Burnley Grammar School

Check out Stuart Agnew here tonight on the GB News Channel, a farmer and former MEP who went to Gordonstoun with then Prince (now King) Charles in what must have been the start of the 60's. He speaks of a tough regime where boys were actually woken first thing in the morning before 7am to get going for cross country running. At one point he dismisses a scene from the Crown where it was suggested Charles was able to avoid cross country running, saying if he had done that for real then nobody would have forgotten it for the next few years.

I've read about this school before in the press and our now King's hatred of it. I think it was notorious for cold showers too. It sounds less like a school more like a juvenile prison camp to me. Awful sounding place.

Watching Birth of a Nation it shows how different criteria applied throughout schools when having P E lessons. At my all boys school which was secondary modern that I attended 1961 to 1966 indoors P E was always no top no socks no pants and we wore plimsolls.
With regards to the location we did not have a gym P E took place in the one and only school hall which was also used for morning assemblies and other big gatherings. I expect like many schools at that time the wall bars were locked to the side of the wall and swung out for use and the climbing ropes came out on a gantry.
With regards to the teacher instructions were shouted out which in turn echoed in the hall along with the noise of the activities. In addition to the shouting by the teacher he also had a whistle which was used to draw our attention to him.
As far as discipline his voice was usually sufficient to maintain control.
With regards to not wearing a top this was no problem for me because I knew it was the regime because my elder brother was already a pupil at the school and I knew that P E was shirtless and pant less. Furthermore when my father at6tended a parents evening before the term started when uniform was discussed it was sated there and then what would or would not be worn during P E . In addition parents were informed that all classes would be having swimming lessons at the local municipal swimming pool and whereas as there was no stipulation to colour, it was explained that swimming trunks (which now are now colloquially as Speedos) would be worn. This was announced because swimming shorts were just beginning to become available.
Before our first P E lesson commenced the teacher assembled us all in the hall and reiterated that we would be changing into shorts and no tops or pants. He also introduced us to "his Friend" a size 10 plimsolls which he placed on the stage in the hall which he said was his "Enforcer". Any misdemeanour and he would introduce his friend to our backside!!!!
The plimsolls was vary rarely used.
The threat was enough.

Birth Of A Nation did not make comfortable viewing. The gym teacher shown in it resembled one from the mid seventies I had called Mr Bristow who didn't need a bat to clout you with, he just used his foot. The date he did this to me is still scarred on my consciousness - it was a Friday second period on 1st February in 1974 and without warning that sod chose to kick me up the backside very hard indeed in the centre of the school gym for being too slow. He missed his target and kicked me just above the bottom and more at the lower back and it hurt like hell and left me in a lot of pain all day long and further discomfort for a week afterwards sitting down. I do recall wanting to cry so much but I think I went into a state of shock and could barely speak afterwards, and I was 15 and a half at the time as well, the same size as the teacher, almost 6ft tall. He wasn't sorry. I wasn't the kind of kid to muck about in school, that made it worse. We only wore elasticated white shorts in school gym on Fridays, no shirts, vests, trainers, plimsolls or socks was standard turn out and he was fond of sticking a finger or two inside the elastic holding our shorts up and pinging it or pulling you into place by your shorts. Once he'd decided he disliked you that was it. I had three years of this Mr Bristow sod and I never said a word about it to anyone outside of the school. When we were showering afterwards I was trying to see if there was a mark discreetly and got a follow up verbal assault when he knew what I was doing. I couldn't see anything but hours later quite the bruise came through, although it faded within three or four days although the aching remained. I'm of the view that what happened was a clear case of GBH and the fact it happened in a school is no defence. I've had lower back issues most of my life in phases in the place I was kicked and it forever makes me think they stem from that sod in gym who was a quite young teacher. I'm 65 later this summer and he'd be a 75 year old I'd happily return my now older foot to for him to feel even though I'm actually a very placid and peaceable man.

Peter, I saw that being discussed on the news tonight. Someone said you used to need a raincoat to be a flasher, now you get a TV show. Couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. Is the commissioning editor on that channel yet to leave school themselves and about 14 or something.

Bill I don't know how old you are but am sympathetic to how you have felt on a personal level in school but anyone with half a brain cell knows what Channel 4 are all about with that kind of garbage they peddle under some high minded guise. That show was just more purile and childish titilation nothing more. As yourself why school age youngsters aged 14 to 16 even need to be shown adult naked bodies in the first place. They don't, there's nothing they don't already know about and have seen. Pathetic actually, the show that is, not yourself.

Tanya 2nd April 2023 at 15.48.

There was a show on Channel 4 tonight, 4th April, before the watershed which involved adults showing their naked bodies to school age children and trying to normalise how we see each other. I wish Naked Education, the name of the show, had been around when I was younger. I grew up hating my body, and I still do, and I don't know how not to. This began at school where I could never stop judging myself alongside others because I was forced to do so in physical education and always felt others judging me too throughout my young teenage years.
Especially in the gay community where body type is the most important thing (apparently) and if you're not skinny or muscled then you're invisible.

Quoting something you said Ryan - "It suddenly occurred to me that making us boys strip to the waist was about control and discipline and that in other schools PE masters where more easy-going. In any case, I left school in 1988 without ever having had the privilege to wear a PE top."


I left school ten years before you did. Our PE kits included tops with a small embossed school name and logo on them on the front right hand side, not identical but quite similar to the one on the school blazer itself.

Your description of "privilege" hit home with me. A couple of PE teachers threw this line at us about it being a privilege to wear the school top with the logo on it, not a right, and that it was a privilege they could withdraw at any time if they wished. And they did.

For any doubters out there who think it's a figment of the imagination it wasn't. Our privileges were always getting withdrawn on false pretexts time after time. They do use removing shirts in PE as a form of telling off. I strongly associate being shirtless as a form of PE punishment from being at school. But if so many boys aren't bothered by it why did they do it.

Comment by: Neil on 4th April 2023 at 17:20
Yes, back then you would hear stories of 5000 people chasing one job. Just last week I heard of an employer with a job who couldn't get anyone to even apply for it. Both probably a media exaggeration.



I know this isn't a politics forum but the Chancellor installed in 1983 was the newly late Nigel Lawson who died yesterday and by the time he quit at the end of the decade unemployment had halved.

Just to clear up, I wasn't trying to scoff at you Alan but just making what I think was a fair point in response to your previous comment beforehand.

Yes, back then you would hear stories of 5000 people chasing one job. Just last week I heard of an employer with a job who couldn't get anyone to even apply for it. Both probably a media exaggeration.

I don't wish to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't yet watched Birth Of A Nation and intends to do so - thanks Ryan for sharing it by the way. But I found the ending spoilt it and was extreme, although obviously ramming home a point of sorts, I guess about pupil frustrations at schools like that boiling over. Have there ever been any examples of that in the real world I thought to myself.

I didn't quite get the point that was being made by the PE teacher looking at a soft porn magazine picture hung up inside his locker as he changed with nothing on below the waist. The point being what there, anyone any idea on that?

The no hope attitude so much youth and school leavers had at the start of the 1980s now looks to have been far too pessimistic and things were not that bleak in the end for nearly all of us. Does anyone remember ITV's News At Ten on Friday night ending the week with a totting up of all the job losses across the country every week for what seemed like forever.

I went to school at a similar time to the film, and certainly Joe's comments/experience 100% apply to me.

We had very strict PE lessons, mostly circuit training type activities, positions changed on the teachers whistle. No stopping or talking was allowed and we were shouted at with surnames always used. Additionally we were punished with the slipper and even caning (which was rare but did happen in PE).

Kit inside was bare feet, no shirts, no pants; kit for cross country was shorts and plimsolls, stripped to the waist even in winter. There were no exceptions to this kit, so no matter how cold it was, thus if it was a cross country day we all ran shirtless.

Always showers afterwards, again no exceptions

Regards Birth Of A Nation - Matthew I agree on the casual use of the paddle or bat that was used to hit the boy in the PE lesson a couple of times. It was the casual use of it that really struck me (excuse the pun). Never saw anything like it at my school from anybody, and I'm sure there were some deserving provocations at times. If I had been that boy I'd have been home and told my parents the first time it happened and I can assure you they'd both have been up the school first thing next day demanding answers. Quite rightly. Why did so many decent boys quietly accept being treated so unfairly if this was, and I agree it was, a fair representation of some schools at the time.

There is a huge distinction between that kind of discipline/punishment on what in essence looked like it was given to a boy who probably was a generally decent pupil in truth and hadn't really done anything much wrong, and the other older boy who was demanding money with menaces with a knife and threatening to cut the c*ck off the younger boy before getting caught and given what for in the headmasters office, deservedly I thought in that case. Although was the way he was held down by all the stuff actually even lawful, it didn't look like it could have been even for about 1983. It was at least something good to see that there was no tolerance of bullying of that type. A small positive from an otherwise negative dramatisation.

In the PE lessson, just to say Ryan I don't think being told to take his shirt off was meant to be the punishment, that was the couple of hits he took. The shirt he had on looked like he'd shown up to PE in his normal all day school white long sleeved shirt so clearly he would not be allowed to do PE in that by most teachers you'd think. Everyone else was in a white short sleeved t-shirt type top after all.

But how demeaning is it to be bent over so casually like that in front of your class and given those hits on the backside like that, one given after his shirt was off too. This is definitely the kind of behaviour that absolutely kills some kids self esteem if they are prone to it. This drama worked very well as I immediately disliked the PE teacher. I can't say any PE teacher ever openly swore at us one to one or as a group and found the boxing gloves and w*nking comment to that other boy nothing I ever came across. I hope nobody else here did either.

The old lady in the office reminded me of the woman who was librarian in our school who didn't actually seem to like the fact that anyone who was a pupil at our school could come into the library to read, get books out or study and treated us all as an inconvenience to her despite that being her reason for employment in the school. I don't know what else she ever thought she was there for.

You described your school recently Alan and when I'd finished with the drama I thought it sounded like the kind of school you described on here. No wonder you have such bitter memories.

Thank you, Ryan, for linking this excellent film, which really took me back to my PE classes in the 80ies. The whistle, the barking, the whole environment, which you never really forget. The PE teacher in his strictness and unforgiveness quite resembled my own, in a certain way they all seemed to be similarly unpleasant and demeaning. In my comprehensive they were very strict on PE kit, which actually meant they were extremely draconian on imposing a shirtless regime on us boys without any exceptions. We were shirtless not only in the gym but also for cross-country, for athletics and sports such as badminton or table-tennis where there was absolutely no need for it. Very surprising to see the boys in the film are actually required to wear a top for PE.

The PE scenes in the "Birth of a Nation" film were strange to me

Certain at my school (state grammar - mid 70's), boys were slippered, but not chased around the gym. We certainly didn't wear full kit, in fact indoors we all had to strip to only shorts, and even cross country was always shirtless. I would be surprised that everyone has such perfect kit, even in a middle class school, let alone a working class one like this.

Ash, Tanya and Andy, You are perfectly free to scoff - perhaps you didn't have a bent PE teacher. We did.

As others have alluded to, you got some very strange characters in the teaching "profession" in the days before checks were made on the background of some of these individuals, like putting an alcoholic in charge of a distillery.

Good film that. Surprised how it concluded.

I wasn't sure whether the sex ed teacher and the spanking porn mag being produced with the head teacher was meant to be serious or a quite dark comedy moment.

"but we are a spanking school, why not show them, avail them of some of the fringe benefits".

I wish I'd had him for sex education.


No showers after PE at this school, or at least they didn't show them. Kind of surprising because so many of these kind of gripping dramas would finish off those PE scenes with the almost obligatory communal shower moments and as it was forty years ago likely have shown everything without fear.

I don't remember 1983 feeling quite so grim though and I was there.

Thank you for sharing that link Ryan. I'd never seen it before but viewing it made me realise how lucky I must have been to be at school just a few years below you!
I was open mouthed at the PE teacher whacking lads across the backside with his plimsoll. That kind of thing just didn't happen in my school. Which is not to say PE teachers couldn't be strict and bark orders at us, they certainly did. But the more violent aspect of the discipline they used must have been phased out during the 1980s, I suppose.
Although it surprised you, the main aspect of that clip that rang true for me was the boy being made to do the class without a top! Our regular PE uniform was also white T-shirt and shorts but it wasn't unusual for boys to be ordered to do the lesson with a bare chest. That would always happen if you forgot your T-shirt but sometimes also as a punishment. I'd agree that was about control and discipline, it happened to me when I was about 14 and I do remember feeling quite small and self conscious being the only boy in the class without my top on.

What a monumental hypocrite your teacher was Harrison (see what I did there), hating the sound of his own name.

I got away with mostly Jimbo in gym and around school. Highly unoriginal I know.

I will watch the school drama Birth Of A Nation, an interesting find. I dipped in quickly at a few points only. Like others, I have never seen or heard of it before myself either.

Ryan. Thankyou very much for posting the film. At first it looks like a fly-on-the-wall documentary doesn't it. I have never heard of it before and like you I was also at school in the year it says it comes from and must be about your age too.

I think I'm now suffering from PTSD having listened to the whistle and shouty echoey sounds of the school gym again bringing those days back so vividly on a Sunday night forty years later.

I wanted to take that paddle and stick it right across the backside of the PE teacher there and for good measure across his jaw too. How easily we forget that as recently as 1983 teachers were still allowed to do that whenever they fancied in school.

My school wasn't so poor at the one dramatised here despite so much to relate with. For starters we had no fat boys like the one in this and like you alluded to, this school looks like the type that would go without the full white PE kit doesn't it. My own gym was trainers with white soles, shorts and absolutely no chance of being allowed shirt tops in the gym among the boys, we were always skins unless there was a team game and some bibs got dished out, which wasn't often anyway.

I often think of schooldays being the best days of my life and then I get a rude awakening again to make me think again about that. They aren't really are they for most of us.

I shared the same surname as a PE teacher whose pupil I was.

Guess what.....I was also the only lad in his class who he called by christian first name because he obviously didn't want to shout out his own surname anytime. Funny that.

Lads in school all called each other by surnames, or nicknames based on surnames almost always in secondary school. None ever used each others christian first names. Was that something for others here I wonder? When I left school and kept in touch with a couple of lads we quickly started using first names to address each other outside of the school environment. Again, funny that.

Does anyone remember the TV screening of ‘Birth of a nation’ and the PE master featured in it? I must have been about 13 and I remember quite clearly watching it with my parents. It all related in many aspects to my own PE lesson, being called by our surname, having orders shouted at you, being given the plimsoll for punishment. However, I remember being quite surprised by the PE uniform shown in the film, T-shirts and trainers. I was astounded that in one scene the punishment given to one of the boys who had the wrong PE top was to be made to take it off as at our school boys always had to strip to the waist for any sports activity and also had to be barefoot in indoor PE. It suddenly occurred to me that making us boys strip to the waist was about control and discipline and that in other schools PE masters where more easy-going. In any case, I left school in 1988 without ever having had the privilege to wear a PE top.
https://youtu.be/L39HdCCdnl0?t=939

Comment by: Tanya on 2nd April 2023 at 15:48
You are wildly sexualising a normal situation Alan with that comment. You clearly see the body without clothing only in a sexual way. I think this is because you must have been a child in school who discovered same sex attraction. Are you gay Alan and is this the root cause of your issue here?



^VERY MUCH THIS ABOVE YES^

You are wildly sexualising a normal situation Alan with that comment. You clearly see the body without clothing only in a sexual way. I think this is because you must have been a child in school who discovered same sex attraction. Are you gay Alan and is this the root cause of your issue here?

Maybe PE teachers should supervise wearing a blindfold in the changing room if showers are going on.

Lance, Robbie and Dean - at least by the sound of these easy-going schools you didn't have a dirty old PE teacher "supervising" in the shower room and getting free entertainment whilst so doing

Yes Lance and Robbie, that goes without saying doesn't it.

So many schools in the 1970's have a bad rap and image.

I look around at what other people say and my school feels like it compared quite favourably marked up against others and was generally fine and easy going in a whole range of areas. But it most definitely did not let us off the showering bit, oh no. Fine teachers but strict as hell on school showering hygiene discipline for all.

You mean showers don't you Lance.

Almost certainly true. There's no such thing as a 1970's school for anyone over the age of eleven that didn't require and strictly insist on communal showers for everyone is there. They all did.

There was I'll bet the house on, one obvious thing you didn't get any choice on after the lesson Dean even in your school in the 70s.

Sometimes schools do seem to get hung up on rules, many of them silly, petty, pointless or just there to be a rule for the sake of it. That applies to schools right now and back within the living memory of most here who were young too who are now getting on. It's one thing that never changes and might even have got worse than in the 50's to 90's period nearly all on here were schooled.

Dean - reading your time back then, it sounds quite relaxed and yet you say the teacher didn't conform to type. That is interesting. I wonder if your own description meant you had an overall more contented class because of it. I note Alan would have approved.