Burnley Grammar School

I was at secondary school in the 1960's, and the picture is very reminiscent. We were allowed, no, expected, to wear a white singlet, and very short shorts, with no underwear. To this day, i do not know why underpants were not allowed, as both my sons and grandsons have worn briefs under their PE shorts. I wore trunks (old fashioned name for boxers) under my shorts,and got away with it for a few weeks, before the elastic weakened, and they showed below my shorts. I got the cane for disobeying the no underwear rule!

Most of your posts prove that boys doesn't really mind having to be shirtless for P.E. So I can't see why most schools stopped that rule. It is much more logical and healthier being barechested for P.E. I can't see the real purpose of shirts.
Why do boys wear T-shirts in many schools for PE nowadays? Why most schools have stopped shirtless PE lessons? Any ideas?

Like many people who’ve posted I went to school in the 1970’s.

We had very tightly defined uniform requirements, and this also covered PE and games kit. As was pretty common then, we wore only shorts inside, and did cross country in just shorts and plimsolls, so no shirt no matter how cold it was.

I think most boys enjoyed PE and games sessions, much more than most other lessons. I wasn’t embarrassed in any way about being stripped to the waist, and I doubt anyone else was. It was just what you did, and also we had to shower naked after any sports lesson, so you rapidly got used to seeing one another with no clothes on.

Yes the gym was often cold, and the showers were nearly always freezing, but so what. The school cross country course included some local street, and it was a common sight to see boys running with no tops on, so you knew what was going to happen before you first started at the school.

To school on a winters day, generally you wore a vest, shirt, pullover, blazer and coat, so it did seem strange to be forced to take off everything and run outside with a bare chest/back. But again, you didn’t have any say in it, and everyone had to do the same, anyway wearing a thin vest would have been little benefit anyway.

I was at school in the late sixties/ early seventies and have a vivid memory of a rugby session at the start of term. The master was a barrel chested welshman who began proceedings by having us stand in a circle round him and go through the warm-up routine, this ended with us all on our backs, feet towards the centre doing various excercises one of which was both feet up, legs straight(good for the abdominal muscles) at which point anything worn under our very short shorts was clearly on display. After this he announced that he "couldn`t help noticing" that some of us were wearing unsuitable underwear or worse, none at all and the correct item was a jockstrap and woe betide any one not having one next session.I can`t remember what the punishment was to be but I don`t recall any one not complying.

This is an excellent pic which reminds me of my schooldays. I went to boarding school at the age of seven in 1967 and stayed through prep, junior and senior houses until I was 18.

Sports kit was consistent throughout my time, for gym work we had a pair of white shorts, for outdoor PT, running etc. we added a pair of plimsols, for rugby we had a shirt, shorts, socks and boots, underpants were not allowed at any age and checks were made. Wearing underpants resulted in a slippering on the first occasion and the cane on any subsequent occasions. Swimming was always naked.

The sports pavillion was set away from the school buildings and the rule was no sports kit on the school side so we always got changed in there. There were changing bays for about twenty so space for about two hundred boys to change in ten teams and one huge communal shower so no room for anyone to be shy. There was never hot water in the pavillion so showers were always freezing.

The various teachers were strict and unbending, standards were high and nonsense was not tolerated and dealt with swiftly. That said, the sports staff in particular were generally good fun and always went the extra mile to encourage you and get you performing.

For academic work we had monthly tests and there was something called the average marks rule. If your marks in any test fell below your previous average the result was the cane unless your average was over 90%. It certainly was an incentive to keep performance up but of course the harder you worked the higher your marks got and the more you risked a caning. I got quite a few but in the end left with some very good results. Imagine that being applied these days.

When I was at school we wore satin shorts with side slits.They were very revealing and had a shimmering affect.

in our day there was nom inhibition in doing pe commando there couldn't be whaat with thim white nylon shorts ( very short) doing excercises in pairs especially handstands you saw everything & showered together afterwards. are boys more effiminate now & no longer men & embat=rrassed to be naked in showers together?

London Lad, I'm 13, and yes, modern schools have it A LOT better!

he modern schools do boys now wear underwear for pe?

How sad that people had such awful experiences as those described in the recent posts but it seems to have happened outside of P.E. lessons. Thankfully,I think most of us have happier memories and enjoyed our P.E., as those in the photograph seem to be doing.

As I've stated before,I experienced morning cold showers and daily cross country runs whilst stripped to the waist.
Like 'Jon' I went to an all-boys boarding school where the PE staff insisted PE was done barechested both indoors and outside regardless of the weather.
As caning had recently stopped at the school we got seriously gruelling 'punishment hours' in the evening. The PE master was an old sadist, of that I'm now convinced. Any boy would rather have accepted a good caning than get 2 hours
one evening, never mind an ongoing nightly affair as in 'Jons' case. We had ours in the gym bare barefoot, no vest allowed.
Guys behaved to avoid these. There was a huge climate of fear during my time because of this one man.
I once had a two hour session and I was the only one being 'punished'. Although the cane, strap and slipper had been stopped while it was still legal and going on throughout most private public schools in the UK, the school had 'volunteered' to give up whacking and replaced it with something much worse.
That sadist still used the neck strap of his whistle to whip the legs and torso with at will. If one was taking too long to change after games he'd lash you with this cord. It stung like blazes and left a nasty raised stripe.
Can you imagine two whole hours with this nutcase whipping you if he decided you were not sweating enough or doing squats quick enough. Two hours with one drink of water half way. I do not recall anyone having two in a row but do remember the nurse excused lads off lessons the day following one and they'd stay in bed all day. Brutal.

I went to an all male boarding school in Scotland in the mid 1970's. It was a strict regime and quite hard, especially for the new boys.
Every morning we would do a 2 mile run wearing white pe shorts and plimsolls. When it wasn't frozen, we also had to, immediatly after the run, do 4 lengths of the outdoor pool which was so so cold in the winter. We took off our shorts and plimsolls, did the swinm and then dashed back to our House to try and get warm. The thing I remember was that in the cold days of winter, our housemaster and his wife, who were all wrapped up, used to check religiously that every boy had done the run/swim and finished it off with a cold shower. There was no hot water in my House although some of the other Houses had hot water. My House was always very popular though, for some reason. These were harsh times but really only in the winter. In the summer, we all enjoyed it and had a lot of fun.

For a video version similar to this photo see the P.E. scene in the excellent "P'Tang Yang Kipperbang", set in a 1950's grammar school. It is followed by a Head's caning as mentioned by Stephen with an hilarious voice over by the cricket commentator John Arlott. The film, a touching and at the same time funny rite of passage story, is available on DVD.

yes that could be the school I went to in the 1960s White shorts and plimsols a Boy found in underpants did it bare for a few times. Showers were compulsory the only tiem a jock strap was allowed was when you played rugby against another school It ws common to see things hanging out of shorts when you were in the 4th 5th and 6th forms. In the winter cross country runs were shorts only to come rain , hail or snow. A boy who played up went to the hea dand came back with a hot bottom.

My school's PE kit is a bright yellow t-shirt with black shorts, together with the standard school socks and shoes. We also had a white vest used during different occasions. After the first PE lesson, our teacher told us to come in the vest instead. We were slightly uncomfortable at first as we could feel the breeze on our shoulders and even across our chests as our loosely fitted vests created air spaces between the vest and our 13-year old bodies. It made us feel more vulnerable. During competitive sports, one team had to be stripped to the waist to differentiate the teams, and nobody liked to be in the stripped team. Boys who did not bring their PE kit would have to borrow another boy's shorts and change out his uniform, leaving him shirtless. As mentioned by someone else, this was perhaps a show of power by the teacher, and to force the boy into a compliant and submissive state, knowing that he was being punished. 

Ahh, school PE lessons ... I went to school a little later than many others her (mid 1970s - mid 1980s) but I think I just caught the 'tail end' of the old regime, as my state schools (in the 'grim north') were rather old-fashioned with many staff (including the venerable PE teacher) having been there decades and very stuck in their (traditional) ways.

There was no uniform at my old Infant school (it was a poor school in a poor area) and this was reflected in the PE kit - boys simply did indoor work (there were no outdoor facilities) stripped down to underpants and in bare feet. Unthinkable today, but very common back there and then. I vaguely recollect being allowed to keep my white vest occasionally, but really, we never questioned or thought about it - we simply did as we were told!

Moving up to Juniors we got our first taste of 'proper' PE involving apparatus work like in the photo. Again, the school didn't have a uniform, but we were expected to bring and wear 'suitable' shorts (i.e. proper gym shorts not casual wear). We were allowed to wear black plimsolls indoors and a vest, and a few boys did, but I never bothered, largely spurred by a 'PE mad' friend of mine who always insisted on doing everything bare chested and in bare feet (he used to keep telling me how better it was).

Moving up to Seniors, and I finally got my first taste of having to wear a proper school uniform. The school also had a set PE kit for both indoor and outdoor sports. Outdoors was generally a rugby kit in school colours, although for athletics and cross-country our indoor kit was worn.

Indoors, the kit was ostensibly 'shorts only' and we were permitted to wear the same shorts as our outdoor kit (plain black). However, the rules did permit the wearing of a plain white vest and clean plimsolls or trainers for indoor work, but this was generally frowned upon by the teacher. However it didn't stop some boys from wearing the whole lot (which I always thought wa stupid). Some boys never wore anything for indoor work except their shorts (i.e. bare chest and bare feet) so classes ended up with boys in a mixture of kit. Although I was a rather scrawny boy who was rubbish at PE I always took the class very seriously and did my best, and this (along with my insistence on being bare chest and bare feet) always seemed to impress the PE teacher who was very supportive. Whereas those who wore vests and trainers and generally didn't put any effort in, were the ones who ended up having to do laps of the field in the freezing cold and pouring rain after school!

I miss those old lessons. Like others here I agree that contemporary school PE lessons are ridiculously 'soft' and lax. Yes, back then the gym was always freezing cold, and the lessons (especially circuit training) was relentless ... But at same time there was a certain 'macho' atmosphere with boys wanting to show off and prove that they were 'men' and could perform the various activities as well as the teacher (who, for an old man, was amazingly adept and fit).

But it's all gone now, along with those freezing cold dusty old gyms with their deadly wooden wall bars and medicine balls. Now we have school teaching soft non-contact sports and aerobics ... Shudder ...

Our all-boys boarding school wasn't in Scotland but the PE staff insisted PE was done barechested both indoors or outside regardless of the weather or time of year. If you were seen to misbehave or not apply the required effort you were punished with a 2hr remedial session under the lights on the school yard from 7-9pm, obviously stripped to the waist and the term of your punishment could range from one night upwards to 2 weeks, determined by the PE staff. Now I can tell you this was a nightmare during the winter months!

I experienced morning cold showers and daily cross country runs whilst stripped to the waist. Sheer hell in winter. However I've read of even harsher regimes in Scottish boarding schools where boys had to submerge themselves in a cold bath first thing every morning. Has anyone experienced such a thing?

yes I remember Buckmore Prk. Is there still a Scout Campsite there?

I attended an all-boys Kent grammar school in the late sixties/early seventies. As I recall, our PE kit was white shorts and shirts, with dark blue shorts and red and black hooped shirts for games. Having an open air pool, at least when I started, we always had to wear trunks for swimming. i was never much good at sports, but I cannot remember our PE or games teachers being anything like the hard disciplinarians mentioned here, but they still kept order and had a great deal of respect from us.
Mention of swimming in the nude reminds me of Buckmore Park at the time, a scout campsite, where at that time there were certainly some all-male nude bathing sessions!
It would be considered highly improper now, but little was said at the time, though we scouts were quite rude about the individual who insisted on it!!

Yes, I remember Mr. Parry being my PE teacher back in 1962. The gym equipment is very familiar. Google Sam Hanna, the woodwork teacher. A keen photographer and I believe the first person to film Man U in colour back in 1957! Now beat that.

I did p. e. in just a pair of shorts when I was at school over 40 years ago. We were all the same, no shirt, footwear or underwear, so there was no need for embarrasment. We enjoyed being able to get out of our uniforms and the cold didn't bother us in the winter, even cross-country running was done in just shorts. I think boys were tougher then and didn't have silly hang-ups about their bodies.

I remember ehat I hated the most which was SHIRTLESS PIGGYBACK RIDES! When it was really cold your nipples would get hard. It would not feel good being carried with your hard nipples on soomeone's bare back

Our teacher used to do the same thing when he gave boys a PE detention; first you all got changed into full PE kit, then each boy had to stand up in turn for a kit inspection. Any minor infringement of the rules resulted in extra punishment – wearing the wrong colour socks, or having a dirty towel, for instance. If you passed the inspection, you were then ordered to take your vest off and line up outside – which, if you were lucky, meant the corridor leading to the gym, if not it could mean the playing fields on a cold afternoon. In a regular PE lesson we would sometimes be shirts or skins, in detention every boy was skins without exception.
It did seem illogical to me that I had to put my vest on only to remove it almost immediately, but it was probably a power thing, a reminder from the teacher about who was in charge and who was being punished.

Our classes at secondary school weren't like that, but when I was at infant school in the mid 1980s we did gymnastics in mixed classes with boys in blue vests and briefs (none of us wore boxers at that age) and girls in vests and knickers. However in the summer when it was warm the boys were allowed to tak their vest off and just do gym in their briefs. This practice stopped when we went to junior school (age 8 to 11) and we did gymnastics barefoot in shorts and a t-shirt, still mixed.

At secondary school in the early to mid 1990s we did gymnastics barefoot in white shorts and a green rugby top. For everything else it was that plus socks and trainers/football boots. Shirts v skins must have been frowned upon by then as our rugby tops were reversible - turning them inside out revealed a yellow hoop on one side only. If you were picked for hoops in team sports you took your top off and turned it inside out to wear. In cross country in the summer you were allowed to take your shirt off if you wanted - not compulsory - but those of us who did did it more to pose in front of the girls in the fields we ran past than anything else!

Our kit was listed as a vest and pair of shorts but we were to find out it was anything but. After changing for our first lesson we all trooped out onto the field and lined up. Shortly after the teacher turned up he looked along the line, pointed and shouted "You, out to the front" and then "Right then vest off!" After dropping my vest on the ground we were told this would be our PE kit. One boy mumbled something and was given a cold shower at the end of the lesson for his troubles.

So it was our vests were off for all PE/Games lessons (then 5 periods at week, 1 double and 3 singles and though for some reason we had to put our vests on in the changing room just to take them off a few minutes later) regardless of temperature or weather.
During the winter the girls tried unsuccessfully to monopolise the gym and on numerous occasions when they were outside, their teacher would "accidently" forget extra netballs or equipment and send a couple of girls to collect these from the storeroom at the bottom end of the gym. It always seemed to be timed so they'd enter the gym as our vests were coming off!

Michael, were you forced to perfoem P.E shirtless?

The picture reminds me of my old grammar school days. I was academically inclined but not physically adept - brains not brawn you could say. Which is why I suppose, I went to a grammar school in the first place.

Because I wasn't confident at football or gymnastics or indeed anything of the sort, the PE teacher took a dislike to me. He could have done what teachers are supposed to do, i.e. help me to develop my skills so I could begin to enjoy the activities. But no; all I got was sneering contempt, humiliation and the gym shoe on my backside. Accordingly, the school gym was a torture chamber to me, made worse by being bone-chillingly cold most of the time.

I couldn't get out of that gym quickly enough. I could have enjoyed some sport during my adult life but my experiences there put me off permanently.

we had awfull thin seethru nylon pe shorts at my school, only a few lads wore anything under them, and every now and then the lessons would change from football to swimming, and when this happened we only had white shorts, so all the boys had to wear there white football shorts in the pool, which got very seethru when we got out of the pool and stood on the side for diving practice. everything visable

I don't understand how Toby could forget his PE shorts if he was a boarder. Even if he had the world's worst memory, he and his shorts would surely always have been on the same premises.