Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

Chris G, I considered it strange that I should be kept in shorts when most of my contemporaries wore long trousers,but my mother liked to see me wearing shorts.I tended to wear just shorts when the weather was warm at home.I normally wore a PJ top.My friends looked on with bemusement as most at that time wore long trousers.

James - as a secondary school student, what was your response to your mother wanting to keep you in just shorts at home. Were you absolutely forbidden to wear pullovers, shirts, vests or any combination of these? What about cold weather - was the house kept warm enough to be topless all the time? Did you have to sleep Without a pj top? What did your friends think?

Hi,at the secondary school that I attended boys always went with bare chests and just wore white shorts.This continued with all boys until they left school at sixteen.Sometimes the gym was shared with the girls when the weather was unsuitable for them to play outside.Of course this led to some embarrassment for the boys as most of them were shy about being seen by so many girls. in just their shorts.We were seen by as many girls as there were boys in our class and when parents were invited to organised sports events we were seen participating at our sports by many parents as well as all the girls in just our shorts. Certainly my mother liked the idea and decided to put me in just shorts at home.

My boarding school days were quite grim at times Mike L, thanks for your own experience of yours.

The ice bath is a popular thing that sports people do nowadays. In my school we had a row of six full sized bath tubs as well as a huge shower area. The communal shower was for PE, the baths were for bath night a certain time each week. But the baths were also used, mainly by PE teachers but sometimes by others, as something to teach us a lesson or to essentially punish you for various misdeeds. Boys were sometimes given cold water baths to sit in and submerge fully, head under, and to stay there for a set amount of time. I had this and you were made to strip and get in quickly, no messing about with it, and it took your breath away something big, and then they'd tell you to get your head under the water too and when you did that it took your breath away even more and gave you the most amazing cold feeling all over before you got your head back up. I'm convinced they did it more over winter and cold days to make it worse and the water even colder. There were no bags of ice cubes thankfully but it was cold enough already. We would have to sit in this cold bath water for 10 or 15 minutes, with nothing on and becoming very cold, although the water did feel like it got warmer as you lay there but getting out after quarter an hour into a cold changing/bathroom area made you shiver, which was probably the intention. Even when I got my head above water after being told to submerge it, I had to keep the rest of me and my shoulders fully under water, up to my neck and touching my chin. I have three memories of a cold bath punishment at boarding school, two were given by a PE teacher, and on one occasion all the baths were filled with cold water and used for someone at the same time, reasons I cannot now remember, but always quite trivial really. I think I was just 12 when this first happened to me, so quite young.

What with the extra tuition they also dished out involving running the school grounds in bare feet and bare chests in any weather going, it now seems highly improper and ill judged bordering on going too far.

Hi Liam, I started as a 9yr old and left at 18. Hope this helps.

When satin shorts became fashionable in the 80's my mother bought me several pairs in different colours. They were very shiny and comfortable to wear and preferable to my grey school short trousers.I wore them for PE and games at school and at home. I even went shopping when wearing them.

Mike L
What years did you attend that school.

Nick and Peter thought I share my recollections of PE and punishment at my boarding school in Herefordshire. We had PE timetabled for Monday to Friday with a two hour session on Saturday morning with all boys out on the huge playing field exercising probably to make sure we were up early. This was the only day you could choose to wear a vest if you wanted.and a good few took advantage when it was cold..
There was no distinction between exercising in the gym or being outdoors, all vests came off regardless. One notable event was being given a week's worth of sessions for not paying attention to the head teacher during English. These were a 6.15am start for a very demanding hour and a quarter gym session (as usual without vests) followed by laps of the field until you could barely run and a freezing cold shower. afterwards.
Another favourite punishment for 11 year olds and up was making you run up and down long flight of stairs with a teacher at both ends and another present so you couldn't grab a breather. Always performed in just briefs, no vest, barefoot and late on at night you were sweating long before your cold shower. Like everyone else I took more than my fair share of both punishments throughout my time.

I was given corporal punishment at school, caning across both the hands and also the behind on a number of occasions to do with my lack of willingness to attend PE lessons or to participate adequately. I was caned for persistent failure to bring the PE kit correctly, for endangering someone on a climbing frame, and for persistent refusal and attempts to avoid a shower. One PE teacher even clouted me across the head very hard for refusing to remove my top for running shirtless one afternoon before pulling, and tearing as he did it, my top off by force, then sent a note home to my old folks explaining why my PE top was damaged with a tear down the side. I got the bellowing of all time from them at home for that as they stood up for the teacher and not me. There was nothing about PE at school (1971-5) that I could abide, it was a sentence like hard labour to me with all the associated humiliations that went with it.

I was an unhappy boarder in the 1960s.

Out running a cross country in PE a lad next to me tripped up and I was accused of making him fall over on purpose, we'd had a bit of history with each other, but it wasn't true, his fall was his own fault, and he got a bit of a grazed mess.

I was sent off to my head of year master by my games teacher, who decided that I needed a dose of his 'medicine', corporal punishment, and was sent to the headmaster to get it. This was the cane. On my way I stopped off in a cloakroom and got some clothing to pad down my trousers and wrapped a small exercise book in the middle of it to try and protect myself rather cackhandedly.

I got tot he headmaster and was give corporal punishment, was told it would be three stokes of the cane on my behind and had to bend forward. After hit he realised I had stuffed my trousers with padding of come clothing and a think exercise book. It worked and dulled the effect well, but made a sound that gave the game away, but you could probably tell anyway on closer inspection.

With that I was told to unfasten my trousers to show what I had done, and with that the headmaster threw those bits aside and pulled my trousers and my underpants down fully to my ankles and caned me six times on my actual skin, this was terribly painful and made me cry. When he'd done it all I remember was his finger jabbing in my face and being told never to try and make a fool out of him again.

What Nick says rings a few bells with me. It was all about "the school" and not letting "it" down, rather than about us as individuals.

While I went to a state grammar school, I had friends who boarded, and had similar experiences to Nick.

One friend's school used workout/running sessions as a punishment or poor behaviour. They had to do a gym workout, followed by a cross country run - the only kit allowed was a pair of shorts, both in the gym and for the outdoor run. Often boys got caned as well on return. These sessions took place all year around, irrespective of weather/temperatures.

I was privately educated at a boarding school in Devon in the 1970s with a strong sports ethic, which was bloody hard on those who didn't quite make the grade or were not quite as sport obsessed as others.

We had 4 PE lessons a week, yes, FOUR. Two gym, two outside.

We were so regimented that we even had to have the exact short haircuts the teachers wanted, and if you started getting longer (this was the 70s) a teacher would force a trim on you and do it themselves even. You wanted to avoid that happening.

I was there for 7 years from age 11 to 18. I certainly came out fit.

All 7 years I was there was a non tops policy for the gym, and a no tops policy going out too a remarkable amount of the time. Our gymwork was barefoot and not plimsolls. I've just mentioned the haircut length, our PE teacher even used to check the length of our toenails every now and again while we sat on a bench, all our little toes lined up side by side as he browsed them all. It was here I was educated that the toenail could have the potential wounding power of a stanley knife! More than one of our gym teachers were hard as nails with us.

We ran the cross country with shirts or vests on. But there was something called extra tuition for those not up to standard or who were in trouble, and this was assembling for an early morning run around school grounds, a cross country in itself as they were so many acres of land. This was before the days lessons, and could be as early as 7.15am.

There was no vest option, it was bare chested, and unlike usual cross country, no footwear, it was bare feet. Extra tuition was the same all year long, and is tantamount to abuse when you look at it now, making boys go running at the crack of dawn any time of year and without trainers or vests on. We all got extra tuition at some point, I did multiple times, notably freezing half to death once, and another in driving rain. The weather never put the PE teachers off taking anyone out for usual PE or extra tuition.

If you went to extra tuition and gave out any suggestion of poor attitude or was openly hostile, the belt or more often the teachers plimsoll was waiting for your bum back in the changing rooms, when it hit with force on your bum cheek it almost sounded like a gunshot. I was regularly beaten with that shoe.

Don't be like me and go to boarding school.

Toby

We were vests for cross country, as my post.

One of my mates, who went to a different senior school, had to run xc all year around, always stripped to the waist. It was policy across the whole school, and every boy had to do the same, aged 11 to 18, every week.

Andy Our PE/Games teachers held the same views. From the age of 9 to 18 I don't ever remember an outdoors session where the whole class wore a vest for a full lesson. Skins vs vests was as good as it got.. For the vast majority of outdoor sessions we were simply told to drop our vests outside regardless of temperature or weather conditions..

I went to a grammar school in the 1970's.

We had "normal" PE/sports kit, meaning white shorts with school crest, house banded vest, plimsolls, white socks for PE and cross country, plus the usual rugby, cricket kit. This had to be purchased from a particular shop and was expensive.

One of the parents started a campaign (via the local paper), concerned about the high cost, but also suggesting that boys didn't need a vest etc for sport. From memory it was along the lines of "all they need in the gym is a pair of shorts plus maybe plimsolls for cross country. They should run stripped to the waist, even in winter"

Not sure many of us agreed with this (especially bare chested in winter) , but lot of parents did !

Much like the previous comments, we had PE teachers, at least THREE, all with a similar mindset and attitude to boys and effort. If we'd been in an outside PE lesson and for whatever reason our PE teacher that day became exasperated with lack of effort or something along those lines, we would find near ourselves "punished" by being made to take our PE shirts off and go running laps of the school field until told to stop. Sometimes it just involved a small group of boys in class who were singled out, other times the entire class copped it, somewhere in the region of 35 of us.

In one case our whole class was sent running the field in circles with our chests all bare, our PE shirts left in a pile on the grass, and our PE teacher made us all keep running and running, past the end of PE and all through our break time too, finally stopping us when we should have been going to an Art lesson. Going back we were not even given a hot shower, we had to shower but it was made deliberately much colder than normal. Then the Art teacher got thoroughly peeved because we all turned up in his Art class about 15 minutes late and he was in a mood about it, but our PE teacher didn't care about that and we still got the blame ourselves anyway. So we'd been made to run a chilly day shirtless, then a chilly shower, made late, and everyone feeling hassled.

Just a typical day in school really! This was how they used to be with us.

I don't recall ever having to run cross country bare chested but as Toby P mentioned, doing laps of the field that way was also a common punishment at my all-boys school in the 1990s. I think because we normally wore tops for PE outdoors, it felt like an additional part of the punishment being made to strip to your shorts before you began running. In the case of my PE teacher, he refused to allow you to put your shirt back on after finishing the laps, so you also had to spend the rest of the lesson bare chested.
For PE lessons in the gym, our kit was just shorts and footwear, with gym socks optional. We were all made aware of that beforehand in the school handbook, which stated that boys were not permitted to wear a shirt or vest of any kind in the gym.

Alex, yes bare chests cross country was hard particularly on a cold day. Laps of the field bare chests was a very common and regular punishment and you'd see boys doing it pretty much everyday. We were also given two outdoor fitness sessions a month where the class all had to strip to the waist outside, dropping our tops in a line on the yard. Our teachers were experts in getting us to show sweat.

My grammar school, started there in autumn 1968, would have felt luxurious to have a top for the cross country, we nearly always ran out for cross country in our bare chests only, on specific teacher orders. It was considered character building. We were often very cold running, and bits of mud would flick up at your body and speckle your skin, mixing with any sweat that might eventually develop. We also ran this way on some quite warm days, dripping sweat from every pore and feeling exhausted. Whatever the conditions, we did it bare chests though.

I recall turning up to PE with a new teacher in one of my own tops just like others did but this teacher we had just flipped and accused us all of looking a right mess because we all looked rather different, so he decided to fix it and said no tops on and get the lot of it off, from that moment on in his lessons he never allowed boys to show up in different tops of our own and opted for shirtless instead. No other teacher had a problem with our mixed PE tops.

Comment by: Dan on 7th June 2025 at 16:38

Dan, this picture is largely representative of my own schooldays give or take a few years or so. Although clothes rationing in the UK officially ended in 1949, even a decade later, many families simply did not have spare money for relatively unnecessary items such as elaborate PE kit. This was well before the era of designer trainers and annually changing First Division team shirts. When I started at secondary school, PE kit requirements were minimal. As long as you had a dedicated pair of shorts, a short-sleeved top and white-soled plimsolls, you were good to go! For my first two years, up until the time when bare torsos became the norm, we presented a rather motley appearance in the gym, much like that shown in the photograph. Although some of my classmates actually had short-sleeved tops, these were rarely white, and some had obviously been sourced from an Army Surplus Store. For the majority of us, however, domestic economics dictated that the everyday bog-standard underwear vests (singlets) that most of us wore back in those days were quite capable of moonlighting as perfectly adequate PE wear, the more so as crowded changing-room logistics favoured not changing one's vest twice within the space of an hour or so..

Two years on, the goal posts moved. Bare-chested PE was introduced throughout the school, and persisted at least until the year after I left. Dad approved, saying that exercising bare-chested was healthy for boys, adding that I wouldn’t need any more PE vests. Mum, a dedicated vest-wearer if ever there was one, reminded Dad that I always wore my underwear vest for PE. and was more concerned with me catching cold without it.

Now a different aspect of changing-room logistics came into play - why waste time and effort taking your vest off for PE only to put it on again after the lesson, when you could come to school without a vest on PE days. Within a matter of weeks, this tactic had been widely adopted, not just in my class but also throughout the school, and by the end of the first term I, along with most of my class, had given up wearing vests altogether.

I'm surprised they're wearing a mixture of shirts we were expected to run without vests.

Quite right they should all be showered after PE lessons. Sensible school.

Too many people have daft hang ups about their bodies. If PE can force them to confront these fears and deal with them sensibly then good.

I was always keen to take a shower after PE at school in my time and didn't mind doing so and sharing with others even without any clothes on.

No boy should be made to wear shorts and I think as we move to a gender fluid society under Kier Starmer it should be obligatory for all students to wear tracksuits for inside and outside school sports. I also think rash vests and all in one swimsuits should be compulsory so the male upper torso is not exposed. I call on this Labour Government to end compulsory school showers as pupils should not need a medical excuse to avoid this barbaric state sanctioned practice. Here is an example of a school not living up to these values. https://www.stphiliphowardglossop.srscmat.co.uk/information/dress-code-and-equipment/#1650982764984-8eef839e-ebac Physical Education is a National Curriculum subject and all students are required to participate in the course

All students are required to shower unless there is a confirmed medical reason for not doing so.

Although I disliked being in the minority by wearing shorts as opposed to boys wearing long trousers,my parents relished the spectacle of seeing a teenager getting accustomed accustomed to wearing short pants as I grew older.

The wearing of short trousers as part of a school uniform,although it was not obligatory was mainly for looks and disciplinary measures.The shorts that I wore were always short and white knee stockings were uncomfortably held in place by tight garters which left ridges on my knees and had material with the school house colours that had to be kept in place to show that I was wearing them.

I don't know what regular site visitors will make of this fictional 1970s archive film, but it might prompt memories and re-start the conversation:

https://www.huntleyarchives.com/preview.asp?image=1009371

Please don't mind my posting it; though it's not directly relevant to PE, it relates to schooldays.

The job of an incoming labour Government must be to stop the Mysandrist and Mysogynistic practices of our educational institutions that do not allow pupils to wear a gender neutral PE Kit and force vulnerable children to change their underwear.

Here is an example of a school which propogates such a policy. https://www.robertclack.co.uk/zschool-uniform

For Boys
Robert Clack Rugby Jersey in red with blue side panels** Robert Clack Rugby Jersey in red with blue side panels**
Robert Clack Black Shorts with school crest ** Robert Clack Black Shorts with school crest **
Robert Clack Red Polo Shirt with school crest ** (optional) Robert Clack Red Polo Shirt with school crest ** (optional)
Long plain red football socks Long plain red football socks
Training shoes (no plimsolls) & football boots (compulsory for outdoor lessons including football & rugby) Training shoes (no plimsolls) & football boots (compulsory for outdoor lessons including football & rugby)
Towel Towel
Change of underwear Change of underpants (not boxer shorts)
Black Robert clack tracksuit with school crest** (optional) Black Robert clack tracksuit with school crest** (optional)
Black Robert Clack leggings with school crest** (optional) Black silk / satin scarves can be worn to protect hair during contact sports and during inclement weather conditions. They must be tied tightly at the back of the head.

Please Mr Starmer end the discriminatory change of underpants requirement and towel mandate in all UK schools. It should not be the business of the school to dictate pupils must not wear boxer shorts under their pe kit. Boys should also be allowed to wear leggings under the shorts if they choose to protect their modesty.

All clothing and behavior should be underpinned by the desire for modesty – and this applies equally to both men and women. Women are asked not to display their adornments of beauty – except those which are naturally and functionally apparent; (ie, face and hands).

I wonder if Jenny still reads this post (Comment by: Jenny on 12th October 2022 ) and would consider giving an update on your sons PE experiences in his first years at high school.

Chris G and others.

A very happy Christmas to you too and new year.