few of his other George Lifts videos, everyone struggles to believe he's only 13, even a group of twenty somethings down a gym when he told them he was born in 2011. He'd easily pass for 25.

His PE teacher might as well tell him to not bother with his school gym lessons and go and do his own thing, there's nothing his PE teacher can teach this boy, he can teach his own PE teacher just about everything instead. Quite a remarkable collection of videos on his YT Channel, a pleasure to watch someone from the young generation so grounded so young.

Comment by: Dennis Cruickshank on 18th March 2025 at 23:42
Regards you comment Michael on 16th March.

"Boys should all face shirtless gyms, it does them good, most of them...... and few boys dare to tease even in school showers........."

You sure about that, Dennis?.Any evidence to back it up?

Regards you comment Michael on 16th March.

Boys should all face shirtless gyms, it does them good, most of them. Starting to do things you don't like when young in life is a good grounding. Boys don't tend to tease each other about their shirtless bodies anyway, and few boys dare to tease even in school showers. Everyone does the same, many are all thinking the same in these situations. I was also quite anxious by all these things when I first did them but the very tough approach my school had to boys at our school which made us all go shirtless in and out three days a week of PE and proper full showers we were not allowed to make excuses to avoid soon made me overcome anxious feelings because I had no choice about it. Early 1970's in my case, school PE was really quite hard and rough at times.

That kid looks a lot older than 13 to me. He seems level headed but shouldn't get too carried away with all that, whatever age he is. I wouldn't recommend he takes creatine under the age of 18.

Imagine being this boy's PE teachers at school.

It says he's only 13! He looks and sounds 18 to 20 to me. I have never seen a 13 year old with a body like that, or the maturity this chap seems to have. He's clearly very comfortable in his own skin, or is he? Something about a 13 year old being this obsessed feels premature. Nice lad though. He'd give every other lad in his class a real inferiority complex and even his gym teacher I should think.

A typical school day - 13 year old bodybuilder.

https://youtu.be/__bCDd9guyA?si=fSwCTcTSnwutCuqy

To all the men who want to see boys and girls taking mixed showers, can I just remind you that you would have to sell the idea to fathers who will be repulsed by the idea of their little girls being exposed to such indignities and will take them out of school, and mums who will be equally angry about subjecting their little boys to that sort of treatment.

I shudder to think what devout Muslims would make of it - and they have the ear of the present government.

Dream on, David and co!

Comment by: Ex-Navy David Turkington on 14th March 2025 at 22:56
'When in Stockholm, Sweden, some years ago, I switched on my hotel TV and came across a documentary type show of school kids of both boys and girls, shown fully nude front and back, intermingled and sharing the very same open plan communal showers and change rooms for PE. I asked one of the Swedish engineers on the job I was on at the time for an explanation and was told that it was the government mandated response to reduce the country's high sex crime rate. When children of both sexes became accustomed to such intermingling from an early age, physiological differences became no big deal as it yet largely remains in our own Western culture. There was full acceptance across the sexes, sexual inequality vanished in every aspect of life, and there was a sharp decline of the former sex crime rate with the new generations.'




What an interesting observation David.

Based on what you've said above and in light of recent media reporting perhaps we should be forcing all muslims in this country to gender share communal showers at school from a young age if it will have a later affect on the sex crime rate, so instead of making the women and girls all cover up and hide behind masks we should be going completely the other way and laying it all out there, no hiding place for anyone.

I'm not trying to be flippant here, it really is a serious point.

It's hard to know what I would have made of being introduced to a mixed showers regime at say the age of 7 or 8 at school. Probably easy acceptance at that age I suppose. If forcing such a regime on children at school after a simple PE class at that age and above was really proven to make a major difference to the rate of sexual crime in this country then I would approve of that.

Aren't the Japanese a nation with very low sex crime rates and a lot of mixed and adult nudity? There may be something in this.

I'd like to come at the whole enforcement of shirtless PE and showering on uncomfortable schoolboys from a different angle.

I was a very unconfident child and often reticent to take part in things with groups of others, especially boys my own age. I had a quite strong fear about not having a top on or anyone making me do that and always avoided any situation as a child where this might happen. Luckily it didn't....then I hit secondary school when I was 12 and that was the age I felt my childhood actually ended, but in both good and bad ways.

I was churning myself stupid inside at the thought the PE teacher would make me shower at school, really badly. I remember all kinds of mad rumours that went around about things that would happen in them. But I was equally bothered about just taking my shirt off and going shirtless in the PE, and my 1970's comp made me do this and I was oh so reluctant.

But a funny thing happened to me that I never expected. They forced me into removing my shirt for PE with the other boys and then taking everything off to shower and quite fast, within maybe a month I not only accepted this but seemed to no longer feel any concern about it, and soon after that I realised that I was becoming a much more confident person, especially in shirtless gym PE we were doing, and my confidemce seemed to keep growing to the point I no longer feared going shirtless but almost preferred it, I couldn't believe the change in me.

I remember saying to myself at the time that if I could overcome that deep feeling and lack of confidence about myself and the anxiety it had produced then I could overcome just about anything.

Anyone who has a bare chest phobia or anxiety around others should put themselves in that situation and see if they too can surprise themselves. I would never have believed the change in me that being forced to do shirtless PE and to naked shower at school gave me.

It's true that the only thing to fear is fear itself. This was one of my own examples of this.

Comment by: Ex-Navy David Turkington on 14th March
It’s such a balanced and healthier attitude that the Scandinavians have, or perhaps had, regarding dealing with children. I frequently saw much the same during documentary film studies of the world years ago at uni. I also spent a lot of time in Germany as a kid and they certainly had a better attitude there too, which didn’t routinely disregard boys compared to how they treated girls, which many still seem to think is the correct way to go about things here. Much more of an understanding of how things really ought to be for a healthier minded society.

Mark on 14th March 2025
I certainly learnt from experience during my childhood that some females will take advantage of situations they feel completely comfortable in.

Being naked in the boys' changing rooms / showers became a regular part of school life. That was not a problem after a while, we had to accept the compulsion to do it and there was little point creating a fuss about it. All of us, myself included went through that process well over 100 times a year for (in my case) 7 years, from the age of 9 (middle school) and then 12 (comprehensive school) ending at 16. That's a lot of communal showers, 700, which amounts to a lot of time too even if they were just a couple of minutes and out. That amounts to a full 24 hour whole day of my life in the school communal showers mingling naked side by side my class!! At comprehensive we were actually told 4 minutes for a shower so it could be double that.

One thing I do know is that they went far harder on the boys at school over the demand to make us shower than they did the girls who could get away with not taking them at all.

I remember my first ever shirtless PE lesson being dropped on me at comprehensive school without any warning at all. Simply a teacher who taught his PE that way and always refused to let any of us wear t-shirts in his PE lesson while we were in what he called 'his' gym. Another teacher was a bit more flexible, but even so we spent a lot of time whipping our tops on and off even with him. I never liked having to file down the school corridor to the gym with my shirt off because it was a long walk and we always went past somebody else.

Comment by: Ex-Navy David Turkington on 14th March 2025 at 22:56


David, you chose to go into the Navy, and presumably had some idea of what you were letting yourself in for. All of us at 11 were forced to go to school. I think the bathroom arrangements you had to contend with sounds disgusting.

I was an only child - there were/are a lot of disadvantages, but one bonus was that you got privacy, which to me was paramount.

Hi Yours Truly.

I thought you might like a quick couple of minute read of this American article and website, titled - The Double Standard of Physical Education in Schools.

https://www.ablineducation.com/post/the-double-standard-of-physical-education-in-schools

Hi Mark,

'I know others don't like going down this road too much and I agree but it's worth a quick mention to notice that it's not always men who can't be trusted, women sometimes do the same and this woman has been convicted today for a couple of years for abusing a schoolboy and actually having full sex with him last year at his boys school in Northern Ireland. She has been described as a 'cold calculating child predator'. '

This is why I keep pressing for awareness of the double standard, though other posters here seem to think I'm just harping on. The double standard has far more serious and far-reaching consequences than boys being treated with casual disregard on a daily basis. The fact that she actually tried to counter-accuse the boy just goes to show her absolute lack of penitence.

I absolutely agree that a man that committed the same offence wouldn't have been treated so leniently. It prompts the question: when the law deliberately turns its back on their issue where is a concerned parent to go?

I'm surprised being bare chested or naked showering is the big issue it gets made to be now in the UK. Are we returning to a new Victorian Age? How does an entire class of about fifteen or twenty or so boys change clothes for a PE class, then go in the showers and change back at the end of the class period (assuming the other half class of girls are separately doing the same)? In Durham where I attended school, such a PE class ran from first to fifth year at my big school after I left primary, where I'd also been taking part in bare chested PE whenever it suited them too.

I was not initially the most confident at such things as a youngster but only by joining up and meeting challenges head on did I end up removing completely all these hang ups and come to realise how futile they are to hold onto.

What do people think life in the military is like, where dozens of guys simultaneously use the shower rooms. In Navy basic, there were no doors on the line of toilet stalls, you were watched emptying your guts with all the smells and sounds that go with it, openly urinating with each other as well. Up at 6am and twenty minutes for what was referred to as a "shit, shower and a shave". Ditto for shipboard life, literally tripping over each other and having various random nuts and d*cks in your face. (I've served on an aircraft carrier). One for Felicity's son to think about, good luck to him with his future ambition, it will be the making of him if he succeeds. The only thing we didn't actually do in the navy was the PT bare chested like school, we were strictly in proper clean white vests or close fitting T-shirts with no loose fabric.

When in Stockholm, Sweden, some years ago, I switched on my hotel TV and came across a documentary type show of school kids of both boys and girls, shown fully nude front and back, intermingled and sharing the very same open plan communal showers and change rooms for PE. I asked one of the Swedish engineers on the job I was on at the time for an explanation and was told that it was the government mandated response to reduce the country's high sex crime rate. When children of both sexes became accustomed to such intermingling from an early age, physiological differences became no big deal as it yet largely remains in our own Western culture. There was full acceptance across the sexes, sexual inequality vanished in every aspect of life, and there was a sharp decline of the former sex crime rate with the new generations.

I'd suggest everyone does a long stretch of bare chested PE from an early age and all schools should require showering, and the Swedish model may sound un-British but aren't some things worth a look at for the greater good of all in society in the longer term? Some contributors on these pages have spoken of double standards on behaviour and schooling on the male/female divide but what the Swedish example suggests is the perfect answer to this and a "one standard" for all from a young age onwards.

Felicity, in your post you passed comment on shirtless PE being old fashioned. I often wonder why some people think of it like that, or just because something is old fashioned means it can't be current too. When I was growing up I always remember seeing lots of boys playing in the streets on long summer afternoons and evenings shirtless. It does seem to me that you don't see it as much as you used to although when we have had the really hot weather it happens a lot still. One thing that you do see now more than ever is men and bare legs though with shorts on all through the winter, even much older men. I rarely saw my PE teachers knees, they were always wearing long tracksuit jogging bottoms in navy blue with white stripes down the leg, and I never recall seeing any of my own PE teachers shirtless like our own gym rules were, but this was only because our teacher decided it, it certainly wasn't down to set school rules.

Peter W. I'm curious was there ever a reason given for stripping off halfway during cross country. I remember those very thin vests and our teachers disdain for them. We had a daily PE lessons. Indoors everyone was barechested throughout my time while the vests were supposed to be for outdoor use.
We soon discovered outdoors lessons were performed in teams of skins and vests or with everyone barechested dependant on the teachers wishes regardless of time of year or conditions. Cross country and athletics were barechested with no exceptions.

This one's for Alan.

I know others don't like going down this road too much and I agree but it's worth a quick mention to notice that it's not always men who can't be trusted, women sometimes do the same and this woman has been convicted today for a couple of years for abusing a schoolboy and actually having full sex with him last year at his boys school in Northern Ireland. She has been described as a 'cold calculating child predator'.

It says here that there is a stigma attached to boys reporting women like this. I couldn't help feel she got off very lightly and that if this had been a man committing the same abusive breach of trust and offences against the boy, or a female pupil, then he'd be looking at five or ten years instead of two. Therefore do we not have a double standard here too. She has been put on the offenders register for life. In this case she tried to turn the tables on her victim by accusing him of assaulting her. It's not clear what this woman taught except one to one hands on biology and sex education to favoured pupils she liked.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjd9vv2nylo

I was packed off to a boarding school in the late sixties by my highly ambitious parents who were determined to give me what they never had themselves. Although not an unhappy experience I did not really enjoy it much either and sometimes I found the physical education to be a nightmare of extreme competitiveness when I was just happy to take part and get my body moving and heart rate up a bit.

Shirtless PE was very frequent and it was a permanent feature of any gym based lessons where any notion of boys in tops was a non starter and the mandate never changed on that in my time.

We used to run cross country in small thin vests all year. I've no idea how long the cross country was but I think 7 miles wouldn't be a bad estimate, they were very long and winding and up and downhill in all weather. There was a halfway point landmark on our normal cross country run and we would reach it and take a few moments breather as a group for everyone to catch up before setting off again and nearly always we would then be told to pull our vests over our heads, tuck them into our shorts and do the second half bare chests. You might call it a skins and shirts run. I always got the impression that there were a decent amount of confident boys at school who rather liked to be able to run stripped off like that showing off their growing physical attributes.

Our school had something known as 'PE Drill' once a month where everyone came out of school in shorts and trainers/plimsolls as we called them then, all bare chests, except teachers stayed in vests, and upwards of 300 boys would do a form of mass calisthenics for half an hour. It was quite something to see and take part in. I remember wjhen I took part in these things feeling less like an individual with the sameness it made us all.

But when it comes to taking your kit off for such things, no boys are meant to be ashamed or reluctant to do so are they, we are conditioned from a quite young age that as young, or even old males that our bodies can be displayed to anyone at any moment and we should accept and embrace that openly and with enthusiasm and much of this happens to us at school.

I remember having a conversation with my own father soon after he packed me off to boarding school and speaking of the physical education I was getting there and he told me it sounded like I was getting given it tougher there than he had as a rookie national service recruit not long after the war.

During the course of an average week at school in the 1980's I would regular as clockwork have three communal nudity showers. Two of these were after both my usual PE lessons, the gym and outside games, but the other one was on the day I had to show up after school hours for football practice. The PE teacher who always took us for practice would never let us just go home at the end even if someone's parent was waiting at the gates or with a car pick up. He always said nobody was going home to their parents without a proper shower so they went home clean. My dad used to get fed up waiting for me, but without the pressure of time constraints in the schoolday timetable our football practice teacher made us shower for longer and all over with school issue soap and if we wanted it some shampoo.

I'm of an age that remembers the Fit and Healthy school programme and remember watching many of those in that series including the one with the boys in the showers. I think a lot of people who saw it at the time will have remembered it and one or two others. I think the boys who took part in the changing room showers deserve a medal for bravery for doing that. It's not so much that their winkles were out all over the place in front of the lens but that all their faces were easily identifiable as well at the same time. I wonder if the school benefitted from the endless repeat fees on that, although the boys deserved to.

Comment by: James on 12th March 2025 at 04:11
Does this bring back any memories of anyone's school cross country?
https://youtu.be/iWC_-evE8qs?si=pNWYJrw7q2k8FaNq



It does James. That looks like many school cross country runs I endured in my time in the 70's at a slightly younger age, made to go out without my shirt on and just keep on running with a teacher up the front of us and another at the rear of us forever blasting the slower boys to keep up. We ran the school cross country like we were in the school gym, completely and utterly shirtless the whole class group. We would often get wet through rain or just sweat until our hair was dripping too. I remember boys that looked completely out of shape and finding it very hard. Sometimes when we got back from the cross country the less fit boys could barely manage to stand up straight to shower the sweat and grime off, some of us used to sit on the floor of the showers at school and just rest while the water cascaded over us. We were actually allowed to do that.

The difference between us and these boys is they look like they were sort of enjoying it while many of us were not. It was like a school boot camp existence doing the cross country shirtless like that until you almost dropped through exhaustion.

Comment by: Terry on 12th March 2025 at 15:01



Totally agree, Terry. I think the point is you can get men and women who "only" went to a state school who are just as intelligent and hard working as those who aim higher (or were aimed higher). Recent PM's of both parties have proved that just because you went to Oxbridge and got a title, it doesn't give you extra wisdom or even commonsense.



Comment by: Yours Truly on 12th March 2025 at 09:55




"Hi Alan,

I am rather surprised to hear that in 2025 upmarket schools are marketing themselves as offering 'traditional values in a traditional setting'. How traditional are we talking about here? They can't cane kids anymore so it can only be so traditional. Is it Jimmy Edwards era traditional? Or Tucker Jenkins era Grange Hill traditional? Both are traditions. My primary school was big on 'traditional values' (no caning though) back in the 1970s in a working-class area, so more fool people who are willing to fork out for this pantomime nonsense....."

One of our two "traditional" teachers loved the cane and used it until the last day it was legal to do so, the other one - well let's not go there again!.

As regards our P.M - he got free access to Reigate(?) Grammar School, something denied to others these days, and I think some of his recent behaviour shows he has no conception of what life is like for the elderly and the poor. I would also refer you to the horrible way he ingratiated himself with Mr. Trump a couple of weeks back..much they way he did with Blair and Mandelson. A "good education" doesn't necessarily equate to compassion and empathy, and plain old hard work.

I understand, to some degree why pushy parents want their children to go to such establishments, but it is more about fulfilling their desires than that of the sons or daughters. As I said earlier when I was eleven I wanted to be a bus driver. That was two years or so before I discovered the trumpet - goodbye to bus driving. I was a much better brassman than I would have been a busman. We all change a lot in our teens, and the lad concerned might well have had enough of "traditional discipline" when he gets to 17 or 18. Who knows?

It is sad that the school system is so two tier that people find it necessary to pay thousands of pounds for slightly better education - possibly. I should say a good well motivated state school teacher was the equal of a grammar school teacher. As I have never been in a David Lloyd gymnasium, I can't comment, but for children who are nervous or even scared, they will be just as scared in a grammar school gym, as they would be in the one at the local comprehensive - but these little baubles seem to play a good part in encouraging people to part with their money. A case of preferring the box to the chocolates.

I can honestly say I would have loathed any school I had been forced to attend, but at least mine lacked pretension.

Nothing perpetuates and reinforces the class system in this country more than the education system and it does that to children from an early age. I think it is perfectly fair to say that many people, no matter how brilliant they might be, are condemned to a certain life trajectory even while still in the womb.

I don't know who these people are who try to convince themselves that this is a less class ridden country nowadays, and as Starmer has been mentioned by a couple of you he was even faced with the two teir Keir comment in his face today by the opposition over criminal justice but as usual pretended we are all equal. Yes, some are more equal than others to coin the cliche.

Hi Alan,

I am rather surprised to hear that in 2025 upmarket schools are marketing themselves as offering 'traditional values in a traditional setting'. How traditional are we talking about here? They can't cane kids anymore so it can only be so traditional. Is it Jimmy Edwards era traditional? Or Tucker Jenkins era Grange Hill traditional? Both are traditions. My primary school was big on 'traditional values' (no caning though) back in the 1970s in a working-class area, so more fool people who are willing to fork out for this pantomime nonsense.

'Felicity - have you asked the person most intimately concerned with all this "traditional values" jazz his opinion? - that is your son. If he doesn't have a problem with it, well and good, but if he does.....'

You have hit the nail on the head. At the end of the day the final decision should be their son's since he is going to be the one having his character shaped by his experiences in this school.

'I will say no more than to remind you that our current Prime Minister is the product of one of those selective grammar schools (the only difference being his parents got it for nothing and you will be paying for it). Let's just say that when I look at him, I don't feel deprived or jealous.'

Do you mean 'Sir' Keir Starmer, who graduated from the universities of Leeds and Oxford, qualified to the bar and was previously the Attorney General before becoming prime minister?

That is why parents are falling over themselves to get their children into these schools. You have answered you own question there. If he had gone to Bash St Comprehensive he might have ended up just plain Keir, with his name on a badge on his B&Q uniform shirt. The UK school system is nowadays even more feudalised than when I was a schoolboy forty years ago and it all comes down to the way in which money is (mis-)allocated. Grammar schools were always given far more state subsidy than comprehensive and secondary modern schools.

'Academy' is a confectionary term for what everybody understands was previously a failing school. Comprehensive schools are now referred to as 'high' schools because the term 'comprehensive has become so degraded after decades of slandering from our lovely right-wing media. Every concerned parent with the means is tripping over their own feet to get their children into grammar or private schools.

In this bankrupt educational climate you can hardly blame Felicity, or any other parent, for wanting their son or daughter to get a place at one of the 'better' schools. And I state this as someone who thinks that a truly good, enabling education is a universal right and that the concept of good education being only for those who can afford it is an atrocity and a criminal offence.

Comment by: Felicity on 11th March 2025 at 15:45


"Thanks for the reply. The school is excellent and not how you describe it, when we went there we were treated very well, even getting given tea and biscuits for the three of us. He will definitely come out of equiped for the times we now live in, I am in no doubt about that, it's very modern, I think you may have taken the "traditional values and setting" too literally. It's not a 1950s time capsule with wooden desks and masters in black capes.

He's quite active and likes all sports and will get to do all the ones he likes and to specialise, but he's going there for the academic first and foremost.

He is not concerned by the "no tops rule for PE" or even the showering. We were shown this area and it looked more like going into a David Lloyd Leisure Club....."


Felicity it seems to me you have no problem at all as your son is content with the schools arrangements, and if he is going to join the RN he will have to get used to the lack of privacy (when I was eleven I wanted to be a bus driver!)

I would just make the point that the grammar school is a business, and they are asking you to pay thousands of pounds a year for something that you could get elsewhere for practically nothing - therefore the Crown Derby and green tea and biscuits was merely PR - they would hardly give you three chipped mugs with a Lidl own brand teabag in each. It seems an expensive way to get a Rich Tea. I just hope that their "traditional values" are not the traditional values a couple of my teachers used to practice, but good luck to your son anyway.