Burnley Grammar School

Hi James,

This was in infant school. I'm very grateful to say that the shorts thing faded out in junior school, apart from my first year teacher who tried to order all of us boys into shorts for the summer, but got nowhere.

My parents were all for it. They just thought I was being silly not wanting to wear shorts and totally approved of the silliness being knocked out of me.

Alan, many younger parents, like my daughter-in-law, are very interested in their kids education.
Kenny, do you know if they have the same rules today?

Further to what Alan has said about the no pants under your shorts rule, I was at an otherwise normal secondary school that had this strange rule in PE lessons in my time from 1977 until 1982. The rule did not bother me too much even though this meant bare bums and willies were coming out before PE as we changed in a way they would not had we kept our pants on, but that was a second or two. What I remember about this strange rule in our school is nobody could explain to us why we did it, and how we had no problems with three of our PE teaching men but another two men who took PE, and one in particular were keen to check the rule out. The worst teacher for this would wait until boys were in the school gym at the start of the class and look around and randomly pick a few boys and check them by pulling the elastic of the shorts at the front quite far away from the body, but not just that, when he did this he would give what was an over long look downwards into the shorts, clearly observing the random bare penises of boys he probably knew full well were not wearing pants anyway. There were boys who would keep wearing their pants under shorts into PE for whatever reasons, I don't know why they did that. This particular teacher always waited until we were in the gym to do his random check, rather than in the changing room before we were let out to go to the gym itself. When he discovered someone who was wearing pants under their PE shorts he made them take them off on the spot, meaning shorts and pants came off before shorts went back on, while we watched. In one example of this he made someone in my class wear his pants on his head for the rest of the lesson, not allowing him to take them off and when they fell off he had to place them back on his head again. That is deeply humiliating stuff to dish out on an already dubious rule anyway that served no real meaningful or useful purpose.

The shorts we wore to PE at the time were very short and tight on the upper thigh things with little give in them and very high up the leg, nowhere near the knee for example, like some are now. Most of the time I seem to remember we were in our bare feet in the school gym and for long periods of time I remember never even needing to or bringing any footwear for gym (inside) PE days, and once more as so many I have already read on here are saying, I only recall the secondary school gym PE as a bare chested lesson but I have no idea if this was our school rule or a teachers rule, and I suppose I could say the same for the no pants rule, whose rules were they really? The communal showers rule is another interesting one. Was this the school rule or the teachers rule, I don't know. Why did there seem to be so few liberal minded teachers about in those days, unlike now.

With compulsory PE showers at school boys had to act all big and carefree about it and not give any clue to their more inner feelings about it. We had these weird tiny white soap bars laying on the shower floor that we just had to go in and pick up and basically begin rubbing all over our bodies when we showered. These same soap bars had already been used by someone else that day and left lying there. I don't even know if that is a health hazard in itself or unhygienic, or whether it is fine. The PE teacher who checked the no pants rule was fond of instructing boys to wash their armpits and groins I seem to remember, and he was watching as we did it.

I saw four of my five secondary PE teachers use a gym plimsoll to discipline boys over the years, happening mainly to the under 14s, not the older age group. This was used across the back of the legs, the buttocks or the hands. Once I saw the gym plimsoll being used against someone's head for swearing, a fantastic swipe at pace across the back of the head. This is casual violence in reality isn't it, a genuinely nice person doesn't want to do that to anyone even if they have sworn at them.

Nothing I've said is new here and seems to have been said dozens of times before from the look of this site.

Yours Truly, up to what age did your teachers make you wear shorts to school.Did your parents approve of this or did you have to wear them at home?

Comment by: Gary on 8th June 2025 at 21:13


"I really cannot believe that any school in the UK has a compulsory shirtless PE kit in 2025. Lads deciding to do XC shirtless maybe, but compulsory bare chests would have parents beating on the Principals door and cause havoc on social media"

You would hope not, Gary, but the evidence seems to point to the fact that they do. Only one P.E. teacher, Simon W in recent times has been on the forum to say that he is relaxed about boys kit and whether they chose to shower or not. I wish there were more like him. I think, frankly, some P.E teachers are downright kinky - the "no pants" rule for example (which we had), I can find no excuse or reason for it - except in our own case our teacher was an iron. You would hope that governments would have looked more closely at the behaviour of school's and their often ridiculous and sometimes suspicious rules. Philipson might have made that a priority instead of her ridiculous "teeth brushing" lessons, but then, when you have middle aged men in Parliament interested in Ukrainian male models. As for parents, I am afraid they take little interest, just as long as they can watch Eastenders on the telly.

Hi Penny, welcome to the forum,

'he mentioned how the ladies at school would not let boys wear their tops in PE lessons and thought he looked silly holding an egg and spoon like that'

I will have been in primary school at the same time as your son. Well done you for questioning the teachers. Back in those days teachers seemed to have a of of leeway to do whatever they wanted in their own classrooms and essentially make up their own rules. It was my impression from my own school experiences that the women, and it was mostly all women in charge, were keen to impose their authority over the boys. In my case it was that all boys had to wear shorts to school although there was no actual rule stating this. Of course children always had basic rights but our teachers, the good christians that they were, didn't tell us this, and we just believed the teachers could do whatever they wanted.

Making the kids go barefoot on the grass was unsafe, risking potential injury and other nastiness if they trod in dogshit or whatever. That was a ridiculous and ill-advised practise which would presumably be against health and safety rules today.

I daresay the teacher you approached was surprised that you questioned it - back then a lot of parents were reluctant to question teachers about anything. I think a lot of working-class parents of your generation put teachers on pedestals. My late mum couldn't envision anything higher or more exalted than teaching and was very displeased when, coming up to my graduation, I made it bluntly plain that whether things worked out well or not teacher training was not going to be on the agenda.

It is no surprise your son didn't tell you about it. Bu it did not mean he was happy with it. Children often don't talk about the things that unsettle them. I was badly bullied but said very little about it to my parents. You need to try and observe what they are not telling you as much as listen to what they do say.

I am very grateful to be able to say that I was always allowed to wear a top throughout both primary and secondary school. And footwear, if we had it, both outdoors and indoors. I still can see no no virtue in making kids do things that make them feel self-conscious and uncomfortable.

Only 26, all this (going shirtless in PE and having naked class group showers) was still demanded of me when I was at school and that was only 8 years ago when I left. I refused to do any sixth form PE when they kept on at me to. Fortunately I got away with it but the PE teachers hated me for that. I think I last actually did a PE lesson in my bare chest just over ten years ago some point in the first half of 2015 and it was never a free choice of mine to do it, I think I last had a school shower in the same period actually. There were no refusals that I ever saw up to that point before I was in sixth form.

I wonder how many boys actually do go into PE lessons nowadays where they could keep the top on and choose to remove it in the gym by free choice. After all the chat on here there are probably boys who would nowadays get told off for daring to do so and told to get it put right back on again! I'm sure there will be many places even in 2025 that do shirtless PE but it depends how, whether it is all the while as actual kit preference by a school or just the kind of shirtless gym that happens when the teacher decides it, the latter I'm sure must still be fairly common, a few people on here have said that shirts v skins has never gone away and we have had a couple of PE teachers in the last year say PE gets done shirtless to some extent where they take gym. This does not really surprise me.

What you've said Penny about discovering your own son was doing his PE long ago in a bare chest just proves how little parents paid attention to such things in the past until you saw it up close in reality yourself. When I think about it in my case I don't really remember talking a lot about PE to my own parents and I don't remember any specifics being asked about it. I could be wrong and simply have forgotten though!

Comment by: Gary on 8th June 2025 at 21:13
I really cannot believe that any school in the UK has a compulsory shirtless PE kit in 2025. Lads deciding to do XC shirtless maybe, but compulsory bare chests would have parents beating on the Principals door and cause havoc on social media.



I left school in 2012, social media was a thing then, and our secondary school had some PE teachers that would only take the boys like me in the gym for PE without our tops on. We had to shower too. I don't remember anyone's parents piling in on the school about it and I didn't mind it at all actually but if I did I don't think I would have wanted my parents getting involved because if anyone was to find out in class I think that would have been embarrassing.

As a new dad if my own child, a boy, goes to a school in a few years time and I discover they do PE this way I don't think I would make any issue about it. Boys and men through the ages have done things while shirtless. and I think doing so at school did no harm to my body image and might have made me confident about what God gave me. I went to a catholic school.

I really cannot believe that any school in the UK has a compulsory shirtless PE kit in 2025. Lads deciding to do XC shirtless maybe, but compulsory bare chests would have parents beating on the Principals door and cause havoc on social media.

I went to see my own son doing his primary school sport afternoon in 1981 and most of it was nothing more than sack racing and egg and spoon races, the boys were all without their tops on, I took a few photographs at the time which I still have, girls and boys and mainly female teachers and mothers present. All the children were barefoot on the grass too. Nobody said anything but I found it quite needless and politely mentioned it to a teacher at the time and this was where I found out for the first time that the primary school actually asked boys do PE with a bare chest permanently indoors and rather a lot outside in summer term also. I remember the teacher being surprised I'd raised the question and didn't know, and my son who was ten at the time had never ever mentioned this to me over the previous couple for years he had been there and I never spoke about it to him even though I had mentioned it to a teacher in passing on the day. I took that to mean he was happy with it. Then when he was in his 30's we were looking at these photos among others from school and childhood and he mentioned how the ladies at school would not let boys wear their tops in PE lessons and thought he looked silly holding an egg and spoon like that. I didn't really understand it with such mild low level activity.

Comment by Greg2, we had to wear shorts at junior school in the late 60s,as that was the culture of the country.By the time I reached secondary school no boys wore shorts again as part of their school uniform and I was glad to be rid of them.

Very few boys at the secondary school wore shorts that I attended,but there was one boy in my class that wore them as well as myself. Wearing shorts at junior school gave me confidence to wear them at secondary school which was my parent's preference.

Ronnie,

We shared the same showers as younger boys in their school years when we had all boys team events

Comment by: James on 7th June 2025 at 09:43
What most of us objected to when I was at school was that when we reached the final year at school we were treated the same as junior boys entering the school.The way we used the showers was the same,often in front of boys a lot younger than ourselves and the way way we were dressed just wearing shorts.Both my parents and teachers found this acceptable,




Would you have been sharing showers in school with others much younger than you, by this I gather you mean in the actual school years below.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 4th June 2025 at 17:29

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was pressurised to go to this school, but certainly it was suggested and then encouraged by this teacher, even telling me I would be in her form if I chose to go, which proved to be correct. Thinking back, I don't know how she could arrange this when she was a new teacher herself starting at that school? A few local Secondary Schools had open days for prospective children, so she suggested I take this visit. I think at that age we were all a bit overwhelmed by any ‘big school’ environment anyway, so knowing I’d be with a teacher I already knew probably facilitated my decision. There were a couple of other children from my class whose parents had chosen this school, including one boy who was a friend, and the girl I had been made to sit next to, so this helped as well I suppose. I was the only member of my family to attend this school, albeit for a short time as things unexpectedly worked out.

You’re correct in thinking there might be a little more to this story, but it wasn’t necessarily that she was vital to my further learning, though my parents had noticed my improvement during my final year in her class. In fact they already knew of her as she’d once visited our house, but this was about my older brother’s artwork, and nothing to do with me. She was always very art and music orientated at junior school, played piano at assembly and ran the school choir. My older brother who’d been in her class was naturally gifted in producing lifelike drawings from childhood which she obviously noted and forwarded advice; and I was musical which she tried also tried to help me with by arranging for me to take an important voice trial, which I think I passed, but had no interest in taking this further to where it could lead. I did have to sing in her school choir for a few years though, even though the majority of the other children were older than me! She did specialise in Art, and as one of the Music teachers, for her subjects at her new secondary school.

To get subject matter back on track for this forum, for Gym or PT, as we called it at junior school, I always thought the dress code was much more unfair for the girls. They had to jump around in just their underwear, whereas us boys kept our shorts on and I’m not sure but I think we could keep our vests on too, but we all had bare feet. This arrangement only lasted until we were around 9 or so, and then for the last few years there, PT turned into Country or Scottish Dancing. I remember we all thought this dancing was great fun, and we all kept our clothes on for that.


Comment by: James on 2nd June 2025 at 10:44

James we had to wear shorts at junior school back in the late 60s as that was just the culture of the country. By the time I reached Secondary School no boys wore shorts again as part of their school uniform, and I was glad to be rid of them.

What most of us objected to when I was at school was that when we reached the final year at school we were treated the same as junior boys entering the school.The way we used the showers was the same,often in front of boys a lot younger than ourselves and the way way we were dressed just wearing shorts.Both my parents and teachers found this acceptable,

Comment by: Ralph on 6th June 2025 at 21:43


"One of my lads started secondary school in 1996 and was bothered by some of the things discussed here, especially the prospect of a PE required shower. I remember writing three short notes in quick succession hoping to help him out only to receive a note back myself from the school that no more of my own notes would be accepted any longer and that he and I must accept the rules of the school and the teacher in charge.......

When people say "it's a free country" they forget that for too many schools it is North Korea.

What a high handed attitude they had. If they had written to me like that, I would have been round there to have it out with them. I bet they were not so supercilious if they ever wanted donations, or help!

Isn't it remarkable how one old black and white photo from the late fifties manages to stir up such passion and debate about the merits or otherwise of PE being done shirtless to order.

I've never heard of the car wash style of showering, surely that should mean getting given a good brushing down too.

One of my lads started secondary school in 1996 and was bothered by some of the things discussed here, especially the prospect of a PE required shower. I remember writing three short notes in quick succession hoping to help him out only to receive a note back myself from the school that no more of my own notes would be accepted any longer and that he and I must accept the rules of the school and the teacher in charge.

Unusually perhaps for me and the time I was at school, when I had been a teenage schoolboy at the start of the 70's our PE teachers had a quite casual attitude to showers and most of the time let us decide, and there was none of this chasing boys down to take them if they hadn't. Most boys did at some point still take the showers because we had no choice when splattered in mud from the football pitch or cross country run, to avoid was just foolish in that circumstance. My mistake was to think everywhere else was like my own place and clearly it was not.

Shirtless PE was not the standard gym appearance for me but we certainly did our own fair amount of it when told to.

Comment by: Graeme on 6th June 2025 at 15:18
'Would a modern class faced with a sudden instruction to all do PE bare chested comply as quickly and quietly as we once did, or would there be more said, or even active resistance?'



The way some used to say no to things in school was by bunking off Graeme. I did that a few times myself for a while. Would 2025 be any different to 1975, I don't reckon so somehow. I think they'd still do it. The real difference is parental reaction and possible running off to social media to sound off and gain attention.

My own parents wouldn't have had the slightest problem with my PE teachers telling me to go shirtless any time or place they saw fit to tell me to.

In a misguided attempt to save time after PE at our school our head PE teacher once tried using what he called a "car wash" method of post PE showers for our quite large thirty or so boys PE class. This involved turning all the shower heads on throughout the entire communal shower and making a line of us walk very slowly through them one by one, soaping up our whole body and rinsing off by the time we reached the last shower head. At least in theory that is how it was supposed to work. The idea was a joke and was longer, not quicker. In the end, it was way too awkward for all of us, wasn’t effective at cleaning any of us and saved no time but took more and left us loitering about naked outside the showers being told when our turn to do the walk through was. That idea was quickly abandoned and we went back to the usual stripping off as soon as we got back and in for the usual free for all together as one group, which is how such things are meant to be anyway.

If he wanted to save time he could have just said skip the showers at least once in a while but that was the one thing they never considered letting us do after PE. I think "going in the showers" must have been the most mandatory thing any of us used to do in school, other than uniform. Whilst I was pretty calm about such things I do agree with others on here who have come to the view that the near obsession that our PE teachers once had about getting all children naked in front of them for showers was a touch extreme.

Perhaps what's most shocking is that I can still remember what many of my old classmates and friends looked like naked even over 30 years later and quite a few of their penises too! Is that just me being weird or can anyone else do that? LOL

I'd like to see the reaction that might be given in a school in the here and now of today with no recent history of doing any PE in the gym shirtless if a new PE teacher came into the job and took hold of the class of 12 year olds telling them all they must all do the lesson in their bare chests whether they liked it or not.

Something like this happened in my school at that age in the late seventies with a new teacher who overturned the way we had normally done things. At that time we all just did it without a murmur because you could not say no very easily to a teacher, no matter what they asked unless you were spectacularly brave or stupid. In my opinion boys PE like that split into two halves, boys who didn't care, mind or liked a chance to bare their chests for a while doing gym, and the other half who did not want it for a whole host of reasons, shyness, self consciousness, body dysmorphia of some kind, and maybe just that vulnerable exposed sensation that many get when shirtless, especially in school PE.

Would a modern class faced with a sudden instruction to all do PE bare chested comply as quickly and quietly as we once did, or would there be more said, or even active resistance?

"........Comment by: James on 6th June 2025 at 11:19

.....
I considered that the statutory requirement of boys just wearing shorts for PE and games was sufficient to maintain discipline.Of course the length of the shorts that we wore were considerably shorter than those that we could see in the pictures and we weren't allowed to wear anything underneath them.Like you,showers were done in the nude and if boys objected they would receive the plimsoll or cane...."


Sorry James, but whenever anyone mentions the "D" word, I feel like responding with the "F" word.
It must be a bottom of the barrel teacher if the only way he can control his class is through humiliating and threatening boys. Some boys are going to cause mischief, and cause mischief they will, whether dressed or undressed. Likewise, well behaved boys will remain well behaved if they are allowed a shirt. We are in the first quarter of the 21st century, for Christ's sake.
I strongly suspect that some lads become juvenile delinquents BECAUSE of this ridiculous last century discipline which jars on most modern thinking people, b y the teenage years now they are growing up and don't need such ridiculous rules  - and I see you cite the good old cane in the last paragraph for boys who were shy or reluctant to use the showers.
The good old days, eh, James?. Too bad we can't send them up the chimney  anymore. 


Yours Truly:  I should imagine that with all the Health & Safety laws today that untrained older pupils would not be allowed to conduct classes for younger boys - there was an example of a teacher - a public servant, for that is all they are, - sitting back getting paid for  doing nothing and those he delegated to, doing the job for nothing. Of course, as you say the teaching pupils will not have any degree of responsibility, patience or tact, but then, a lot of teachers didn't either!.

Simon.
I considered that the statutory requirement of boys just wearing shorts for PE and games was sufficient to maintain discipline.Of course the length of the shorts that we wore were considerably shorter than those that we could see in the pictures and we weren't allowed to wear anything underneath them.Like you,showers were done in the nude and if boys objected they would receive the plimsoll or cane.

Comment by: Donald on 5th June 2025 at 20:46




".....But young men like my brother who was ten years older than me once had to leave school and at the age of 18 do national service,....."

Hi Donald, I have in the past mentioned that, and have admitted that the school nonsense was, perhaps, a good introduction and preparation to what the poor devils would go through at 18, - BUT - National Service ended in this country in 1960 - the last of the press gang would have left compulsory military life in 1962/63. The last national servicemen would have been born in 1941/42. That is, NS ended 65 years ago and it's last youngest "recruits" would now be 82/83. That should put school into context. Some of the ghastly old waxworks that run them still think it is 1950-something. Unless Rachel From Accounts grows another magic money tree, which would need the IMF to provide the compost, it will not return, because it is unaffordable, and most military men would not welcome forced labour for two years for unwilling recruits, so for the past 62 years lads have been put through this doctrinaire crap at school for no good reason at all, except to massage the egos of control freaks, and provide free entertainment for men who like looking at naked lads and getting paid for it. . There is no justification for it at all. It is an entirely different question whether this country would now be worth fighting for, when you consider our former "enemies" are a lot better off than we are.

Hi Chris 1970,

' when you're a sixth from student you are volunteering to attend school, you no longer have to be there. The idea is you are specialising in a handful of core subjects only, so unless one of them is actually PE at A level I fail to see why it should be mandatory to carry on if you don't want to do so, and as for showers and shirtless with it, what happened to the idea that being in the sixth form gives greater freedoms at school and less hassle over rules you once had to follow?'

You put that so well. By opting to stay on into the sixth form you are contributing to making the school's performance figures look better, especially since the introduction of school assessment tables in the early '90s, and for that alone you are entitled to some measure of privilege in return.


Hi Christine, Alan, Damien,

Further to PE in the sixth form, at my school it was not only required but sixth formers were even pressed into service taking classes instead of teachers.

I mean - was this even legal?
It was utterly inappropriate since mid-teens do not have the sensitivity and maturity to deal with younger children, which is exactly what I found out in my first ever Games lesson. Furthermore, given that they would not have undergone proper training, training, surely this practice was contravening at least one health and safety or even an employment law. Perhaps Christine could shed some light on this one. Did this happen at anybody else's school? Because I'm smelling a rat here.

It's a good point Donald. Makes school, even the kind of sixth forms some here went to, seem very appealing in comparison.

I wonder if anyone ever failed one of those medicals because of their testicles!

Comment by: Alan on 5th June 2025
To put men through compulsory P.E when they have no interest in sport, is in my view a punishment. Hopefully, these days, any sixth former, male or female, would refuse to comply with such ridiculous rules.



But young men like my brother who was ten years older than me once had to leave school and at the age of 18 do national service, I well remember my brother explaining how difficult he found the training where he had PT (PE) sessions all the while, without a great deal of say about it which would leave him exhausted. These men were sent away and had to do these things, and as he told me, on day one within the hour of his induction he was standing around with something like 50 other young men, none whom he knew, all completely naked waiting to be looked at and then had a complete stranger grab his balls too without permission for the draft medical. Shared barracks, shared showers, shared everything, no private life for a year or two and a lot of PE on top and then a posting some place.

At my grammar school in the 50s no boys would ever have been expected to express discomfort around such things as not wearing a top for PE or sharing the showers we had. But I am pleased I missed national service but had the call came for me too I would have been well informed about what to expect.

When I took my A-level exams two of the subjects I wanted to study were not done by my comprehensive school, one of them was politics, but it was done by another secondary school in my same area a few miles away, so I had a decision to make, do I leave, do I stay at my comprehensive and change what I wanted to do to fit what they could offer me or do I switch to the other secondary school to take up the subjects I wanted to do. In the end it was easy really, I knew what I wanted to do and so I had to make a switch, which I did in 1976, enjoying a glorious summer between the two schools, but it was not a great age at which to change schools and make new friends, even though I was still in the same area and seeing all my old ones too.

I remember my comprehensive school not being thrilled I was leaving and not continuing with them in subjects they were offering at A-level, which was a bit rich of them and they did try to encourage me to stay but if they didn't offer me the two A-levels I wanted out of the three I took what was the point.

So I went off to the secondary school a few miles away to speak about their sixth form and the A-levels available with my parents, gathered all the details I needed about coursework and everything I could imagine and was set for my September start. I was more nervous about this new school than I was aged eleven doing the big move up from a small primary to a huge comprehensive.

When I left my comprehensive school after my O-levels I certainly thought I'd seen the last of any school gym or team games on the playing fields or any type of PE in any form. That comprehensive was I think completely typical of the time, although we did wear vests in the gym much of the time but with occasional shirtless days with skins and shirts and all that obvious stuff, and other random shirtless lessons under various teachers. Nothing outside was ever done shirtless. The showers, like everywhere at the time, were to be taken always without excuses. All quite unremarkable I think and I had a normal average attitude to PE and just went with whatever they did with us.

When I joined the sixth form at the nearby secondary school I remember immediately feeling an outsider and had to make quite a bit of effort with everyone to fit in, as a new boy, a funny thing to say at sixteen in school. But at least I had my subjects.

This was when the surprise happened. I was in the sixth form common room being filled in on my role in school and what to do and were to go and what time etc, when I found out they wanted me to do some PE there. I couldn't believe it. When I had been to talk about joining their sixth form with my parents I'd been given all manner of details about sixth form and study periods and subjects and clubs I could join but at no point in the conversations about it had anyone from the school ever suggested, spoken or written down any mention of physical education being on the agenda in the sixth form, and not expecting it I had not even thought to ask either. But here I was being told I needed to stick a PE lesson into my timetable on a Tuesday and Friday. I was absolutely livid, and as I had not been a pupil at this school I wondered if this meant I would have to even buy some kind of compatible kit. It was a question of, what do I wear for all this then, and what am I expected to be doing?

Well like many men here report of their schools, this secondary I'd just joined for my A-levels was one of the mainly shirtless gym PE type of schools I soon found out. A PE teacher dropped by into the common room and had a few words with us and I approached for a personal chat as I was from another school.

Luckily I already had generic shorts, white, that most places used and a pair of short white socks. But he wanted the boys from the lower sixth from in the gym on Tuesday late mornings if it didn't clash with a subject I was taking, and it didn't, they checked this up for all of us. So I did gym PE that day for my lower sixth year, switching it to another day in upper sixth the following year and I remember packing a T-shirt top for the PE despite knowing they did a lot of PE with tops off apparently, and when I changed nobody put a top on and so although I had one I didn't dare even attempt to put it on and that was my debut to shirtless PE being made to do so in sixth form of another school I'd only joined because my old one couldn't offer me the right courses. If I'd had the guts to put that top on I think I would have been told to get it off anyway. It was a bit surreal.

My parents when they found this out actually thought it was an excellent idea that I had to do yet more PE!

On Fridays after lunch it was outside, mostly we seemed to cross country among ourselves and chat as we went along. Nothing on my A-level syllabus clashed with that time so I had to do it. In the end i didn't mind the outdoors so much, but could have done without the other gym lesson which mostly consisted of what I can best call aerobics or sometimes handball, basketball, volleyball or even just kickabout inside no rules football, all without tops on us, the occasional bib got produced but not often.

Not many people start a new school at sixteen and a half, have to make new pals, and get an intro to shirtless PE they never did before, all while getting stuck into serious study with A-levels at the same time, but it worked out for the best in the end and became enjoyable over time.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 5th June 2025 at 15:47

Thank you for your reply, Christine. I still think this particular rule is inappropriate - for young men (or women) after 16, because, as Matthew said, his friend, some months younger than him was at work and no longer treated like a child, and dictated to. If it is necessary for school hours to be made up, I would have thought that they could, for example, spend two or three hours a week in the school library (especially kitted out, as they are these days, with computer equipment). To put men through compulsory P.E when they have no interest in sport, is in my view a punishment. Hopefully, these days, any sixth former, male or female, would refuse to comply with such ridiculous rules.