Burnley Grammar School

Mel, I am absolutely fine with bare chest PE going on anywhere if anyone wants to do it that way, they should feel free and able to do it that way, I have not the slightest problem with that at all, all well and good if the entire school wants it, but don't you find it quite unreal that nowadays in 2025 there are still schools and teachers out there who say to boys you MUST be a bare chest instead of you CAN be a bare chest if that's your preferred choice. It's a perfectly reasonable option to take, but the insistence on it always got to me at school as well in the late eighties and early nineties. My nerves used to jangle the moment I ever heard a teacher scream 'strip to the waist', or 'shirts off now' or 'skins you lot' and the very real reluctance I had following such diktats. It always took me half the lesson to get over the fact I was doing PE that way and I was always glad to get a top back on a soon as possible.

I would have found being at a boarding school like being in a prison. I would have felt very intimidated to be at your school Miles and be faced with having to go out with the whole place bare chests at the same time like that. Whilst I might have felt able to some extent merge amongst all the others I think taking the whole school, you said it was 400 boys, outside for sport in bare chests is crazy to imagine. It's like the school was trying to prove its masculinity to the world outside. I would not have enjoyed being any part of such a spectacle. Your description reminds me of the Hitler Youth in 1938 rather than an English boarding school in 1968. But like I said, if all those boys wanted to then that's not a problem, it just wouldn't have been for me.

Comment by: Steven on 19th April 2025 at 04:02 It is true that boys PE shorts in the 80s were rather short and tight fitting and that with the boy being shirtless an erection was difficult to dissimulate. It is also true that teenage boys could have them rather often. When I could see a boy in my classes being erect, I went to him, tapped him gently on the back or the shoulder and told him to go the changing room for 5 minutes. I did this in the most inconspicuous way possible and was always intent on preserving the boy’s dignity. I would never have shouted at him or exposed him in front of all the others as your teacher seemed to do.
While the action taken of sending the boy away to relieve himself in the changing room was, on the surface, similar to what Alan described, the way I handled it was very different.




You "Sir" are an A* liar.

The way you preserve anyone's dignity in any awkward situation that develops is to not draw any attention to it.

Please don't bring my profession into disrepute with such fairy tales from your own mind. You've never taught in a school in your life.

Nobody probably remembers me or my comment from last year, it was placed on the 8th March 2024, about my son here in Daventry at his school where he'd been doing PE for more than two years, since 2021, in his gym without a top on. Well he's now 15 and still doing PE without a top on. He's a boy who finds removing a top like that quite difficult but has long got used to it. However better late than never I finally decided, after not doing so a couple of times, that this time I wanted to drop a mention of this at his latest parent teacher evening in March just gone and asked the question of a non-PE teacher I got into some small talk with who took me across to one of his PE teachers who I wasn't down to actually meet that night. The response to my query was that I shouldn't worry and I could tell the teacher thought I was being a silly over protective mother when he said my son didn't appear to lack any confidence in PE and he was happy with his attendance and effort. His teacher told me he prefers teaching gym that way with many classes, so it came down to personal preference of that actual teacher who gave me a lot of words on confidence building of young minds and bodies. But why do you insist on it I asked, and he suggested it worked well as an effective teaching method, was hygienic and preferred by a lot of boys anyway. I was told I was only the third person ever to bring that subject up to him in 20 years and that he has never considered it a serious issue. When I told him my son thought it was when he started, he just told me he was sure he didn't think it was anymore. At least I got it off my own chest and said something even if it was a bit of a predictable type of answer.

Friends of mine in other parts of the country act surprised when I say my own son here in Daventry has been doing his PE in a bare chest top since 2021 but I suppose it depends where you go and who you get.

Me and my sister once had a discussion at the dinner table at home not long after I started BIG school, she was already there, and started the mandatory shower rite of passage as to which of us and our friends found it worse. I said it was worse for boys because we all had that little bit extra we could check out and she said it was definitely worse for girls, indicated by what Hazel described as her ghastly view on doing it and all the girls. The bottom line is most of us had issues with it, boys or girls, but never said and put up with it because we seemed powerless to do anything else faced with it. I didn't really mind so much mixing with the boys my own age doing that, we were all in the same boat, but I never liked being naked showering around adult teachers at school one little bit. I know some people suggest that their teachers even ended up in the showers with them, if this was the case, no matter how long ago they should be ashamed of themselves, and it rather reduces that pupil/teacher distance that often gets described here where boys are all shirtless but teacher is in a top, like the photo, to distinguish the authority figure. Any old teachers of the past who showered with their pupils erased that dynamic totally and levelled themselves with the class.

I really don't get why someone posted three consecutive comments under different names earlier, and concur with what has been said about that. Thankfully we have more transparency nowadays and can see when this happens.

It's nice to see another teacher show up with almost perfect sentiments to the job he does, and also another female perspective is always welcome too.

Thankyou for replying direct to my comment Alan.

I was definitely self conscious when I had to do PE shirtless between 1999 and 2003, with a few further times in sixth form from 2003 to 2005. If you feel good about yourself then you project that confidence and if you don't feel good about yourself you project a resulting lack of confidence in how you act, so if you don't feel good about yourself while exposed to being shirtless then you are likely to look less confident.

It seems that there were a lot of self conscious boys out there at school thinking much the same thing about their lot in school, but so many were thinking the same thoughts but nobody really said anything about it to anyone, it was a quiet acceptance that as a male pupil in school you should accept shirtlessness without hesitation and care little about it.

While I don't feel my teachers were setting out to humiliate the couple of fat boys in my own PE class at the time, it may well have still been the net effect on them. I did at the time think it was alright to point out how unhealthy it was to be too overweight so young, but being shirtless in PE was very unforgiving to those boys for showing them up compared to the rest of us. I wonder what they made of it? Being shirtless for me did act as an incentive to remain in good shape.

Reading Miles about boarding school in the late sixties, you said there were four hundred boys there and you all had to be shirtless on sports day each year, your "extravaganza!. That's a big event, no wonder they called it an extravaganza. But you have to think about how many of those four hundred in your school felt good about that. Even if it was three quarters okay that still means a hundred boys might have felt very self conscious, I know I would have done. If the whole school was the same it suggests it must have been mandatory to do that. It must have looked impressive if you were all very fit and active which it sounds they made sure you all were.

I agree that needed to be said Terry, so don't apologise.

I also agree wholeheartedly with you Greg there, another thoughtful offering. Of course the girls should have been told off like the boys were, but at those ages tell me any of us that might not have attempted a peep if such a chance had arisen.

If you look at what Hazel has written here today, she has started by saying how there was equality at the start of school but then actually goes on to show up the emergence of double standards quite soon after, where girls like her could pick and choose a top to wear for their PE lesson but boys were kept to the ongoing rigidity of a shirtless turnout for PE.

Hi Ash,

I don't think Susan F is coming back here. Maybe I offended her, although if I did it wasn't my intention. But she did answer some of what you ask a few weeks back. From what I can remember her saying:

I think the lesson you are enquiring about was gymnastics, which obviously requires tighter health and safety rules than normal classes The boys were normally allowed t-shirts but for gymnastics it was shorts only, which is understandable. On the girls complaining that they found their leotards - which were full-length and so covered them neck to ankle - embarrassing in front of the boys (!), they were allowed to switch their gymnastics rig to t-shirts and shorts - which was the exact same kit explicitly forbidden the boys for the same lessons on safety reasoning. Some boys also complained about how embarrassing it was being made to parade half naked in front of the girls. Their pleas fell on deaf ears and their kit stayed the same. So, still no shirts. Double standards, much?



Hi Hazel,

I'm sorry to hear how much you hated school showers. I did too. Although you kind of undermine your own argument by stating that boys had to go topless all through your school years. Thereagain it is absolutely appropriate that the same rules be enforced for girls as for boys. It is refreshing and seemingly pretty unusual to hear of a school that enforced equal standards that way. But if you ask me there is no real need for either girls or boys to shower at all. Schedule the Games/ PE classes for the last period of the day and then let them go to clean up at home. It's hardly rocket science. But then PE teachers were hardly rocket scientists, were they?

At my infants school we also had to do PE in our underwear, although we were allowed to keep our vests on. And plimsolls if we had them, which looking back now seems vaguely contradictory.

I think it's cruel to force boys to go topless in PE. Plenty of men have spoken up on here to assert how they were fine with it. And that's fine for them. But then plenty more boys, me being one, were not or would not have been fine with it at all. I think what Danny C described is frankly disgusting. Contrary to the way they act and the impressions they project, boys have feelings too.

Given that sports lessons happen out of the public view (well, you hope) there is no uniform requirement. Make PE kit optional! We all got through my junior school's years turning up in any t-shirt and shorts we chose or that our folks could afford, both sexes, and it worked! We could have done the same all through secondary if they had let us.. Really, this national obsession with standardised PE kit is just
ridiculous.

My apologies to the forum for feeling the need to divert briefly but someone should say it so as I'm first here at 2.36pm this afternoon it may as well be me;

To 'fakename', 'Ash' and 'Hall'.

If you want to use an alias, like Yours Truly, that's all well and good if you or anyone else would prefer not to use your real name, although some people are happy to use their full name as we see, or initial the surname incase of confusion with others with same forename, but please do not come on here and use all kinds of different names as the same person, like you have done 'fakename', 'Ash' and 'Hall', all within a few minutes and broadly asking similar questions. What is the point in this and what are you trying to achieve that can't be said or asked under one name or alias?

We all can see you have done this as your IP tag is identical for all three comments under these names and has given you away.

See below;

Comment by: Hall on 25th April 2025 at 08:53
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Comment by: Ash on 25th April 2025 at 08:42
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Comment by: fakename on 25th April 2025 at 08:41
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Austin, yeah my middle school seemed to be more obsessed and strict about doing PE in bare feet. This was in or out always without anything on our feet, which felt odd sometimes. High school it was mostly bare feet indoors and outside if you wanted to.

John, what exactly did the girls do or say to those boys that you describe as "go in for the kill" and "lot of flack from girls in PE and were teased about their bodies?" Were these boys overweight or had anything that set them apart and made them vulnerable to mockery? What did the girls wear? How old were the pupils when PE was mixed?

Susan F, you said leotards were discontinued because it was unpopular with the girls when they were around boys.
What did the girls wear instead at that point?
Were the boys who asked to wear shirts allowed to do so?

Jane, you said "having boys around us was a distraction for us girls in PE". How did the other girls react to the boys' predicament?
You also said "Our own gym PE kit was horrible clingy black leotards until we got a bit older." So your PE kit changed at a certain point, what was it changed to?
Did the boys' PE kit also change at that point? Were they allowed to wear shirts then?
For clarity, could you specify the ages of the pupils?

andy. someone here has already reported someone to their real work place. that 1 stopped posting after. you remember? you shocked that people use fake names?

Some gentlemen on here have been concerned about the gender double standard working against them as boys and in our favour as girls so I'd like to redress that a small way.

When I began my school life in the infants first school in 1971 and we had to do our PE lessons together, all the boys as well as all the girls like me had to do it, inside, with nothing to wear on top at all, or on our feet. Boys and girls wore exactly the same little set of light green shorts for PE and this was always how everyone at my infants school did PE for all three years I was there from just after my fifth birthday until just after my eighth. There was not a bit of difference there how we were treated, girls were expected to accept being topless for PE just as the boys are.

Even at that very young often unquestioning age I was thinking isn't this only what boys are meant to do.

Only when I finally reached the nearby primary school at the age of eight did I finally get to wear a top for PE, just any old random t-shirt was allowed, but I remember the boys carried on without t-shirts and remained without all the way through for PE indoors that we did alongside them up to almost age twelve. It was obviously compulsory for them to continue that way, while we picked any t-shirt we wanted and liked from home.

I believe the comprehensive school that many of us went on to attend also leant heavily into the bare chest PE ethic for boys there too in gym so it seems that some of the boys I shared my schooldays with might have spent their whole school life doing PE, at least most of it indoors, never actually being able. allowed or expected to put a top of any type on.

At comprehensive school all girls did have to take a communal PE shower entirely nude the same as boys right up until we drew near to the end of our fifth form year, so we matched the boys on that there too, and most of us despised the ritual which I finally saw the back of in the spring of 1982. It could be quite a ghastly experience for many.

Comment by: Darren G on 24th April 2025

I hate anything like this Darren G. No one ever really gave a damn about how some boys might feel when being forced into accepting such a situation, which they could do nothing about. Most boys, I expect, would have said nothing, becoming resigned to it at that young age, as they’d already be bombarded by everything being new and strange while trying to get used to life in their new school. She would have interpreted this as acceptance to her being there. Well how wrong she was, though she wouldn't care, as most boys would have wished they could have told her to clear off. I blame the head teacher (male or female?) for a blatant disregard for the boys and a total lack of understanding. As usual, as long as the girls are not compromised, everything’s okay isn’t it. What an awful situation, and a horrible woman, who I expect enjoyed telling everybody what she did.

I so often resented the many double standards I found when I was growing up. I never thought girls were entitled to more privacy than me, and I would have hated this gym teacher being around us in there at that age. You like to think you’re just starting to grow up around 11, and certainly some boys are more developed than others by that age and you really should be deserving of some respect. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this still happened somewhere today.

I’ll tell of something that happened when we were all around 13 years old in our 2nd year, which some might find amusing, we boys didn’t…for long. I’ve mentioned before how the girl’s gym teacher would frequently walk right through our boys’ changing room at secondary school, no matter what state of undress we were in. She had no need to do this as the girls’ door was just a few metres away, so it was a deliberate decision of choice on her part and I'm sure she thought of it as a little perk. We didn’t routinely share gym lessons with the girls, and at this particular time we boys had a music lesson which was followed by gym, so we’d all go to our changing room at the end of music where we’d often hear the shower water still going and the girls’ voices, as the shower block was in the middle with our separate changing rooms on either side of it. We’d then have to get changed for our gym lesson, and when the girls were ready, they’d go across for their music lesson. We’d later all meet up again for the next period which I think was Geography.

This situation would alternate each week, so sometimes we’d be in the shower when the girls came to change for gym on their side, and on one such occasion, when we’d met up again for geography, a few of the girls began to tell us that they’d just been watching us in the showers, through the keyhole on their side! They were able to give details of how we looked which I remember finding a bit embarrassing as they were so accurate. They said who was more developed than others which was also true. What's more, their very same gym teacher who liked to walk through our room didn’t mind them watching us in the shower, and just smiled and left them to it.

So, on hearing this, we boys thought we’d have to get our own back. When the next opportunity came the following week, after arriving from music, we decided to forego our usual respect for the girls privacy, and take turns to check out our girl classmates just as they had us. I know we all found it just as interesting as they did, but there was one big difference: in walked our gym teacher and caught us. He went berserk, shouting at the top of his voice to get changed. When we’d done so, he stamped in wielding a size 11 plimsoll in hand, selected a group of us to touch our toes in line, and proceeded to give each of us six of the best…obviously waiting until only the thin white cotton of our gym shorts was between his slipper and our skin. Now then, how’s that for a representation of double standards, and what a contrast to how the girls were dealt with on the other side of the shower block. From that moment onwards we often thought the girls continued to watch us whenever they wanted, and we couldn’t do anything about it as our volatile gym teacher never let us miss showering.

Comment by: Mark on 24th April 2025 at 13:03




".....I thought you might have picked him up on this 'forced bare chest rule' line here, where boys have to go shirtless if they come with the wrong style PE shirt. You're mellowing Alan!....."

I think it is perfectly acceptable if the lad brings the wrong kit - assuming - and I am sure it is - made clear what is worn, when, then the teacher is within his rights to inflict that punishment, but if I were one of those lads I would make sure I DID follow the guidelines. I think Simon's classes have little to complain about. Yes you have to take the uniform shirt off, but you can easily turn your back while you do it, and put the P.E. one on, and vice versa, and he doesn't force them to shower, so he is not a prowler. What is there not to like?. If you want me to add a but - if the lad brings the wrong shirt because his mum forgot to wash it, that is tough on the lad. I would do the washing myself. I like down to earth teachers like him, and I sincerely hope most lads have teachers like him who know it is now a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and the boys are not in borstal, and are not forced into things they don't like. Free and easy, that's my style. I could have coped with Simon's school.


Comment by: Nick on 24th April 2025 at 13:56


"...The worst thing you can do to those of school age is to wrap them up in cotton wool and try to protect them from largely imaginary problems.

Why did boys at school excitedly go swimming but then became all coy when the PE lesson required they look much the same? I see that conundrum has been mentioned previously here......"

That's right, Nick - we've got to get them toughened up to go up the chimneys or face the press gangs who will be forcing them to take the King's shilling, haven't we?. Well, no we haven't. Clearly you were never in a school where bullying was on the timetable every day, and aided and abetted by a teacher who was as cracked as the pupils, with a prurient interest in other people's anatomy.

This swimming thing. I can only explain my feelings about it. When you are in water it is like a psychological blanket covering you up, you (or I) would get out and in and back to the changing cubicles as quickly as possible. There is a great deal of difference between that and being on dry land wearing only shorts (especially when you are climbing up ropes or doing exercises with a partner), with teachers of other subjects walking through the gym as a short cut to wherever they are going. It must be even worse in a mixed school.

The year 1968 has been mentioned on here and that was a year I was at a privately run boarding school in Kent with 400 male pupils, and was a fourteen year old that particular year. I will confess that these were not the most wonderful years of my life but I wouldn't say I had a bad time either.

If you were sensitive or shy you had to find ways to try and overcome it.

If you wish to know what a lack of privacy is like you should have been a full time boarder at school like I was after the age of eleven. The kind of day school secondary issues are minor in comparison I would think.

Let me explain. I had to share a dormitory room with nine other boys at school, and sometimes not all of us got on and they would switch someone around with another group. We were not allowed to just go to bed in our underwear and had to put on a proper set of pyjamas to go to bed sleep in. Before bed we all had a mad rush into the bathrooms to do what needed to be done. Lights out was always a set time and silence was expected once that happened.

Each morning the first thing everyone had to do was get out of the pyjamas, grab a towel and go off to the communal showers, big enough for 50 boys to easily use at the same time in our part of school in our year group age. Each morning was exactly the same set routine without fail. There was absolutely no privacy available or expected to be. We were expected to strip naked, get wet through and start washing properly and quietly with each other, seven days a week. If PE was in the morning we still had to do that and would have a second shower of the day before lunchtime arrived. We stayed clean at least! You were not expected to have any reservations about your own nudity or that of others.

Someone has mentioned sixth former looking over younger ones in school. We had prefects doing the same in our school. They could also have the privilege of a bath in the mornings and there were two baths available. It was not unusual to have a prefect in the mornings sitting in his bath giving out instructions and orders while everyone else was showering and coming and going. Prefect could indeed be worse than the teaching staff if you got a bad one, and one or two did seem to over enjoy some of their bestowed authority they were given. Quite unfairly I thought, in our school they were even allowed to administer a slipper to the body of anyone stepping out of line as they saw it. This was abused a lot, although even prefects were liable to corporal punishment if they fell short. One was caned at our school for slippering too many boys for fun. That's how it was then. Hierarchy and control, knowing your place in the order of things. Many of us had an inclination to break free of such strictures.

PE was three days a week and 90 minutes long and some of it could be quite brutally rough and intense even as very young eleven and twelve year olds.

There were no shirts worn in the gymnasium. Your bare chest was your gym uniform. Only the teacher wore his PE vest. I think it was a mixture of plimsolls without socks and nothing on the feet, mostly nothing I think. Our shorts were plain black. Some people say they had to remove underwear, we did not, we kept ours on, but I suppose if anyone wished to remove it they could have done so. That would never have occurred to me to take my pants off and only wear the shorts.

In our PE all of us were expected to reach quite high standards of ability and if we did not we got extra tuition sometimes. We were not allowed to have a can't do attitude to anything, however daunting it may have seemed. It's fair to say we could be run ragged at times. Even if we didn't like doing something we still had to pretend we did and put in the effort. Not putting in effort could result in getting a strap wrapped across your legs or bottom, so you tended to stay focussed in fear the belt or a plimsoll shoe would come out and find its way at you from a teacher.

Anything a teacher said you acted upon immediately without answering back. So it's fair to say that, especially when we were younger, we were all very subservient.

I've just noticed that Simon has said he would not ever send someone outside shirtless for PE unless they chose to in summer term. Well in 1968 at my boarding school it was very different indeed. When we all assembled for the weekly cross country in PE none of us had shirts on. Obviously outside for football, rugby and such like we wore our shirt colours but not for cross country, that was classed just like the gymnasium, and was deemed a real test of our stamina, so all of us ran outside shirtless in any weather at any given time on the calendar. The older we got the longer we were expected to run, ending up at something like 10 to 12 miles by sixteen. Cross country running around 1968 at the age of fourteen was the absolute beast of PE to me which took every ounce of effort and energy out of you on the longer runs on bad days when we were absolute wrecks by the end of it. We would finish up and be laying on our backs too tired to get back up off the school sports field. I remember weak buckling legs, stomach stitch and often still feeling cold after many miles of it, breath puffing out clouds into the air. We then had to race to the showers and be into another lesson within short order sometimes, still aching and feeling quite worn out, but still expected to concentrate and not complain in the next subject.

Annually our parents were invited to our sports extravaganza as they called it, where the whole school took part, it was a sports day by another name. We all stood to attention on the school field in front of our parents, in our school years, every single one of us was shirtless for that event and we lined up in various formations before doing some school exercises in unison by school age, and then a run past the parents before getting on with the extravaganza, which involved a lot of running and outdoors gymnastic prowess being displayed, some between older and younger boys, the only time we did such things out of our age groups. One year the weather was bad so it was called off, they didn't mind us getting wet but didn't want our parents to, or even have to sit under a brolly to watch us. Thinking we'd got off it for that year they went and rearranged it a fortnight later and sent the invites back out again.

The fitter the school made me get and the more stamina it gave me, the more I wanted to get even fitter and gain more stamina. The bashfulness was knocked out of even the most sensitive ones. So in that sense it worked.

The worst thing you can do to those of school age is to wrap them up in cotton wool and try to protect them from largely imaginary problems.

Why did boys at school excitedly go swimming but then became all coy when the PE lesson required they look much the same? I see that conundrum has been mentioned previously here.

I've never understood why it should be a problem for a group of boys all about the same age mucking in together in a group shower and think it's perfectly reasonable to be told to do so, even if that does affect the sensibilities of those on the shy self conscious end of the spectrum. The same applies to shirts coming off during PE.

Comment by: Alan on 24th April 2025 at 06:02
'Welcome Simon. It is really good to hear from a P.E. teacher. Your school's policies seem totally acceptable.'

Comment by: Simon W on 23rd April 2025 at 21:25
'If anyone does not come to PE (indoors gym) with the accepted footwear then it's bare feet, and if an incorrect PE top is worn then it's no top.'


I thought you might have picked him up on this 'forced bare chest rule' line here, where boys have to go shirtless if they come with the wrong style PE shirt. You're mellowing Alan!

If you know what you are meant to bring and you don't do so and that's the end result then I think it's fair, if you end up the one and only boy in PE shirtless and don't like it, do not blame the teacher blame yourself, even if you could probably still wear an incorrect top and make little difference. Yes, I think it's very fair too.

I think a lot of schools are like this nowadays, they have all the facilities like we used to have but nobody uses them. It made me consider how many boys there might be who would secretly love to shower after PE lessons, especially if very sweaty but feel they can't suddenly be the only one doing so because that would look weird to the others. We've heard a lot about boys, and some girls, who didn't want to shower at school, that's most of us to be fair, but what about those out there who didn't mind or actually wanted to, they existed too, and in this day and age at school's such as the one Simon describes feel they simply can't because nobody else does.

Interesting that he suggests there is some shower use after school, but then those who do after school sports are the keen and active sporty types who are motivated so perhaps not so unexpected some might be up for a quick shower in those situations which are probably more relaxed than in the school day itself.

Comment by: Simon W on 23rd April 2025 at 21:25



Welcome Simon. It is really good to hear from a P.E. teacher who is neither a control, freak or a voyeur, and seems a genuinely modern and sympathetic teacher. I hope there are many more like you, and I hope you will contribute as often as you want to. Your school's policies seem totally acceptable.


Comment by: Yours Truly on 23rd April 2025 at 17:33



Hi YT I broadly agree with you. There have been some terrible governments of BOTH parties (and the Lib Dems in 2010, who proved they were just as bad), but, honestly, has there ever been one as bad as this one?. It took their leader FOUR years and a Supreme Court ruling to understand what a woman is, and where I do disagree with you is that in the current instance, ministers are not appointed by rank or birth, on the contrary they are appointed because they tick one of the "minority" boxes. I won't elaborate further. You can see unemployment rising every day - one or two of my larger customers are cutting back on staff, and they cite the rise in NIC and the new employment laws as the reason. Previous governemts have had youth training schemes - this one (and the last one) just keep them cooped up in school.

The last really great PM that I have read of was Harold Wilson (Labour) who told America where to go when their then President (Johnson) wanted us to get involved in the Vietnam war. That was in 1968. That took grit, since we are so often subservient to the USA. He really did put his own country first, as they all should, but don't. I am sure he would have sacked any poor performers in his cabinet

Too damned bad in my senior school if you didn't like going shirtless and taking your top off, a typical mid 1970s northern English state run comprehensive school with classic type stereotypical PE teachers. We boys at our school had to share the PE gym with the girls for my first two years there and none of the boys wore a top in that gym with those girls among us.
What I can recall is how girls can sense exactly who the shy or worried boys are in such situations and go in for the kill. There were two boys in PE who took a lot of flack from girls in PE and were teased about their bodies and none of us could just go grab a top, stick it on and shut some of these girls up once they got going somtimes. This often happened as we all waited outside gym for our teacher while unsupervised but ready in our gym attire.

I also had a male sod of a gym teacher when I was 15 who liked to face up to boys his own size by that age and eyeball them with attitude while treading on our bare toes hard with his training shoe which I was a victim of first hand and it hurt like hell the way this sod perfected his accidentally on purpose foot crushing technique on the floor of the gym.

The same man was a shower sadist who enjoyed giving us a whole class cold shower after PE if even a couple of class had misbehaved during PE.

Comment by: Matthew on 26th October 2015 at 09:20
I don't believe that a female teacher would be supervising naked boys in a secondary school.



Answering a very old post here I know, but they did in mine Matthew. First years in my secondary school often had gym taken by a female PE teacher who had full entry into our changing room which had a group showers area we used and she was close by when we did this, and that for me was in 1982/3. She was quite a tomboy kind of looking teacher with a short haircut but was very much a female and must have seen us all stripped off. Our gym lessons with her, just like later with the men were mostly a shorts only kit with no t-shirts on or shoes and socks. We grew up fast 42 tears ago and got used to it quite quickly. Both my parents knew this arrangement but when I first told my father he thought it was funny and laughed about it.

80% of our class would have wanted flat feet if that got them a permanent pass for PE at school Gary! But there was some quite enjoyable PE so I wouldn't have wished for flat feet, and I most certainly wouldn't have wanted anyone poking any part of me, my feet or private parts. Those kind of things that swirl the school are like Chinese whispers I think. Someone says something and what is it they say, a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got it's boots on or something like that.

Hello.

I teach physical education at a school in Maidenhead for school years 7 to 11 (that's ages eleven to sixteen).

There is a fully specific PE kit required to be brought into class dependant on the activity involved. If anyone does not come to PE (indoors gym) with the accepted footwear then it's bare feet, and if an incorrect PE top is worn then it's no top. This keeps kit issues down to a minimum and ensures most bring the correct items when they should.

Outside, incorrect kit results in a detention for repeat offenders. We do not force bare feet outside or no tops, but in summer term boys are free to take PE in that way if they wish and it is appropriate to the activity. A few do this with permission.

Sometimes I do agree that the rules around PE kit are overly stringent but I only uphold the rules I do not make them. I think there's a reasonable case to be made for simplicity and I'm sure many boys would enjoy that too.

Of course everyone is without tops in the changing room when moving from school uniform to PE kit, that is unavoidable.

My own school physical education was broadly similar to many on here, but I think the teaching standard is far higher today. Our school has full working order showers in all the changing rooms but they lay largely idle, our school does not operate compulsion to use them. I would feel unsure being like the PE teachers who taught me in making an absolute demand that they must be used, but anyone who wanted to would be free and able to do so. They are sometimes used with after school sport activity by some pupils though.

This is a very interesting discussion.

There's been a question about school urban legends from Terry after the funny little anecdote that came from YT. Well I can think of quite a few from schooldays but as this is a PE based discussion I'll keep it to topic.

All the boys in our year were unexpectedly told late one morning that we had to assemble after lunch in our school sports hall. Well that set the rumour mill going like wildfire I remember as there had been this unprovable story going round that boys had to turn out there for a foreskin check with the school nurse and a male PE teacher present, thought's of us all dropping our trousers and being made to pull our foreskins back passed through the mind and the sheer awfulness of doing that. It was obviously rubbish, an urban school legend but we really believed it was a genuine possibility, or some of us did.

There was another along similar lines that boys had to get their feet checked out with the school nurse and PE teachers and anyone discovered with flat feet would be exempt from PE. Not so bad as the willy one but equally ridiculous when you think about it, but again, some believed this, and would wish it were true if it got them off PE, but that was never going to happen.

Perhaps not so much an urban legend but there was the one rumour that got going that our school couldn't afford to run two separate girls and boys PE blocks and that we would all have to share, even mixed showers. It's amazing what an average 13 year old will believe at times, and sounds amusing now because it all this stuff really worried a few people even though it was just nonsense.

There was another that may have been true, I don't know, and it was about a boy in our year who had got three girls pregnant before the age of 15 and all had to have a termination. This was interesting and possible because the lad in question bragged about promiscuity and losing his virginity at the age of 12, and three girls who he hung out with all ended up having a prolonged spell off school at one point which fired up the rumour mill and suspicions. Nobody ever found out whether any of it was true, if so it was brushed under the carpet very effectively to save the school any terrible publicity.


YT you mentioned the school medical upsetting you. I had one in first school where I kept my underpants and vest on and remember bursting into tears during it. I had another when I began at secondary school which took place in matron's office and I was down to just my pants and nothing else at all, had a quick stand up check over and then had to sit in the chair in just my pants answering some questions before being allowed to leave. I remember there were some waiting boys outside the door for their turn in just their pants ready to be called in. Very awkward!

Ross, in my middle school they were completely obsessed with going barefoot for activities, PE was done that way always in the school hall and alos on the grass outside in the good weather, so was something they called M & M (Music and movement). Then switching to comprehensive school the obsession went from that to bare chests for PE instead, mainly the school gymnasium but not exclusively so.

It was rare at either school for both 'bares' to combine, no footwear and no shirts, but did happen a handful of times in middle, and a bit more in comprehensive, where a PE teacher we had was fond of what he deemed Brazilian style football, the type they played on the beach I think, and we sometimes played football in gym barefoot and bare chest.

I think it was Yours Truly who mentioned a feeling of vulnerability in PE. I get that. You did feel a bit vulnerable doing PE in this manner, without a top on, or even without footwear but with a top.

I was at a middle school that had a communal shower installed in the boys changing room, but not the girls. We didn't have to use them after every PE lesson, they were only compulsory when our teacher decided they were, and for boys that was if we went outside and played football in the autumn or winter. Sometimes if we were outside in summer and it was blazing hot we had to do the same, but it was unusual, we might have got asked to take maybe 10 showers a year at middle school, nobody ever brought a towel so if we took one we dried off with paper towels from the dispenser in the changing room which were more than good enough. If our teacher was a woman then she would stand at the door pretending not to look at us but we knew she must have seen something. You couldn't wrap a paper towel around your waist unfortunately!

Comprehensive school was bare chests right from the off, very first lesson there, it must have been my third day at the school, then straight into the showers with a bunch of unknowns. Talk about a getting to know you session within a couple of days of meeting new people. The term 'zero tolerance' wasn't in use in the early eighties but there was zero tolerance for anyone thinking about kicking up a stink about doing PE in a bare chest, they made that very clear to us at school in PE, and even clearer that there would be no tolerating those who thought they might miss out the shower part of PE lessons. I remember seeing some boys getting a real dressing down from PE teachers for trying not to shower, real shouting stuff and physical prodding to get them in to do it. It wasn't exactly subtle at times. You could tell some teachers liked that style of authority while it was obviously more difficult for others to be like that if they needed to be.

I stayed on for sixth form but dropped out after a year and got a job instead. You were supposed to do PE in my sixth form at least once a week, I remember it was Wednesday afternoons, but I never showed up once for any of them. I think some other sixth form boys also gave PE a miss too, but most just did it, and it was much the same kit as before as far as I knew, one of my friends Paul was quite sporty and happily continued PE in sixth form and I hung outside the changing room waiting for him one time and he came back off PE in trainers, shorts and a bare chest from the gym with about half a dozen others. The teacher knew I was meant to be a part of it but as it was sixth form wasn't really bothered and just rolled his eyes and tutted. Officially I was meant to be there but unofficially he was letting it pass, and did so for the whole year. I walked in and waited for my mate Paul and they all took the showers, the full soapy washdown like we did pre-sixth form in first to fifth years.

PE and school changing rooms remind me of many things, of boys who were sporty show offs and boys who were unsporty very quiet and timid.

Hi Frank,

I don't know if you know this but there is a US bar chain called Hooters. It is exactly what it sounds like, with the all-female staff made to wear the corporate uniform of skimpy vests and tight shorts. Try and guess the clientelle. I don't have children but I wouldn't be okay with a daughter or niece of mine working there. And I wouldn't have been okay with my son working in the place you describe. That bar manager sounds like a covert fetishist.

But is it any different from shirtless PE for boys? Why is there this assumption that children can just be stripped?


Hi Gerald,

I can see the logic of shorts-only kit for boys on grounds of cost reduction. We had a fairly extensive PE kit for indoors and out which placed a strain on our parents. Really I didn't and can't see why PE kit can't be any affordable t-shirt and shorts like we had at primary school. My school used to have the rule that while uniform was absolutely compulsory - and you got hammered for any infraction - the school blazer was optional. This was a well-intentioned move to reduce the financial burden on struggling parents in a poor neighbourhood. Our incoming headmaster changed that rule. No, no, no, that just wouldn't do, and from the following term blazers were compulsory for both genders.

Also, as Danny C once said, it's less stuff to forget. Just a pair of shorts and a towel, as another recent poster said. Maybe that is the same reason why many girls in my time were happy to do indoor PE barefoot, it was just less clutter and less to forget.

Two things only: girls should be held to the same standard. With tops, obviously. After all the same discipline will benefit them as much as their male cohorts. And it should be voluntary. No pupil of either gender should be forced to dress in a way they find humiliating.

Hi Alan,

If you ask me the UK has been gradually declining since the end of World War One when we were forced off the gold standard. It has been going on way longer than any of our lifetimes. Maggie Thatcher's asset-stripping pirate government was really only the coup de grace and we nowadays live in the rattling corpse. People have always been promoted in the UK for what they were rather than what they were capable of. It's called the aristocracy and since they own all the land they can't be got rid of.

Always interesting reading here. Looking back I saw a comment from a PE teacher describing the kit they mandated which was barefoot l, shirtless and shorts only.
This is pretty much the full kit I wore throughout middle and high school. Always shirtless, barefoot with navy shorts.

Comment by: Frank on 22nd April 2025 at 21:21

I hope your son took your advice, Frank. It might not have been a gay bar, but I bet, sure as hell, the young manager was.

What is worrying is that with Rachel From Accounts tanking the economy, and the hospitality sector is especially badly hit, such "requests" might become compulsory rather than voluntary. Sadly too many people are promoted because of WHAT they are, rather than what they can do. This manager sounds as if he should have been a P.E. teacher!

Frank when I was younger I worked in a hotel bar for about four months a few nights a week just to get a bit extra that I wanted. If anyone there had suggested to me that I remove my clothing to place my torso on display for the punters and guests there I think I would have laughed in their face, and if they looked like they were being serious I would have quit. Nowadays that would constitute harrassment, although what adults choose to do is up to them, it's not school is it where we had no choice but to follow orders.

It would be good to hear again from the likes of YorkshireDad, Greg2 and DannyC who has had a couple of mentions recently, also any other genuine PE teachers out there or ones who have been here before and gone quiet.