Burnley Grammar School

What a brilliant story that is. I wouldn't have had the nerve even if I was inn the right. Good for you.

Greg2.

That story of the quiet boy fronting up to the teacher so relates to me.

Now I only left school quite recently compared to others here, in 2001 and am only just turned 40. However, just like everyone else much older than me whose secondary life was mainly late 90's, school did the showers thing most PE lessons and although the majority of PE we wore our various tops, every term some barechested PE would crop up at some point with team sports or something else.

Now all my PE teachers were okay, except for one who in my considered opinion I thought didn't like me very much, Mr Hart-Booth his name was, and was forever giving me attitude I didn't think I deserved and I felt I could never do anything right no matter how hard I tried with him. He was only 30 years old at the time, I know this because he told us.

I have never forgotten the day I gave him both barrels verbally, it was the outdoors PE lesson just after lunchtime on Tuesday 1st December 1998 and the lesson began at 1.30pm. The time is important here because he accused me of being very late arriving despite me not being late at all and perfectly on time and started arguing with me that the time was not actually half past one when it clearly was exactly half past one and I was wearing a watch that picked up an accurate time signal. Others were changing while I had this stand up argument. I'd never done anything like it before but to be so falsely accused was a total red rag to me and at 15 I was becoming far more confident of myself.

My PE teacher, Mr Hart-Booth simply would not back down with me and became intransigent. At one point I thrust my watch in his face quite close up to show him the accurate time and that I was not late to his PE lesson. I was continuing this argument standing in just my boxer shorts halfway through changing at one point when he told me to get the watch off my wrist that I shoved in his face, I shouldn't be wearing it. I actually shouted quite loudly and would not back down and even accused him of now wasting time and making the lesson late himself because of his unreasonable and wrong accusation to me. I even threatened him that if he kept on I would bring his behaviour towards me to the attention of his immediate PE superior, our head of PE and even the head teacher. It was the maddest I've ever been in school and almost anywhere else and one of those days when everything I said just came out of my mouth perfectly and well timed. Plus I was completely in the right anyway. If I'd even been 5 minutes late I'd have owned up and taken my telling off like anyone should.

So after this 2 minutes of madness which saw my PE teacher storming up and down the changing room while I followed him to make my point in his face, normal clothes off but PE kit not yet on, he suddenly went all silent on me and looked like he was sulking for the rest of a very uncomfortable lesson where very little further was said between us. It was not something I wanted to do but felt empowered by it afterwards. Nobody in class spoke a word about it. Not a single comment from anybody.

I thought I'd really gone and done it with firing off at a teacher like that so forcefully right in his face and that I was for the high jump and not the one in the school gym either. There was no swearing involved, the language was clean. I expected there to be some consequences but there was no punishment at all. Nothing.

I was brooding about it for something like 5 days and dreading his next lesson and I made sure to be more than on time and a bit early infact, dreading any kind of repeat performance. I had no history of being late or absent from any of his PE lessons.

What happened next was quite amazing. He took me aside quietly for a chat in a side room and that always spelled bad news for anyone if he did that. All of a sudden I was being given glowing praise as a great guy at school who he'd always trusted and did well, respected and liked a lot. It was everything I thought he didn't think about me and I even got a sort of apology. I almost didn't know how to react to it. It became clear he was one of those people who you can have a blazing row with and not only don't they hold it against you or see it as a slight on their authority figure status but that he actually held me in high regard for standing up for myself to him. Those type of people seem rare to me. From that moment on and for the time I had left at school we had a completely different teacher pupil relationship and it just seemed so much better as if the air had cleared. 25 years later he remains at my old school.

Taking on board your own story Greg2 I just wonder if anybody else has anything remotely similar to me here or even confronted a teacher openly which ended better than expected for them.

A couple of years ago while I was out walking the dogs a group of about eight men all looking under 45 came running past me bare bodied which was somewhat of a surprise on my regular haunt. I'd seen adult runners lots before in groups or alone but not like that. They looked like they were in serious training for something and almost like they were army or something but there is nothing like that anywhere near me at all so that was unlikely. Now I read on here that there is a bit of a barechest running craze going on in some quarters so possible I came across something like that going on.

But I was no stranger to that kind of thing myself. The area I walk the dogs is close to where I used to have to go doing school cross country and we had two teachers who took us out on a few occasions for a run consisting of a class full of barechest running lads during springtime about this time of year. Our cross country was more like a steeplechase where we had to jump fences and some minor water features along the way. We were certainly put through our paces back in the late 70s that's for sure.

It had its merits and was perfectly acceptable to me but it doesn't suit everyone.

All this about thinking you were too thin as a boy. I do understand being self-conscious at those ages, but for an active growing boy to be slender, with no excess weight, is perfectly normal during the school, growing years. Any Gym teacher who'd done a post graduate degree course in teaching, and to then specialise in physical education would surely have understood this. I think for many, it just gave another opportunity to humiliate, which seemed to be quite the routine for many Gym teachers. It does seem, from reading comments here, and remembering my own experiences, that the job certainly attracted types who would look for opportunities to give out bullying, or to just thoroughly enjoy being in charge…of young boys. Pathetic really, and some of the many wrong reasons to enter the profession. I was also very lean during all my school years, but I can't remember ever having to do a Gym lesson shirtless. We always had to wear our all white regulation kit.

I remember my Gym teacher being a very shouty, smallish man, who was also free at giving out the slipper. I do remember one very strange incident when we were all about 13. He was really having a go at one boy who was sitting diagonally across from me in the changing room. I didn’t catch how it all started, but we’d all just changed and were still sitting on the benches waiting to go into the Gym. All of a sudden this boy seemed to snap and swung a fist at him, and it then turned into a bit of a scuffle. We were all really shocked, as this lad was usually full of fun, but generally quite quiet. It seemed to end by the teacher just pushing him back down onto the bench, and then firmly instructing us all to stay where we were and to wait for the whistle; we would usually hear a whistle from within the Gym which was our signal to all go in. He then stormed off into the Gym, or maybe into his own little changing and shower room which was through a separate door off the Gym. There was then a several minute delay until we heard the shrill of the whistle to summon us all in.

I think this incident seemed to call his bluff, as he appeared just as unsettled by it all as we were shocked. He was also quite reasonable with us for the rest of the lesson, which was unusual for him. Nothing, as far as I can remember, was ever said about it again.

Bailey you were fortunate enough to have any part of your name used at all. In our school we had one or two PE teachers who cottoned onto some of the nicknames boys gave each other amongst themselves and started using them as well!

Ivan & Jason you are both spot on here.

I left school at the age of 17 after dropping out of sixth form halfway through. This was in 1989. I was just sick of the place by then and when an unexpectedly good job chance cropped up I jumped at it and took it, left school immediately and without any fanfare was gone.

As anyone who has stayed on after 16 at school in the past will know, you end up with quite a lot of these free periods throughout the week, so called study periods when not much studying was done. For many of them I wasn't even in the school grounds and just went home, nobody checked up. For one of these free periods each week we had to nominate one of them of our choice to do some PE, sometimes with other sixth formers and sometimes joining in with another lower aged class which you'd know nobody at all well.

Let me state it, I was never a fan of shirtless PE which I did have to do lots.

I loved eating anything but never put any weight on. Each week I worked out I must have walked at least 20 miles to and from school. My parents never drove me. I was a very thin schoolboy of normal height. But I occasionally found myself facing comments about how I looked, including teachers such as a time when I'd done something well and was grabbed by both my wrists, raising my arms high above my head and then looked at saying 'there's not much of you is there', something I was already very sensitive about because I tried hard to put a bit more weight and muscle on. PE that day was shirtless, quite a nightmare if you don't rate your body very highly. PE was spent shirtless at school roughly half the time up to 16. There never seemed to be any actual logic to why we went shirtless in some lessons and not others, it seemed completely random and not based on any specific reason.

It's a sorry state to have to admit this but at the age of 17 & 18 I'd spend ages looking at myself in the bathroom mirror worrying about my shape and weight thinking that I'd not developed properly in some way, no thanks to PE lessons and teachers throwaway comments about thin ones like me which played some part in how I saw myself and most importantly of all, how I thought everyone else was seeing me.

Jason I concur with your posting "Many boys were probably acutely self conscious when doing barechested PE not because of a being a bit excess weight but because they were too thin."
As far as I remember there were very few boys who were overweight. It was definitely the scrawny ones who the teacher seemed to home onto.

I didn't have any weird teachers feeling us to make sure we met their wet tests like Graeme's one on here, how creepy is that, but I did have a teacher who had a very annoying habit of jabbing his index finger straight into our upper body when he got angry, or even just when giving general instruction. Many times we were bare up top when he did this. Imagine doing that to your fellow workers in the adult world and you'd be slung out on your ear, buy hey we were only kids so fair game for the worst excesses of some of these always angry and in some cases extremely aggressive teachers, many of whom liked bellowing out our surnames at the tops of their voices. It was Bailey this, Bailey that. It's definitely in the PE teacher training handbook - thou shall not use boys Christian names.

Surely PE teachers are nothing more than failed athletes!

Very interesting post Dominic. I feel it has a lot to do with each school's viewpoint on physical fitness. I attended a private school and our teachers put us through regular outdoor fitness sessions, tests and all cross country runs with everyone stripped off. We also played football and rugby as shirts vs skins. The gym wasn't easy either and it was expected the class would show sweat on the upper body by the end of the lesson obviously it was easy for them to ensure we put in the effort. Our teachers really did expect a great deal from us physically and it was hard but worth it.

I'm not so sure there is such a big difference in overall fitness between certain types of school, grammar/private as opposed to state ones. Plenty of the classes I was in seemed more than capable and physically fit and well to look at.

As a few have already noted, if there was a slightly overweight boy in your class a few years ago he would really stand out because most of us were slim and carrying nothing extra.

Many boys were probably acutely self consacious when doing barechested PE not because of a being a bit excess weight but because they were too thin.

I wonder how many kept their old school clothes?

Following Dominic's interesting comment and the part about fitting old clothing, I can still easily wear one of my old school blazers I owned at the point of leaving school in 1978. How many people have kept their old school blazer. I also have one old football top (school standard issue with school name) that I was required to wear plus two PE vests, again school standard issue with the name on. All items have a fully sewn into the neck full name tag that everyone was always told to do.

The debate about grammars against secondary schools is one I can enter with some family experience of both. I was a home counties grammar schoolboy in the late sixties and I had a couple of cousins at the time who went to a comprehensive in North London.

What I think may possibly set the grammar boys apart from the others is I think grammar boys like me might have been generally more keen on PE and willing to participate and maintain a higher level of fitness. I was on a couple of sports teams at grammar and have a few pictures from those days. In one of them myself and the boys are aged around about fifteen and look to have very well maintained athletic bodies and we all look as if we own what would later be described as a six pack tummy, nicely toned anyway. Possibly from all the push ups we used to do. I'm sure we were not that special and just the normal look of the time for schools like mine. We are sitting together with two dressed teachers in the classic group photograph, fourteen of us, a colour photograph unusually, considering it was taken in June of '68.

On the other hand my cousins did not go to grammar school like me and seemed less than focussed. Despite our deviating educational paths in those years we did manage to spend a lot of time in each others company and talked about our schools. It was clear I was much fitter all round than both of them, noticeably so. It would be easier for me to say what things I didn't do in PE than what I did. Whereas the secondary cousins seemed to have far more limited options for PE.

The grammar school gymnastics PE kit was quite straightforward. Plimsolls and shorts. Shirt tops were nowhere to be seen during gym sessions and this would every so often include the teacher themselves. My own cousins did not do PE at their school in the same way as me. They looked at some of my school pictures after I had left and expressed surprise that I did PE as shown in a couple of the pictures I had from the sports teams I was on for gymnastics and athletics.

At my grammar boys were provided with both a soap bar and shampoo if they wished to use it. Quite decadent. Many of us used to shampoo our hair if we came in out of a very wet sports field or our head had found itself dunked in a muddy patch in a rugby or football game. Otherwise we stuck to the soap. One of my grammar friends was very grateful for this at the time because his home still didn't have a proper bath available, and many homes certainly didn't have showers installed either, so school offered a touch of luxury as he saw it. I believe grammar gave many of us an air of natural self confidence that maybe the secondary ones didn't feel. I did not feel any of the awkwardness some secondary people comment about on here.

Fast forward to the present day and I remain in good fit health and could possibly wear the same size clothing from those days. I think I am still the same size I was when I was sixteen. The two cousins lets just say have well and truly filled out over the years. I find that many of my old grammar friends who remain in touch also look well still. Whether there is any correlation to being at grammar in this and the fitness ethic in PE it gave me compared to those who went to non grammars is open to question but is an interesting observation.

Rather agree with the girls comment from the previous female contributor there.

That invasion of your person is completely unacceptable Graeme. It's easy to visually see if someone is wet without resorting to some kind of pat down like you describe. The same thing used to happen in the girls showers at my school 35-40 years ago with a far too overfamiliar and overbearing middle aged PE teacher we had who didn't respect anybody's personal space and thought she had the right to touch and inspect anyone she wanted.

I don't think I'm exaggerating it to say that there was not a girl in PE who liked or wanted to shower in our early to mid teens, especially when in the class of the teacher I've described above. I always thought that boys had a very different view to girls and took to school showers together like ducks to water with total gusto and enthusiasm compared to girls who found the whole experience of compelled enforcement of school PE days with year group nakedness quite dreadful.

I still remember the shock I felt when I arrived in the UK for my year-long exchange program in the 1980s and found out that the standard PE kit for boys in my new comprehensive school was short white shorts only, no top, no shoes, barechested, and barefoot, inside and out. As a German boy who was used to wearing a normal shorts and T-shirt kit or even tracksuits and trainers during sports lessons, this was a completely new experience for me. When it came to my first PE lesson, I was taken aback by this shirtless PE kit, but as I looked around, I realised that this was the norm, all the other boys were shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.
To make matters worse, the girls in the school were allowed to wear tracksuits outside and a leotard inside, which made us boys stand out even more. What a sight is must have been to have a group of thirty boys lined up outside the sports hall in jus their white shorts. The girls often made fun of us for our revealing and minimal kit, and it only added to the pressure I felt to improve my physical appearance.
I started working hard on my body, focusing on building up my pectoral muscles, as I wanted to prove to myself and the other English boys that I was up to their level of physical fitness. Our sports teacher was extremely strict, giving orders to us boys by shouting or using his whistle. He did not tolerate any bending of the rules and demanded a lot from us.
Activities often included endurance exercises or gymnastics, as well as team games such as football or basketball. The cross-country runs were particularly challenging, but we were proud to complete them successfully no matter if it rained or sometimes even snowed. We were encouraged to push ourselves and improve our performance at each session.
Although the shirtless uniform may seem too harsh today, it had its advantages. The shorts allowed freedom of movement, which was essential for sporting activities. In addition, the absence of shirts and shoes allowed for better air circulation, which helped to keep the body cool and dry, even on hot summer days and it helped us boys to better focus on our technique and form. It was liberating to be able to move around freely without any extra clothing getting in the way.We also learned to toughen up and push through the discomfort, which helped us to develop mental toughness and resilience.
Looking back, I can now see how this experience shaped me as a person. It taught me the importance of discipline, hard work, and perseverance. It also gave me a greater appreciation for different cultures and ways of doing things. Although it was tough at the time, I am grateful for the experience and the lessons it taught me.

Many of my own PE lessons now seem to amount to sustained abuse by the revised standards of today and what is acceptable.

I don't know whether anyone else had a similar kind of experience but my regular outdoors PE teacher was an insanely strict unbending man with quite an intimidating physical presence simply because of his own height and build, he was a big man. If we didn't pass his "wet test", his name for it, where he ran the back of his hand across the body and down the leg to check, we'd be sent straight back in the showers to go again. Half a dozen times he got me for that.

Someone once joked with me that if he wanted to be that thorough it was surprising he didn't jump in and help us with the hard to reach places.

The things we schoolkids had to put up with in the 1970's and 1980's beggar belief don't they.

I don't think anybody would actively choose to run city streets like that Alan to be fair. It's the kind of thing that seems to get done more in the open away from the kind of hazards you mention if one or two of the films I've seen online about it are anything to go by that I glanced after the subject popped up on here.

Whilst there are many people who have memories of shirtless cross country running on here, sometimes taking in more urban areas, I don't think any schoolteacher would ever have been daft enough to expect a class of lads to actually traipse the cross country in the manner and kind of areas you describe, although I note what Bernard says here.

On the topic of barefoot running. My only advice would be not to do it in London, or at least the London Borough I live in. They gave up on street cleaning long ago,and you will often find broken glass (and shattered bus shelters) smashed to smithereens, laying in the street for weeks- especially on grass verges. Ldt's put it this way -I can'ti magine any school in my area would encourage it, still less demand it, in these days of health and safety and compensation claims.

As regards as to whether it is a fetish or not - Craig and his topless running etc - it is his free choice as an adult, the same for barefoot runners. You are imposing it on yourself, not inflicting it on others, so I wouldn't say it was a fetish - just potentially hazardous and I hope you never end up in A & E.

Paul - I wouldn't have thought of exercising in a kit you find comfortable whilst still decent as any kind of fetish. Our barefoot cross country running was for practical reasons - we would have wasted a lot of time pulling plimsolls out of the mud and putting them back on our feet. Having said that, I'm pretty sure that most of us came to enjoy running like that.
I'm glad you enjoy running in a minimal kit though I can understand that you are not keen on being seen like that, especially on your own.

I completely disagree with you Paul. Late 50's, so what, if you are within normal looking range and not morbidly obese you'd look as sensible as at any earlier age. Tonight at 8pm I got in from my latest bareskin run and we had eleven on it tonight, just a shorter three mile go as it was a bit fresh for the time of year but it adds to the fun of doing it. I always come in from doing so with more energy than I go out. Our oldest with us tonight was 61 years old and looked every bit as good as a couple of guys half his age.

Bernard.

Would you say a liking for running barefoot is equivalent to a kind of bodily fetish of some kind? The reason I say this is because when I left school at 18, where I ran cross country in full PE kit top and trainers by the way, I kept up regular jogging around where I live often going out after dark to do so. I'd always leave my parents home in trainers, shorts and t-shirt but when I got to a quiet area once on a late night jog for some reason I wanted to feel how it would be to remove my trainers and carry on, which I did, deliberately running through some squidgy wet mud at one point and getting enjoyment out of the sensation. Hoping nobody saw me and they didn't, the area was quiet, and dark. I put my socks and trainers back on for the final stretch back home around the streets proper. My mum then questioned me about how my socks were so muddy on the inside and I had to think of a quick excuse. I did this a few times and stopped for a while and then picked up doing it five years later again for a bit in the Aspley Guise and Woburn area. I would also sometimes remove my t-shirt while doing the same jogs to experience jogging like that, once again in the dark hoping not to be noticed too obviously as I went and always returning home with the t-shirt back on. I kind of liked jogging like that sometimes. I rather wish like some of you that I'd been able to give it a go like that at school, I think I'd have taken to that style of jogging at that age. I'm not sure in my late 50's I could get away with it and look sensible giving it a try now though.

It's good to read such a positive comment about PE teachers for once.

The trouble is the self conscious unsporty kids in school tend to outnumber the rest and that rather leads to the overall more negative remembrance many ex pupils have of doing PE when they were at school.

Alan & the Radio 4 programme, I will give it a listen later.

For me history was the worst lesson at school. I had a history teacher in 1968 who was quite literally crackers. He had the most extreme mood swings you could imagine, one minute laughing and smiling, seconds later volcanic with rage. He also had rather an unorthodox method of punishing us which involved picking up a quite sizable book, often hardback, asking you to hold both hands right out and slamming the book hard down on them. I saw it happen to a few in my history class. He actually broke a boy's finger doing this in our school and didn't seem remotely sorry.

By contrast PE was great. Fab teachers (one was a D-Day veteran), really interesting men the lot of them, who encouraged and listened to our problems if we had any. Nobody was made to feel worthless even if it was clear they were never going top be the next Pele or George Best at the time. We did all the things everyone else here has already mentioned, the gym lessons were predominantly without any kind of top on, so shirtless and the boys all seemed quite athletic and energetic, very able and keen in the most part. Boys always looked smart in gym, all turned out completely identical, the same white plimsolls, no socks, quite short black shorts and our chest out. Strange as it may seem I also recall how neat all our haircuts seemed to be, perfect side partings were common, and some boys managed to keep their hair fully in place perfectly after a whole class. Nobody sat the classes out at the side or made excuses for not taking part. We would all enthusiastically strip off and shower at the end without needing to be told. As a boy with two much older sisters I quite liked the chance PE gave me to judge myself against others my age. I can only say it holds no poor memories for me. I even thoroughly enjoyed the cross countries.

Reading some excellent posts here lately. Looking at Oliver's one and I think personally that PE teachers did things such as your barefoot running simply because they could do so and nothing more than that really. It's the same with the whole shirtless thing too, some PE teachers had a penchant for that kind of thing and others didn't seem to although it does seem that in the general eras of many here in school it was the done thing a lot of the time. Given half a chance if it was acceptable I'm certain some of them would have taken PE in the ways of the old Greek Olympics a couple of millennia ago.

In view of the interest on school discipline, I heard on Radio 4 Extra in the early hours of Sunday morning, this "comedy" show, made in 1961 and written by Frank Muir, Denis Norden and David Climie. Clearly it is exaggerated, but just imagine somebody writing something ike this today and getting it broadcast.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b06713l2


You have until the end of the month to listen to it

Like you Bernard I had a grammar school cross country teacher who took us out for cross country in quite small groups of about 15 boys at a time, never more than 20, in a period overlapping your own actually, my period goes from 1968 to 1973, I left 50 years ago this summer. I was at school down in Devon at Torquay Boys School. Where were you at if I may ask? Our tutor would also insist many times that the lot of us run barechested. That in itself did not seem too out of the ordinary, although I personally didn't like it at first. It's an acquired taste, especially outside going running the locality. I could never understand why we would randomly get sent out to run sometimes in our totally bare feet though. Where we ran was mostly soft grassy ground anyway and it wasn't actually as bad as it sounds to do so, but the question I never remember being asked was why we were asked to do that sometimes.

In the school gym we used to mix it up with sometimes wearing plimsolls and at other times going completely barefoot, depending on what we were doing. But I remember the first time we did a cross country actually outside like this and thinking our tutor was actually joking or that I'd misheard or misunderstood what he'd said because it sounded just a bit illogical. Running bare feet and seeing so many others around doing it like that was a very strange experience and felt un-natural at first but I think it took about three goes until it kicked in as not so bad. We did only run along on grass and slightly muddier patches, nothing else hard or stony. I'm fairly certain the tutor kept his footwear on. He definitely never ran with us barechested like we did.

I do most certainly think if you have someone who wants you to run like that then they have an obligation to show some leadership and set the example themselves and do likewise. Like so many of their ilk this did not happen. If you were to ask me what I think of it looking back I'd say it would be more sensible to offer the chance to run like that rather than tell us to. It certainly didn't do my feet any harm. Barechesting it made me notice my lack of arm muscles and slim physique I suppose, and I was very blond and pale skinned with freckles across my upper chest and back.

I've read all the previous comments on the bareskin running thing and also the earlier ones on the barefoot running having benefits. Our schools must have been well ahead of their time in that case.

Another thing I remember about the tutor who took us for cross country running (and rugby) was that he'd sometimes jump right into the showers alongside us all at age 15 and it was possible to find yourself standing right beside him doing so and even being made to talk while having a shower with your tutor. The one who took us seemed fairly young. No other tutor did this, possibly because they seemed older. It's something that would never be tolerated nowadays.

There's certainly nothing inherently wrong with this kind of PE and these kind of mandates we were held to. PE was fine for me whatever they threw in front of us. I'd have a go at anything.

I now reside in Perth, Western Australia but pop back to Britain every one to two years and a little bit more changes every time I come back. I barely recognise the place I left in 1986.

I was a sixth form school prefect in the upper sixth during 1984-5 as a seventeen year old. The head of the sixth form used to hive off duties that one would expect to be the sole domain of actual paid teaching staff onto responsible and trusted upper sixth students. Among some of these duties would include getting posted to the canteen for half of a lunchtime to keep an eye on things and the younger years and report back any trouble. Often there was no teacher even in the dining room at all. We had no choice and it was an instruction to do this. I found it a right bloody liberty I can tell you. Another was spending time with the younger year classes if the weather was bad and everyone was staying inside. Being assigned these roles around school was considered to be a privilege, it felt like no such thing. As this is a primarily PE based discussion, perhaps one of the most incredible things we were asked to do was become changing room monitors over the lowest two school years where we would find ourselves filling in for absent PE teachers who didn't want to hang around changing areas on some occasions and also on the school sports day when upper sixth prefects were sent to be shower and changing room monitors and were put in the very awkward position of making sure that the younger years not only behaved themselves but did all the rest, like shower. As I was a naturally very laid back easy going chap nothing like some of my own PE teachers this was something to avoid. I felt I had no right to demand younger pupils do anything that I remember feeling awkward about but would be in trouble if I didn't do my prefect duties properly. Being a prefect was my first taste of having authority over others and it did come as a surprise to me at the age of 17 as an upper sixth prefect just how easy it was to make those 12 and 13 year olds do as instructed and they always did as I asked. But although being an upper sixth prefect sounded good on paper it really was just free labour filling in for other teachers who should be doing the job they were paid to do.

There was someone who wrote on here sometime last year that I remember who said he went to a grammar school but then the rest of his brothers went to a comprehensive. I've been trying to find that post on here tonight to refresh what he said in respect of Gary's question. I'm sure I read it on this actual thread.

Gary interesting question - I expect it varied from area to area.

I went to an all boys grammar school from 1964-1971. A friend from primary school must have had an off day when we took the 11-plus exam because he ended up at the nearby secondary modern school and I remember what he said about cross country there. It was a mixed school but only boys were expected to do cross country. They could choose to wear plimsolls and shirts whereas we wore neither. To start with in September over half the boys in his school chose to run shirtless and only a couple ran barefoot. By the end of term in December a few more were wearing shirts but hardly any were wearing plimsolls due to the muddy conditions. In the second form they were all told to run shirtless and barefoot just as we did at my school - I never did hear why the change - maybe the teachers felt their boys should be as tough as the grammar school boys or perhaps they realised that a minimal kit was more sensible. My friend took the 13-plus exam and joined us at the grammar school in the third form already used to doing all p.e. in just a pair of shorts.