Burnley Grammar School

James C,

I agree,I don't think it should be age related not wearing a vest for PE.
To allow boys to wear vests at a certain age would make younger boys feel self conscious.
Boys at both my primary school and secondary school boys were promoted to wearing long trousers at a certain age and I continued to wear short trousers through secondary school as my parents considered it unnecessary and inappropriate to be promoted to wearing long trousers at a certain age.

Yes we had the same tortuous communal showers at my school. We all loathed it. The teacher would count us in in two groups of 10 boys. We were literally only in for 2 minutes. The second group waiting their turn would just stand there trying to cover ourselves by hand, no towels while waiting, till the 2 minutes was up. Soap didn't feature in the process. It wasn't really wasn't worth the effort much of the time so I can only assume it was our school's method of ritual humiliation just like it was everywhere else.

You can't tell me that fifty years ago, indeed a lot more recently even, that this wasn't appealing to men who had paedo tendancies, when this was a job that could give them a ready made constant supply of naked children all week in large numbers very close to them. It just must have attracted a nit insignificant number of people into the job because they could safely order children to do this on the pretext that their bodies must be so sweaty and stinky or filthy from outside that they absolutely had no choice but to get showered.

It was a ritual, and a rite of passage. It was also a right old con job on most of us, but the teachers loved inflicting it on us over and over.

Getting older I started thinking about this and it suddenly all hit me as wrong to force.

Hi Christine Sanderson,

'Most school sixth forms are perfectly happy if their students wish to continue on with PE in some form, but it's a very different kind of PE and sometimes the sixth former will help out.'

Just so long as it is through their own free choice! My old school forced sixth-formers to carry on doing PE, which is an indignity and overstepping the mark in my opinion. Over-sixteen-year-olds are young adults and should be granted a certain measure of dignity. (At least at my school they were allowed to wear clothes, unlike at Danny C's).I have said in a previous post how my late sister, who was otherwise completely straitlaced and conformist, consistently dodged the PE requirement in sixth form because she considered it an indignity,. I have also told of two sixth-form girls getting wolf-whistled in their PE kit, which as young adults they should never have been exposed to. Schools and their power trips.

As regards sixth-formers helping out? I still remember my first ever games lesson, which was taken not by any teacher but by two sixteen-year-old boys. I was getting mocked and shouted at by the other boys in my year for lack of performance. These two boys just found it funny. You seem quite oblivious.


Hi Alan,

My school used the local catholic communities to buoy up its intake numbers, from groups who were more concerned with the religious element and less critical of the school's track record than they should have been.

Religion is for the weekend in my opinion. And it should be funded solely by the community in question, no state subsidies, not even for anglican. School should be for education not indoctrination.

There was one kid who got into the local grammar school. He was far and away the cleverest child in my year at primary school. Apparently the school had to wage a campaign to get this boy into the grammar, as if they were prejudiced against my primary school. When he was accepted at the local grammar school the whole class was told, as if we should all have been m ore concerned with Brains from Thunderbirds' education than our own, as if he was more important than the rest of us or something.

Comment by: James C on 26th May 2025 at 18:01


Because by the time you are in sixth form you are an adult - other lads and girls your age will be in work and treated like colleagues, not children.

All that semi-militaristic nonsense should have gone by the board decades ago. Teachers - and some students - take themselves far too seriously

Alan,
Going barechested in 6th form wasn't a surprise. We were expected to set an example the younger lads and the females to the younger girls. Stripping off our vests in the gym at the start of a PE lesson was doing what every lad.did. Why should we have went been treated any differently?

Comment by: Tony on 26th May 2025 at 02:15



Hi Tony - rereading JW's message, after reading yours, I concede you might well be right. It was the fact that he mentioned 11-18 that I took to mean he made his "request/requirement" to them. Mind you, he sounded so old-fashioned, who knows? - he might try to instill his rules on them as well. I remember not so long ago Danny C mentioned that it had been a requirement on sixth formers at his school that they were made to do P.E with the same restrictions.

Gary,
When we did inter house running and games we were allowed to use the girls'changing room,but we were supervised by the female teacher who took the girls.

Greg quote/answer - "I don’t resent having had to shower while at school. I did just become resigned to it, as I expect we all did, but it was my very first shower that remained in my memory with the most vividness, plus a few other times when we visited other schools following school football. All the rest became routine and so now just a blur. It's the differences to our routines that we remember the most, which is hardly surprising."


So you played on the school football team like me Greg. Going back to a two year period 1976-78 I was the goalie on our team of under 15s at school. One of the worst parts of this for me was having to visit other schools and play them like you have said in your own comment. This meant sharing the changing room with the home boys when we were the away school visitors. We'd have one half of their changing room, they'd be the other half, each with our teachers. No real mingling, until afterwards when both school teams had to use the showers together, not a thing on, being watched by two teachers, their teacher and ours and I never enjoyed being thrown into showers with boys I didn't know from the other school and using their own showers. I felt much the same when our school was the home venue for a game and we had to share our changing room and showers with the away visitors to us. Most of this happened after school hours of course but it made no difference and there was never any chance the PE teacher in charge of us would let us off the obligatory school team shower even when sharing with other boys from other schools.

In proper adult football games the away team often have their own separate area and changing room, but school didn't have that luxury of course and not many had multiple boys changing rooms.

I never understood why our school or any of the schools we played against wouldn't let the other boys team use the girls changing rooms during this kind of after school football, it would have made things a lot less awkward, but it never happened anywhere we went or at ours, and all the schools were mixed.

No Alan you've misunderstood what Wootton said in his first comment and I don't see how you haven't understood it. Christine and Nicholas are right.

Look, from what you picked out;

'Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside.'



Years 7 to 11 are the ages of 11 to 16 years old in school. They are not sixth form above the age of 16. Wootton has only said this applied to that age range and not 16 to 18, and by saying regularly obviously this does not mean always either, just sometimes. But in terms of the ages, he spelt that out quite clearly for me to understand. I don't know in what context these boys are being asked or told to do PE shirtless but it could just be the old skins and shirts set up couldn't it. That is still a very common thing it seems.

I always found it fascinating last year when the other PE teacher was around commenting here from time to time and did his little survey of a couple of classes and came out with his 75 percent in class being alright with him asking them at his school to do PE in their bare chests when he asked an opinion on it.

Comment by: Nicholas on 25th May 2025 at 16:30


"Just hold on a minute here you are getting too far ahead of yourself with some of these comments......."

Clearly Nicholas, you didn't read Jay's original post - allow me to repeat the relevant section for you:


"
Comment by: Mr J Wootton on 22nd May 2025 at 18:14



"....Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside. I don't expect anyone (pupil or parent) to have an issue with that at all in the safe and closed confines of the school with their own age and gender present...."


Might be a good idea to read the originals for context, Nicholas.


Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 25th May 2025 at 16:56

It seems Jay Wotton does - I refer you to the reply I just gave Nicholas.

I didn't read what you read there Alan.

Most school sixth forms are perfectly happy if their students wish to continue on with PE in some form, but it's a very different kind of PE and sometimes the sixth former will help out. Misrepresenting the truth of current post 16 education in school is not helpful.

Just hold on a minute here you are getting too far ahead of yourself with some of these comments.

You said this about Mr Wootton - 'By your own admission you force 18 year old men to run around half naked (" regularly requests/requires (take your pick)") - that sounds extremely condescending. What would you do if an 18 year old man refused?'


Where did Mr Wootton (Jay) ever say he forces boys up to the age of 18 to 'run around half naked'?

He never said this, you are putting contentious words in other people's mouths here. All he said was that he is at a school with pupils aged from 11 to 18, no more than that. You are making some very grand assumptions here.

My own school in the early 90's had a full gym PE bare chest requirement under any teacher that everyone went along with, some like me reluctantly, to the age of 16 but nobody in the sixth form from 16 to 18 who chose to do some PE was ever made to remove their shirts, being in the sixth form gave lots of extra rights at school. I was one of these shirtless 'fusspots' according to my own teaching (not PE) parents.

They encouraged you to take a PE period in sixth form at my school but if you didn't they didn't exactly chase you up over it and if you did it in gym they were never going to tell sixth form boys aged 18 to get their tops off if they preferred not to. Yes, it was different when we were under 16 and they made us do gym PE shirtless, but once into sixth form many rules were relaxed totally, as they are in most schools.

I'd ask my teacher parents to come here and comment but I don't fancy their chances for not facing an ambush.

I’ve just read your comment, Patrick from 22nd May 2025 at 02:40, and it also made me think about enforced showering a bit too. It certainly did at times seem to be a forced ritual as much as anything else; nothing more than an observed traditional practice...with a hopeful connection of trying to equip growing children with an understanding that they should wash thoroughly following any form of exertion. But, to then not bother to supply enough soap, or even water at times, does tend to make you wonder? Perhaps it did unwittingly develop into an opportunistic culture over the years, permitting anyone to just wander in. Would any women thinking back be left with similar memories, I doubt it.

My memory of our showering facilities was similarly bereft of sufficient soap, with just a few partly used pieces lying about the floor. The showers did work adequately, but seemed to have a built in Goldilocks feature of producing water that was too hot, too cold, or just right. Our gym teacher was ever present to monitor us, but I never saw where he turned the showers on or off. The six or so shower heads were spaced around 4 feet apart all along the right hand side of the shower room wall, which was in the centre of a long, rectangular building built adjacent to our school gym. The left hand side of this building was for boys’ changing, with the walled off shower block in the middle with its own door; the right side of this same building was the girls’ area, so creating a mirror image with these same showers on the left from their changing room. I suppose these six shower heads were just about adequate for 15 pupils to become sufficiently wet following one form’s gym lesson, but when we had Games, several forms would come together. We'd certainly all be shoulder to shoulder on those occasions, with treble the amount of people in there

I don’t resent having had to shower while at school. I did just become resigned to it, as I expect we all did, but it was my very first shower that remained in my memory with the most vividness, plus a few other times when we visited other schools following school football. All the rest became routine and so now just a blur. It's the differences to our routines that we remember the most, which is hardly surprising.

Simon on 23rd May 2025 at 02:00.
Simon, what you describe is what we all experienced, more or less and we can all relate to it I'm sure. Though I didn’t arrive at my (2nd) Secondary School until half way through the year of that 1st year’s intake, my 12th birthday was still a few months away.
Comment by: Mike Tusa on 20th May 2025 at 15:36.
I don’t remember anyone -apart from our strange girls’ gym teacher who I’ve mentioned previously- who would routinely appear in our changing room or shower area, but a few people have remembered similar moments to yours, Mike. I do think that because most societies encouraged the rearing of its boys to believe that they didn’t require privacy, whereas girls privacy was sacred, this culture was always ripe to be taken advantage of by anyone and everyone, and therefore probably, frequently was. I certainly noticed such moments during my own growing up, and it’s plainly evident in so much documentary film footage. If you did happen to be a young lad who was never particularly comfortable with all of this, no one gave a damn, and you were forced to adapt and accept at times as though you were raised in an institution.

Mark, thank you for your kind reply on, 14th May 2025 at 13:57 to my post. I wasn’t generally an all consuming shy character at school, just never really comfortable with a situation where I would be observed with very little clothing, or certainly when all of it was removed.
None of us are the same with how we deal with awkward situations, so when we were forced to confront our discomforts, I think we just found ourselves lost in the moment as we complied. This would have been the expected and intended result of all school gym teachers anyway. None of us were able to get out of showering, shirtless gym, or whatever it was in the end were we, but it’s obvious those times were never forgotten, as is so clear by what’s frequently written on here.

It was interesting to read how you thought it necessary to take so much care of how your hair looked. We certainly start to take more notice of our appearance at those ages, but I bet your hair looked just fine to everyone else, except you. I don’t think any of us really see ourselves as others do. It was a family joke how my hair always looked during my childhood, and I was given the nick name, ‘busby’ by everyone at home because my hair was so thick. My mother used to cut mine and my brothers’ hair sometimes, but always liked to leave it a little longer than was usual for the times. I can remember her saying that she couldn’t find my scalp because it was so dense. But my hair at that young age was just smooth and wavy so always looked okay to me, and remember looking in the mirror before school and just combing it straight all the way around before running out. It was only during my later teenage years that I thought it was a nuisance. Somehow nature seems to make us all ‘low maintenance’ during our childhood years, unless it was just a state of mind of being so young.

I can certainly relate to your walking, ‘bounce’ comment that made you a little self conscious. Something similar happened to me, but it was many years later when I was a student. I was walking through a shopping centre when a girl sitting with others called out, ‘Look how he walks.’ I’d never had that remark before, so like you I then tried to see what she was meaning by trying to check myself in shop windows etc. Later, I quietly noticed my youngest brother had this same walk, so it must be a family trait, though hardly noticeable unless someone’s able to pick up such details. Again we’re all different, so perhaps we should just embrace our uniqueness, whether it’s a characteristic that belongs to just us, or an ability some might have to notice things about others.

Comment by: Jay Wootton on 24th May 2025 at 16:24


"....The word juggler is a 42 year old PE teacher from Essex called Jay. I often automatically use the single letter. What an odd reaction to my comment.....

.......There's a shocking attitude to the teaching world nowadays and PE teachers are at the thick end of it, isn't that proven here quite well by a reaction to my entry into the discussion....."


Jay - my "odd reaction" to your comment was because very few people address us in the way you did - unless you are Acker Bilk, very few people call themselves "Mr.", which, you probably know, is a courtesy title extended to you by others, not an appellation you award yourself.

You say that P.E. teachers are the victims of a "shocking attitude", but have you ever wondered why?. By your own admission you force 18 year old men to run around half naked (" regularly requests/requires (take your pick)") - that sounds extremely condescending. What would you do if an 18 year old man refused?. I had been at work two years when I was 18, and I was never spoken down to. I am sixteen years older than you. If I were 18 today and you were my teacher, I would ignore your "request" or requirement. What could you do about it?. No canes to assist you these days.

You seem, if I may say so, to have a very stiff and old-fashioned attitude. You accuse me of having a "closed mind" - it would seem to me, with the greatest respect, that the closed mind round here is your own., using the devices and attitudes of 50 and more years ago. Teachers in general, in my opinion, seem to live in a world of their own - a world firmly rooted in the attitudes of a long gone time. Martinets reading the "Guardian". The age of deference ended before I was born. Most younger men respond better with a more modern attitude - unless they want to enter the army to be bossed about.

These are just my views. Rest assured to some people on the forum you will be a real hero - they like things the old fashioned way. This just proves that we are all individuals. There IS no one size fits all - some people are instinctively rule takers. It just so happens I am not, and I am sure, if you were interested enough to find out, a good proportion of your pupils are not either, but you force them to adhere to the attitudes of decades ago.

Every PE lesson ended with a group shower to be taken completely naked alongside all your peers. If you were shy it was just too bad, or if you hated what you looked like. Nobody was allowed to pass on going in the showers with everyone else. This was simply how it was and millions who had to get over feelings of self consciousness about themselves. You did get over it too, because when you'd seen all your fellow class naked next to you for about the 12th time in a few weeks how could you remain self conscious or embarrassed and shy about it any longer, it became normal to see people at school stark naked with you and to be seen by your teachers, which I agree with others was the least likeable bit if you had ones that wouldn't leave you alone to get on with it.

But they did take this whole showering ritual, as someone aptly called it, too far at times. We had a PE lesson in 1979 in the school gym where I went (Henry Fanshawe) and there was a sporting visitor who came to give us a pep talk about his sport playing what I think at the time was third division football, his name and team eludes me sadly. We got changed for gym, shorts, no tops, bare feet, and spent the bulk of the lesson period sitting on the gym floor on mats with our legs crossed or sitting along benches listening to this man and watching him demonstrate some of his own skills to us while we did absolutely nothing but look on with mild interest. For the final 5 minutes having sat for almost an hour getting stiff and restless we got up and some were asked to demonstrate ball skills with him, keeping it tapped off the knee or foot and silly stuff like that and counting how many we could do before losing control. Not everyone got a go though. Some of us did no actual PE at all apart from watching all this. Even the boys who had been showing off some barefoot ball control in the gym only did no more than five minutes max. Lesson over, most of us hadn't even needed to change at all, we'd done nothing but watch and listen, but our PE teacher that day licked the showers into life and told us all to get in and use them, and the sporting guest came into the changing room and was talking among us while we did this. We'd sat on our backsides for an hour listening to the guy and were made to shower in front of him at the end of it all. We had to say thankyou to him and act all grateful he had spared some time to come in to talk. For me he'd just wasted our PE lesson.

I've got a feeling he played for Sheffield United, where they a third division football team in 1979 does anyone know. His name evades me, but if anyone knows the team at that time maybe a few names might jog my memory of exactly who he was who watched me shower in our changing room at school in Dronfield. I don't think any of us had any idea why he was brought into the changing room with us afterwards.

Our headmaster Mr Andrews would often come into the gym to watch boys quietly at the side for a few minutes and vanish again, and sometimes appear in the changing rooms even as we all showered away with each other. He even gave permission once for our teacher to raise his plimsoll against the actual bare bottom of a misbehaving boy in our group in front of us all. Yes teachers really did think it was acceptable to hit kids with sporting footwear against thirteen year old boys on their exposed skin while naked as recently as the end of the seventies. A lot of boys got the plimsoll across the hands too. It hit with what sounded like a very loud clap.

It seems a bit hazardous for any PE teacher to join the discussion on here it would seem without immediately being put on the defensive. How many have bitten the dust on here? Nathan Hind, Graham Butterfield, Robert Coulson, now Jay Wootton as soon as he arrived.

Instead of the childish insults, where is a rounded a grown up discussion. We should appreciate those teachers who come on here with a different viewpoint and debate our own perspectives rationally. It now seems that any PE teacher, or another person, who comes on here and speaks honestly as they see it, in favour of something others don't like is going to face the firing line almost instantly. What a shame.

I remember the person on here a few months ago whose name escapes me for now but he met up with a couple of teachers at a reunion in a school he went to where shirtless stuff was all the rage but didn't suggest he had a go at them but had a good chat about it with others, and this was with the very men who had done it to him personally a few years ago.

The people that really win arguments against people they strongly disagree with aren't the ones who fly off the handle at the first opportunity but those who stay cool, calm and collected and state their opinions in an articulate and reasonable way. Going in with a pre-judged attack seems not only counter productive but also plain dum, and we can see where that leads can't we, more than once now.

The word juggler is a 42 year old PE teacher from Essex called Jay. I often automatically use the single letter. What an odd reaction to my comment.

There's a shocking attitude to the teaching world nowadays and PE teachers are at the thick end of it, isn't that proven here quite well by a reaction to my entry into the discussion.

Much as I'd like to engage further I think my initial comment and the reaction to it shows I will be hitting my head against a brick wall if I continue, where I would not be given a fair hearing because there are obviously one or two very closed minds.

Comment by: Alan on 24th May 2025 at 09:52
"not allowing us to know his forename, the somewhat superior mode of addressing us - I pictured him as an "Arthur Lowe character" - would probably say "stupid boy if challenged. They seem definite clues. An awful lot of teachers are still living in the 1950s, I think. The age of deference and all that."



How preposterous can you be on here at times Alan.

There is a lot of talk on here at times about our PE teachers who had bad attitude with us, or gave off sarcasm or personal comments about us. Here you are doing exactly the same as the PE teachers that get talked about, giving off all kinds of judgemental bad attitude about someone you don't even know. It's quite funny really, you don't know just how close your own ways are to some of these PE teachers that get talked of and how they were with us as pupils under their tutelage.

Terry brought up that word you used that almost nobody has ever heard of or used in their life before. You do this on purpose to sound superior yourself I'm sure of it. You've judged "Mr J Wootton" because he used a formal title, but if I recall you correctly there was a discussion on here at one time where you made it clear how you like to be addressed formally by others in certain situations.

Our teachers could make quick instant judgements about us, and PE teachers were great at this. You do it too Alan. You've got more in common with some of these teachers than you might realise.

I've also noticed you still snipe away at Christine who offers her insight yet I fail to see how you can disagree with much she says.

Hi Mark,
I think the reason the strict discipline was accepted by the majority of children was because although the PE teacher could administer summary punishment,he could also send us to the headmaster who could also administer further punishment.Hence that was why boys were not rebellious in any way and I accepted the rules that were given to us.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 22nd May 2025 at 23:59



I know some religious schools do regard themselves as somehow "above" everybody else, but I suspect, in a lot of cases, especially if they are very strict and doctrinaire, they are afraid of the pupils comparing their school and finding it wanting. We were lucky, in that we were not a religious school (and our shower water was lukewarm but never cold - or rarely ever). If I had children I would never have sent them to a CofE or RC school because I think these are matters that the individual should be allowed to decide for themselves, when they are old enough so to do and not imposed on them at birth(our current Prime Minister boasts that he is an atheist at the same time of insisting on his offspring being bought up in the Jewish faith). I do remember one of my friends in junior school, went to a "better" school at eleven and became so snobbish he never spoke to his old friends again. Snobbery in an eleven year old is risible.


Comment by: Mark on 23rd May 2025 at 23:07


"....., you cannot for a minute imagine a situation where the boss tells his employees they must shower together because he's the boss.......

It's one of those curiosities how you could force a large group of children to strip naked and shower with each other in a school but you could never do that with a group of adults in a workplace.......

......Was Mr Wootton a teacher, I thought it sounded so?"


You make a very good point there, Mark. I think the problem with school teachers is that so many are control freaks, and in a few cases very suspect individuals, as well as bullies.

On your final point, I wondered that myself - not allowing us to know his forename, the somewhat superior mode of addressing us - I pictured him as an "Arthur Lowe character" - would probably say "stupid boy if challenged. They seem definite clues. An awful lot of teachers are still living in the 1950s, I think. The age of deference and all that.

Ian,
It was never a foregone conclusion that we would wear a T-shirt for our PE at our secondary modern that I attended,but my mother packed one just in case it was required. On the day of our first PE lesson we were told what we would wear by our teacher and all that would be required would simply be our white shorts and we would all be dressed in this fashion identically.Some of us were slightly perturbed by this and we wondered who would see us in just our shorts.At home when I complained to my mother she didn't object and thought it was a good idea.

I was thinking about the time when I worked in an open plan office with mostly 30 other men a few years ago. If for some reason our boss had taken us off on a team building event involving exercise, you cannot for a minute imagine a situation where the boss tells his employees they must shower together because he's the boss.

It's one of those curiosities how you could force a large group of children to strip naked and shower with each other in a school but you could never do that with a group of adults in a workplace.

Reading many of the comments here has slightly shifted my perspective from where I originally felt I was.

Was Mr Wootton a teacher, I thought it sounded so?

Hey guys nice chat here.

I've got a tale from two schools about shirtless PE actually.

1st my middle school, which laid open the option when I was there that you could do PE in a T-shirt or bare chest, and do it in plimsolls or bare feet. This is what they told our parents , I remember reading it myself, I was a 70's/80's childhood. I think it went about half of boys bare chests and the rest T-shirts, in pure numbers that meant about 8 boys of each. I think I mixed it up a bit between the two options. Lessons included the girls like they did at middle school in PE unless the boys were outside playing a team game other than rounders.

But it didn't last that way for long, and we got a new male class teacher and when he took our PE and saw half the boys without tops he just told the rest of us to do the same, despite the clear option being either a T-shirt or a bare chest. It was meant to be OUR option not his but he obviously interpreted it as HIS option and of course young kids obediently oblige without a word. So all the boys at middle school were doing PE as bare chests in the end, and he took away the foot option too and we were barefoot.

At secondary school we also had a very nice school vest to stick on for PE, it was royal blue, it looked good on. But when we started PE there in the first month we all got down onto the floor of the gym properly dressed for PE as we should have been, only for that PE teacher to blow his whistle, he told us when he blew the whistle it meant we listen, and one blow of the whistle and it was 'right everyone get your vests off, let's see what they've given me to work with this year' and with that we pulled brand new school shop vest over our heads and off, everyone into bare chests as our PE teacher gazed around at us and made a few sarky comments about some of us. We were not allowed to put the vests back on and did the whole PE lesson in bare chests. Over the next six weeks or so with him and another teacher we wore the vests sometimes and didn't other times but after six weeks we just stopped wearing them completely and I never wore a top in the school gym for PE ever again, a very nice blue vest going completely to waste. Even in the 80's it was so obvious to anyone half sentient that a lot of boys DID NOT like being forced into going bare chested in PE. I wasn't too bothered for myself, but I do remember a friend who always looked very awkward in those lessons.

I think it's fair to say there are rules and then there are rules, and some get made up as they go along, teacher could interpret anything their own way I think.

Patrick your description of compulsory school showers is bang on the money there. I recognise that so much. We had no soap either, just water to do like you say. Our showers sometimes didn't even reach lukewarm, they often went cold on us while we took them when I had PE last thing. The kids who got the school bus were technically allowed to go ten minutes early at the end of the day but they still made the bus children take the PE shower and often kept the bus waiting!

Comment by: Terry on 22nd May 2025 at 13:59



Hi Terry, I was commenting on what Christine had written, this is the part I was referring to:




Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 21st May 2025 at 22:23



"......It's a concern, but there were very few meaningful safeguards in those days of the early 1970's and children were a lot more vulnerable to situations like you describe. When people remember things fifty years later, clearly something made an impression at the time...."


Now it seems to me, with the greatest respect Christine is biased towards the teaching profession, however much she protests she is not. She seems to be implying that questionable behaviour ended back in the 1970s - of course there comes a time when contemporary becomes vintage, and vintage becomes veteran. I was making the point that such questionable behaviour continued well into the 1980s and beyond, and there are probably instances even today. If something was wrong in the 1970s, it was wrong in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s as well.



Comment by: Mr J Wootton on 22nd May 2025 at 18:14



"....Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside. I don't expect anyone (pupil or parent) to have an issue with that at all in the safe and closed confines of the school with their own age and gender present...."


Another word juggler!. It is a bit disingenuous to suggest a requirement is really a "request". As for being "safe and enclosed" - well let us hope it is. I am sure the authorities love having compliant parents like you appear to be yourself.

I was twelve when I took my first ever communal shower at school after a PE lesson. I remember it very well, new at school, fresh faced, still getting to know everyone, and this first PE lesson rolled around and we all had our towel in our bags in anticipation. That towel was for one thing only, the school showers. That innocent little towel that had been sitting on the rack in the bathroom at home was now a sinister symbol of what was pending.

The teacher didn't break us in gently, we were straight to it. I remember us all being asked if we had brought our towel and if anyone had not. Then being informed we had to shower there and then, and that nobody was to act all silly about it because we all look the same. He then walked to switch them on and a cascading sound of running water began. The sound of water actually made my nerves kick off, and strip we did and in we all went, nervous and awkward as hell. That teacher was lying through his teeth though. We were not all the same. I couldn't help but notice just how different everyone seemed to look. The only penis I'd ever seen in my life was my own, yet here were boys my age who had ones twice my size and with hair too. We were all so different and I was the late bloomer as they say, and didn't they like to remind me. Two years before I bloomed at fourteen. I thought it was weird that school PE had put me in that situation face to face with everyone forced to bare their private parts to each other like that, and found the whole thing quite utterly embarrassing. It was a rite of passage that I didn't feel in need of. We were so young when we did this too. You felt the eyes of the teachers all over you.

Hi Patrick,

'The most important bit for the PE teachers wasn't the washing, it was the enforced naked ritual we had to undertake.'

Absolutely. Our showers were soapless just like yours so cleanliness can't have been the real issue. Ritualisation is exactly what I think it was, a ritualisation of the PE teacher's authority over us. It just seems to have been a universally held value that boys going into their teens needed to be kept down.

We were allowed in our form rooms during rainy breaktimes but the teachers did not allocate any staff member to supervise us, which meant that all sorts of high jinks and even bullying could and did happen. This was professional negligence in my opinion.

As for the bus home, oh boy. It was like a riot on a prison bus with kids having fights, settling scores and climbing over the seats. If my school had employed the same rule as yours there would have been constant mass detentions.


Hi Christine,

'I agree that general teaching staff should not have unconditional access to a changing room, and certainly not one with active showering participation where anyone is liable to be without any clothing on at all. In my view it would rarely be necessary for another teacher not connected to PE to be in attendance inside a boys school changing room'

You and me both. I remember one time in my first year at secondary school our Maths teacher came into our changing room just as we were finishing getting dressed. What he had to say had nothing to do with PE and there was no reason for him to be in our changing room. Seemingly several of us had forgotten to hand in items of work and he proceeded to shout and rant at us for several minutes - instead of telling us in a calm and reasonable manner that if we did it again we would get a detention.

What stands out is that he chose to get us in our changing room when he could have got us the next day after assembly, or whenever.

I had always assumed that he had just wanted to catch up with us before the end of that day. But some time ago when I looked on the facebook site for my former school a possibly darker subtext was referred to, with him and another male teacher slippering boys coming naked out of the showers for offences unrelated to PE. This would have been in the 70s. Of course this is facebook where anybody can claim anything without corroboration. But from what I knew of this man and his ugly temper I find it entirely believable.

This is why today's teachers are so harassed by Ofsted. Because back when they had wide powers and leeway they abused them both.


Hi Alan,

'I sometimes think teachers would make damned good MPs - they love telling other people what to do, without having to do it themselves, and they like to treat people like toddlers, who only have the concentration of a goldfish.'

Oh, tell me about schools propagating propaganda!

My parents were Irish catholics. They regarded 'normal' schools - ie. church of England schools - with an emotion somewhere between snobbery and outright revulsion.

When I went to my (catholic) secondary school for my open day prior to starting my mum was taken aside into a parents' meeting taken by the girls' head of year, a woman who I remember as having her nose permanently in the air.

Among plenty of other bullshit. she stated that the school didn't like its pupils socialising with pupils from other locals schools out of hours because it 'lowered the high standards' they were inculcating into us. I'm not kidding. That, according to my mum, is what she actually said.

She spoke as if the school was the unofficial equivalent of a grammar school or even almost on a par with some minor private school.

This was all pure bullshit. My secondary school was a completely bog standard school with middling academic results and lost of discipline problems. But my poor mum, who had never learned any sense of critical discernment, just lapped this drivel up.

My home town had big Irish and Italian communities, two groups who tend to demand catholic educations for their children, and this gave my school a constant captive intake group.

Sorry, that was all gloriously off-topic, wasn't it?

Thank you for your kind explanation, Christine (and thank you, too, Terry). The schools I went to were referred to in their names as an infant school (4-7, 1989-92), a junior school (7-11, 1992-96) and a high school afterwards. With none of them called "primary", that explains my not understanding what the word originally meant.

Comment by: Steve I. on 20th May 2025 at 20:32
School websites don't always paint an accurate picture and seem designed to project a certain image back at the wider world about the school.



Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside. I don't expect anyone (pupil or parent) to have an issue with that at all in the safe and closed confines of the school with their own age and gender present. It remains an appropriate mode of dress for PE in a boys only setting. Showers are required dependant on activity undertaken. I'm pleased you do not have a problem with this. Very few male parents do.

To answer your question Matthew I think this is something that has had a slight change of definition over time and in recent years. Most of us think of a primary school as the middle school we went to, not the youngest and not the oldest, general entry to primary school was considered to be when you were eight year old and you could either leave it after three years at the age of eleven, or four years at the age of twelve depending on your own education authority area. So for me, like many older people, over 35, I think of primary school being for children between 8 and 11 or 12. Also known to some as junior school.

But you are correct Matthew and I don't exactly know how or when this happened but primary does seem to cover the lower school age now too, so anything up to age twelve. There is a good example near me with two old schools within one perimeter fence, one was a lower/infant school for age 4/5 to 8, the other a primary school for age 8 to 12. The lower school was named as a "first school" and the primary was actually named as a "middle" school. Both have recently been merged into one named school and called a "primary" so covering all ages from 4 to 12 now, unlike before just a short time ago.

I think we all understand what we mean by the terms used however and for the purposes of this discussion I shall continue to use the term primary to mean middle school juniors if needed.