Burnley Grammar School

I agree with John's point that it would have been better if the boys in his class had got used to  doing PE barechested at a younger age than nine. My first experience of it came at about the same age when I went into middle school and, as had been the case in primary school, boys and girls did PE together. The difference in middle school was that, while the girls kept the same kit they'd had before, the boys were instructed to wear just shorts. I remember being horrified when the teacher announced "Shirts off, boys and if anyone's wearing a vest, take that off too." Even at that age there was plenty of giggling among the girls when they saw us all lined up barechested. It really knocked my confidence having to do PE like that and I'm sure it wouldn't have felt like such a big deal if I'd been used to it from primary school.

Chris G,
I would have disliked being made to wear a top for PE in the sixth form after doing PE shirtless for years, I really can’t see the point in that rule. Male gymnasts normally choose to train shirtless as it’s far more comfortable. At least you were allowed to sleep comfortably.

John - I was less than delighted when, I moved on to a boarding school for my 6th form years, and found that a T-shirt style vest was required at all times for PE., with no exceptions whatsoever, even in summer. The only consolation was that standard, but unofficial, dormitory wear, which nobody in authority ever tried to influence, was PJ bottoms and bare chests. Some bold individuals went even further in hot weather.

Chris G,
You must have been delighted when topless PE was introduced at your Senior School. It was brought in at Primary School when I was 9, for the first lesson I did feel slightly awkward barechested and the girls could tell the lads that were a bit shy. By the end of the second lesson I started to enjoy exercising shirtless and enjoyed staying cooler without a top. I think that topless PE was a good policy but should have started when I first went to school aged 5. Some lads just didn’t like being made to start going without a top at Senior School when they were used to wearing one at Primary School but very quickly got used to doing PE shirtless.

Jonny L on 15th January 2023 at 16:25:

Did your Mum have any opinion as to whether or not you wore a vest under your shirt, and indeed, whether or not you wore one in bed? Did she and your Dad discuss the issue, and were they in agreement with what actually happened? And what were her views on you sleeping topless, which I assume was the case if your sisters were "seeing skin" under your dressing gown. Most importantly, though, were YOU happy with not wearing a vest 24/7 and sleeping topless at the age of ten?

Although I would have given anything to have been doing either, preferably both, at that age, not every kid felt like me, and even in my mid-teens, I found myself being asked by friends and schoolmates why I never wore a vest.

On hot days during my primary school years, Mum reluctantly accepted that I didn't need a vest, but it was not until the summer following my tenth birthday that I went without one from the start of the summer term until school went back in September. However, it was only when topless PE was introduced at secondary school two or three years later that I succeeded in getting rid of vests altogether.

Of course, as I wasn't wearing a vest during the day through that long hot summer, it didn't make sense to wear one under my PJ top, so I didn't, but didn't broadcast the fact. So, when July produced a persistent heatwave, and Mum, to her credit, suggested that I leave off my PJ top for the duration, as Dad was already doing, she inadvertently introduced me to sleeping topless. She saw the funny side of this, and nothing more was said until I went back to school, when she insisted that I should be wearing vests again. Funny thing is she didn't bat an eyelid when I didn't go back to wearing either vests or PJ tops to bed.

Jonny L on 15th January 2023 at 16:25:

Did your Mum have any opinion as to whether or not you wore a vest under your shirt, and indeed, whether or not you wore one in bed? Did she and your Dad discuss the issue, and were they in agreement with what actually happened? And what were her views on you sleeping topless, which I assume was the case if your sisters were "seeing skin" under your dressing gown. Most importantly, though, were YOU happy with not wearing a vest 24/7 and sleeping topless at the age of ten?

Although I would have given anything to have been doing either, preferably both, at that age, not every kid felt like me, and even in my mid-teens, I found myself being asked by friends and schoolmates why I never wore a vest.

On hot days during my primary school years, Mum reluctantly accepted that I didn't need a vest, but it was not until the summer following my tenth birthday that I went without one from the start of the summer term until school went back in September. However, it was only when topless PE was introduced at secondary school two or three years later that I succeeded in getting rid of vests altogether.

Of course, as I wasn't wearing a vest during the day through that long hot summer, it didn't make sense to wear one under my PJ top, so I didn't, but didn't broadcast the fact. So, when July produced a persistent heatwave, and Mum, to her credit, suggested that I leave off my PJ top for the duration, as Dad was already doing, she inadvertently introduced me to sleeping topless. She saw the funny side of this, and nothing more was said until I went back to school, when she insisted that I should be wearing vests again. Funny thing is she didn't bat an eyelid when I didn't go back to wearing either vests or PJ tops to bed.

Jonny why should it have mattered to your father so much about you wearing something like a vest? His reaction seems a bit extreme to say the least.

I remember my dad paying plenty of attention to what I was wearing when I went out later in my teenage years but that's what dads do with daughters and what I was wearing was visible.

THE FEELING OF SUDDENLY & UNEXPECTEDLY BEING CONFRONTED WITH FULLY SHIRTLESS P.E - 1980.

I have never forgotten my first gym lesson at secondary school in September 1980. We had a rather fetching official school gym vest with a couple of vertical green and blue stripes on a white background which looked quite good. I was also a vest wearer under most shirts, t-shirts, jumpers etc anyway so was quite comfortable with vests and used to them. Other than a handful of swimming lessons I'd not ever done anything else without tops prior to my entry to secondary but I was one of those who grew apprehensive about what that change of school culture would mean and remember so many rumours going around about the things that went on in secondary schools. Most of them were tittle-tattle playground nonsense, the showers one being the most obvious one that was correct. But PE did concern me and the possibility of doing it shirtless for long periods and all that stripping off, so I was relieved before I started when I finally knew we actually had this school issue vest to wear and that I even liked it. I would have happily worn it around home away from school, it didn't have a logo or anything directly identifying the school other than being in the school colours. I even looked forward to wearing it I suppose. It went with some similar styled and coloured shorts.

I remember my first gym lesson so well. We had two teachers in it taking us. We all got changed into our fresh new kit and all of us looked really good in it. There was one teacher in the changing room and the other waiting at the gym. We filed off to the gym with the teacher and I was feeling quite good and keen to do the PE, despite knowing that there was a very high chance of a first school shower awaiting afterwards and what that would be like, as the school shower was staring you in the face in front of the changing room benches we'd just come from. But I was mentally prepared for that as everyone had to be back then whether you liked it or not, school showers nudity was basically accepted as a completely unavoidable secondary school PE hazard to be done without fussing over, you resigned yourself to sharing that instruction come the age of twelve or so. Did anyone ever escape it?

What I was not prepared for was turning up in gym with us all looking great in our newly issued school kit and then the two PE teachers having a quiet mutter and the one who had already been in the gym waiting for us telling us that we didn't need to bother with our vests and to take them off immediately, hand them to the teacher who had just filed us along from the changing room, who would then take them back to the changing room again, not before making sure that all of them had been properly name tagged with sewn in labels or a permanent clothes marker pen so we knew who's was who back at the changing room. That leaves me with no top at all I thought. I was so disappointed and confidence evaporated into instant anxiety as I saw the vests all coming off and pulled mine over my head and handed it over. I had never done an actual PE lesson like that before and didn't really want to but held out the hope that it was not going to become a thing we always did. Wrong. For the next two years when we were in the gym the PE vest became almost completely redundant and was ignored, bringing it but always staying in the bag. I remember our second lesson when most of us put the vest on again but didn't even leave the changing room before it was off and the next time half did, half didn't and by lesson four or five we showed up and nobody was even attempting to wear the actual school kit vest. After two years when we had got a bit older we started wearing the vest a bit more in the gym but by this time it was getting too small after most of us had grown a bit. Some of the guys in class had parents who were not prepared to fork out on new kit to replace old that had never been worn much and so our PE gym ended up a mixture of vests and shirtless. My vest was never replaced either and eventually became far too small to get away with so I ended up just doing gym PE without it and only a very small handful of maybe five boys seemed to get new ones and wear one. By that stage I didn't care like I used to do.

Because I already wore a plain vest under regular clothes I did sometimes actually wear my school PE vest instead, not for it's intended purpose of course but I never actually told the parents I didn't wear it doing PE for a very long time but had to make it look like it was being worn so it didn't go in the wash looking unused which would have been a giveaway. I was actually quite embarrassed to tell them I did PE stripped off like that.

Secondary school exposed, literally, a lack of confidence I didn't really think I had about myself.

School in 1980 seems like another planet, but so does life in general and attitudes to everything.

Secondary school boxing, really? Leaving you with bruising and grazes?!

When was this exactly?

Jonny L,

I think you had very sensible parents. I’m sure that you very soon preferred not having to wear a vest under your t shirt or shirt and slept more comfortably barechested. I told my parents when I was 12 that I didn’t want to sleep in pjs any longer. Your dad prepared you for Senior School.

Just found this so thought I may as well recount my experiences. I'm sure there'll be a good number of boys whose parents determined when wearing vests would stop. For me it was on my 10th birthday when my dad very bluntly shouted at me to take off the vest I had on under my t-shirt so I pulled off both and handed him the vest. Then still shouting he told me he would not tolerate me wearing one either for bed or school (I later found out from my mum he'd binned them all) For the first couple of days both my elder sisters found it most entertaining but they very quickly soon got used to seeing skin under my dressing gown. When it came to starting secondary school at 13 my dad remarked that my new school had a proper barechested exercise policy which also extended to outdoor activities at the teachers discretion which pleased him. It didn't take the teachers long to start ordering us drop our rugby shirts after the warm up and usually once they were off you'd end up doing the whole lesson stripped off. Any kind of grumbling or moaning led to detention and being back outside stripped off for laps of the field or worse was 15mins in the ring barechested and being made to knock 9 bells out of some other poor sod. Both left the ring absolutely soaked and with plenty of bruises and grazes to show off in the next PE lesson.

"I don't really understand it myself either Mark, although the reason / excuse given by some of the schools seems to be that it saves time so there is more time for the actual PE lesson."

The comment above from Becky I'd like to address.

This cannot be the case at all. Initially when this began I thought it was because they wanted to keep pupils out of changing rooms completely, which seemed strange in itself when they were already in close proximity to each other in classrooms anyway, so what's the difference. But also a lot of schools after they had been closed for many months came back and insisted on shower usage and some even went as far as re-introducing showering facilities that had been mothballed for years in some cases. I only found this out when an uncle of mine who teachers and is now close to retirement age told me about it when I was having a heated discussion over the treatment of my own two children who were being asked to turn out in PE clothing for a number of months at a different school to the one he works at. As Mark has put it so eloquently, it was claptrap and pure panic to behave that way and completely non-scientific being made up as they went along from total ignorance.

Mark on 15th January 2023 at 02:28

I totally agree and where these pupils walking around all day in PE kits in less close proximity in class rooms than they would have been in changing rooms or while actually doing PE? I think not.

It was a world of precautions gone mad. At my gym we had every other locker out of use and the only consequence of that was that at busy times you couldn't find one - they didn't restrict entry, didn't restrict equipment use, showers were as normal and just as steamy, just lockers for no reason they could explain other than it was a 'covid precaution'.

I don't really understand it myself either Mark, although the reason / excuse given by some of the schools seems to be that it saves time so there is more time for the actual PE lesson.
Maybe some pupils prefer not to have to get undressed in front of others, particularly as they start to enter puberty, but presumably they are going to have to get used to doing that at Secondary school, so they may as well get used to it at an earlier age..

I think during the height of the pandemic there were a great many schools all over the place that began telling pupils to dress in their PE kits and go to school in it on the days they had a PE lesson. I've read and heard this from multiple sources actually. I think it was totally mad. How did it work in practice, for example what if the lesson was the last one of the day, did they have to go to all the other lessons wearing PE kit as well before they finally got to the PE lesson? The whole thing seemed illogical to me and not based on any kind of sound science. How could teachers who drive to school in nice warm cars, fully dressed turn around to pupils and demand that they come to school, if they walked, in shorts in the winter months which is what many seemed to be doing in the winter of 2020/21 for sure and long after. Why did so many parents put up with this stupidity and probably much else besides.

Hi Jason,
Yes I've heard of the 'free the nipple campaign', but I think in reality it will be a long time before it's achieved (if ever).
I don't think topless PE would have been popular (or even tolerated) when was at school. In fact we were probably more reserved than my mum's generation. They didn't have to do PE topless, but they did have to strip off completely and shower after PE and games, whereas we always kept our underwear on when changing into and out of our PE kit.

The social message that girls shouldn't show our tops begins from an early age for example when we are put in swimming costumes that cover our chests, which of course doesn't apply to boys.
Although we didn't change in the same room as the boys from the age of about 8, many girls started to wear cropped vests so their chests wouldn't be bare when they were changing for PE.
I think I read somewhere that some primary schools now allow pupils to come to school wearing their kit on days they have PE rather than have them change in school.
Did you have any mixed PE lessons and if so, did you enjoy them or not?
We had some mixed sessions, which I didn't mind, but some girls didn't like them at all.

Born in early 70s / teenager from mid-80s

- we boys had a male teacher who forced (verbally) everyone to strip naked after games / PE - then after ogling their privates he made them shower.

Only I (with maybe 1 or 2 others) was lucky enough not to be targeted by him - maybe as I was very small and skinny for my age - and sensitive.

I am guessing my secondary school wasn't the only one who had one of "these types"?

Hi Becky. I don't know whether you have ever heard of something called the 'free the nipple' campaign that some women are crusaders for which is where they are asking for complete equality with men with the ability to discard everything on top in public. I'm not sure whether you could consider an enclosed school PE lesson in a gym with about 30 others to be public in the truest meaning of the word but what would your own attitude have been in school if you as a girl had been told to go the full topless way of things with an entire class of girls? Like was mentioned, girls getting a look at boys in school without shirts in PE seems acceptable in a way that boys if it had been possible to look at girls topless feels less okay in some way doesn't it.

I do wonder just what the social norms on these issues will be like in another 100 years from now. Perhaps with the blurring of the genders everything will be unisex and shared completely, everyone tolerant of everyone else and no more boy/girl, male/female divides even when it comes to clothing or lack of in sport, PE, changing rooms, showers, wherever. Just thinking aloud a bit. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

"Back then children were treated like adults. Now adults are treated like children."

Quote of the week on here from James. Spot on!

Becky you're absolutely right I can't remember if anyone didn't welcome the attention from the girls.. Exercising barechested really put boys "in the shop window" as far as a lot of girls were concerned.

When I was at High School in the early 2000s both boys and girls wore polo shirts and shorts for PE.
I don't recall the local boys being shy about taking their shirts off in hot weather during the summer holidays though.
Going back to Fiona's comments about vests, mum tells me that she wore vests all through primary school and into secondary school until she started to wear a bra.
I don't think I wore a traditional vest past about 5 or 6, but did later start to wear cropped half-vests and then cami-tops for a couple of years until I got my first proper bras just before I started at High School.

My school placed great importance on physical exercise, especially for boys and having us stripped to the waist as much as possible played a big part. Mandatory barechested indoor sessions also carried over to doing some outdoor events stripped down too like outdoor fitness sessions on the school yard. Having around 30 boys all stripped off no matter how cold it was or the time of year was something we had to do once a week and was hard especially during winter but strangely the PE teachers had half the class in vests to run cross country. Girls were used to seeing us all barechested during PE/Games lessons but the favourite was a competition between girls vs boys in a best of 3 basketball games. I made it onto the team each year mainly I think due to my height. Every year was the same routine. Each game started with both teams facing each other and being very close to each other gave the girls a very good view when we were ordered to strip off our PE vests in front of them dropping them at the side of the court. These games were always very competitive and long before halftime each boy had sweat running down their chest/back also you were not allowed to use use your vest to rub yourself down at halftime. There were plenty of occasions when the girls would say "can't believe you had your vests off outside, it's freezing!" which was nice but we all knew the majority much preferred to see us stripped off rather than with a vest on and I'd guess given the opportunity today girls would much prefer to see bare chests too.

Interesting discovery Robbie. I concur with Jenny that it makes no sense. Why is something made for children's viewing forty years ago being age restricted now?

Back then children were treated like adults. Now adults are treated like children.

Nicholas, how long did your first lesson with the 2 girls last? What sort of physical tasks were you made to do with them? Did the girls ever comment on you not wearing a shirt?

Comment by: Robbie on 8th January 2023 at 03:57


How strange is that. Wasn't that originally designed for 8 to 11 year olds to watch in the first place, so why would anyone have to prove they are an adult to watch it. Perhaps somebody involved in it from the time has complained themselves.

Stuart K: Probably different reasons for different lads. Some probably always felt embarrassed so stopped, others might have just been taking advantage of the relaxed rules, and a few probably just out of laziness, but the older you get you feel more entitled to decide things for yourself and the chances are if you felt it embarrassing or humiliating to be herded in at 11, those feelings will still be there at 15 or 16 - perhaps even more so.

If most of us in school were not so bothered by the showering issue I've just got one simple point to make.

At fourth years in my own school they became free choice after three years being compulsory after PE. Guess what, nobody used them from the fourth form onwards. Nobody. Everyone stopped. I was in fourth form in 1988.

It was a funny decision because we still sweated out as much if not more than we did in the three lower years and we were well used to it.

But we all just dressed and got off. Nobody actually chose to shower.

Why?

Did my ears deceive me or did I really hear in one of the latest revelations on radio this lunchtime from that book being promoted all over the media currently that a certain ginger whinger had something called a "wash matron" I think it was described as, or some kind of similar wording, who was getting him up at prep school with all the other ones in the dorm and washing his hair each morning and a whole lot more, jesus wept.

Iain Dale on 9th January 2023 at 04:46

I am glad justice has finally caught up with the dirty old man - he couldn't help himself, even when he returned to South Africa. I think it is horrifying he got a job in a school for the deaf. Children with some sort of disability feel even more isolated - you can only hope he didn't get up to his squalid tricks there.

Nicholas, can you recount what subsequent mixed sessions were like? You said it always felt odd when the girls were present, did they ever tease you or cause discomfort in any way?

Did your parents know or comment on this PE policy? Did they approve? Did you ever question why you had to change schools too? Did you ever ask to return to your old school?