Burnley Grammar School

In my secondary school in the late 1950s, PE in the gym and outside in the summer was optionally, and generally universally, topless. Money for luxuries such as PE vests was scarce and, as other posters have indicated, not wearing a vest for PE was an effective way of ultimately dispensing with wearing vests altogether. As for underpants, they took were optional, and many of us went commando, not just for PE but generally, especially in summertime. The nearest we came to any teacher intervention in that area was when I was about 14 and our PE teacher recommended us to start wearing some form of support, either pants or jock-strap. Most of us had never heard of the latter item and had to go home and ask Dad what that was.

Hi Tony,

Just a reply to your post from 22 April.

The girls in that clip come across as happy and confident. Why wouldn't they be. They were allowed to cover up completely. The boys, as you say, look timid and subdued. And to compound it all the filmmakers singled out two boys to be their subjects. I would have been absolutely horrified to have to do PE like that in front of the girls, much less to then have a camera pointed at me. but then we were only boys, after all. Our feelings didn't matter.

Hi Alan,

I was at school in the '80s when corporal punishment was going out. There was no caning or whatever else in my time, even for those one or two truly nasty cases that frankly deserved it, but what there was, was plenty of informal CP and right from my first year in infant school I was seeing other children being slapped, walloped, shaken and shouted at. It was completely arbitrary, depending purely on when the teacher lost their temper and this is surely the main reason it had to go.

I received it numerous times during my final year of primary, where I was in the class of a male teacher who had an explosive temper that he refused to make any effort to control. When he wasn't hitting boys he was shouting. And it was only the boys. The girls were never touched. Despite being shy and well-behaved I came in for my unfair share of his large, hard hand, usually for trivial reasons if any at all and always in front of the whole class. You then had to do the walk of shame back to your seat past the triumphant smirks of the girls, for whom it was strictly a spectator sport.

There was this girl on whom I nursed a secret pre-teen crush. It was definitely not reciprocated, she despised me. One day, going back to my seat our eyes locked just for a moment and I can still remember the gloating, exultant contempt on her face as I passed by with my stinging arse. I felt crushed.

Oh well.

On an observational note taking in what I can see of the Burnley Grammar boys in the photograph with this forum, I wonder if others would agree with me when I say that when it comes to gym activities in PE it is not a bare chest that is more practical but actually bare feet, and yet in the photograph the boys are bare chested but not bare foot, whereas I think it should be the other way around if anything.

When young, early teenage to mid twenties, I used to do gymnastics in low level local competitions, as well as at school, and we always wore a vest to do it, but were always barefoot, you never saw anyone with plimsolls or anything on the feet doing gym. If you watch any gymnastics on television you will always see much the same, it's done barefooted, the males that compete never do so with bare chests but with vests. Somehow many schools took a different attitude to all this though and liked to factor in the bare chests for young male pupils with and without footwear. Insisting shirts must be removed for PE gym but footwear must be worn is not the right way around.

I did used to practice my gym bare chested with friends sometimes though and do some bare chested PE work at school too, but unless boys were swimming it really wasn't as essential or practical as they would have you believe. The photo above is flawed, the best PE would be barefoot with shorts and vest. For me wearing trainers or plimsolls to do gym would have been a hinderance, a secure proper fitting vest is not.

I actually knew a competitive gymnast, in his twenties who was very shy about his bare chest being looked at, and he had the most amazing physique, but we wore vests. He said he felt judged because he was actually in too good a shape! So anyone can have this shirtless discomfort.

I would urge anyone with a shyness or anxiety about being shirtless to try and overcome it and do so in some situations if they can, because it is ultimately an irrational fear for most I think and one that can be dealt with. But I don't think anyone should be made to do it, even at school, just encouraged maybe.

I've always liked being bare chested, not because of what I look like but because of what it feels like. But I don't need to be shirtless to do gym, even competitively, bare feet are a must though, and luckily I have always liked not wearing shoes, sweaty trainers or socks given the chance and enjoy the feel of that too and connecting to the ground. I've run barefoot many times too.

HI Yours Truly, you said this - 'There was a poster on here quite some time back now (might have been Danny C, sorry, me and names) who posted about the time they had a female PE teacher stand in for several weeks. He cited a no-pants rule that their usual male teachers never even bothered to check up on. This female stand-in teacher, though, starting every lesson by making the lads stand at attention while she worked her way down the line, plucking out each pair of white shorts in turn checking for bare balls.'



I remember some people on here quite well. I don't think it was him. This was definitely not Dan's school YT, I remember his one quite well because where he was he got hit with shirtless PE and also shirtless drama, which sounded a tough deal for shy, sensitive kids. I'm not quite sure who you're thinking of here, I don't recall it, but I am quite sure you are mistaken on this one.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 26th April 2025 at 17:31


I think you are right - you get one or two over-confident boys (just as you get a few over confident men on this site like one this afternoon, who treats male sensitivity as a sort of boring joke, and made a point of telling us he was off to the pub), and they love to exhibit themselves and look down on those who don't.

What made our teacher more pervy was that, as we got older, a few lads would try to escape the no pants rule, so it gave our teacher the excuse to stand under the ropes and look up (our shorts were not as tight as many were at the time, as most of them came from the same school outfitters who offered discounts to parents of the various schools, so everything came from the same source). When he discovered one of the pant wearers he would scream at them to come down, pull them and push them and order them to go and take them off.

i do agree many were not perverts, but just obnoxious bullies. I think also many schools, seeing the days of CP were coming to an end, started relaxing that punishment except in extremis, but ours was keen to keep the tradition to the last possible moment. In my opinion CP should never have been allowed in the first place,and what is worse is that those posh schools with prefects (usually the grammars and boarding schools, the latter of which I think were repugnant) allowed slightly older boys to inflict the punishment. I feel sorry for any lads like Miles, and those who came before and after because in my view, parents who paid thousands of pounds to have their kids taken off their hands for half or more of the year, just couldn't be bothered to look after their own children and should never have had them. It's like buying a dog and leaving it in the kennels for half the year.

Hi Alan,

I could well be wrong about this but I think that boys are actually more subservient than girls, despite the popular impression to the contrary. There was a recent poster (apologies, can't remember your name) who posted about being slippered with a friend by his PE teacher for bullying another boy. Not having full grasped the situation the PE then called out the boy they had been bullying. Rather than protesting his innocence the boy meekly turned around and bent over and was thrashed over his bare bottom for nothing at all.

I think the way we were as socialised as boys works against us. We feel that if we complain it makes us unmanly rather than assertive we and risk the mockery and contempt of the other boys in the room who are all having to do the same. Girls are socialised completely differently, allowed to be conscious of their personal boundaries - and quite rightly so - as a paramount priority.

I also think there is a 'pack instinct' among boys and men. If a man or boy establishes himself as the leader the other boys will just fall into line. It
feels as if you are transgressing some primal instinct if you speak out. Put simply girls are more likely to just say no.

I believe the no-pants rule was pretty much ubiquitous for boys until at least the 1970s, with hygiene being the stated justification. And the rule was vigorously enforced ( As I think you yourself recently pointed out, they could just have demanded that boys brought an extra pair of pants to school on PE days . . .) There was a poster on here quite some time back now (might have been Danny C, sorry, me and names) who posted about the time they had a female PE teacher stand in for several weeks. He cited a no-pants rule that their usual male teachers never even bothered to check up on. This female stand-in teacher, though, starting every lesson by making the lads stand at attention while she worked her way down the line, plucking out each pair of white shorts in turn checking for bare balls. Why she did this is a very good question. Maybe she felt intimidated at having to take a class of hormonal teenage lads and so felt the need to cut them down to size, which would be understandable for a women, but still just as inappropriate. Or maybe she just enjoyed being sadistic. I met one of that particular breed at a very young age.

I'm very sorry for what happened to you, Alan. But by no means all PE teachers were deviants. Most were just plain and honest bastards.

I never agreed with corporal punishment. The old adage holds true that those that could have benefitted from it (me being a case in point) never needed it, while those that received it weren't changed by it at all. And of course there was the ever-present gender discrimination, with one survey finding that boys were the recipients of 95% of all canings, even when the girls had committed similar transgressions.

More urgently there is the issue of teacher discretion. Or more precisely, the lack thereof. I was slapped in front of the whole class by my final year primary teacher, several times, for no other reason than that he had lost his temper, which he never made much effort to keep in check. There is a damn good reason that the power to cane and etc was taken from the hands of teachers. Teachers forever bleat that they are professionals and should be paid as such. But then they go on to act in an unprofessional manner. That is why CP had to go.

Revolution, NOW!!!
To add to the whingeing, bellyaching, griping and moaning.
Goodbye cruel world, I'm off to the pub!

Comment by: Zak on 25th April 2025 at 17:17




"....It seems that there were a lot of self conscious boys out there at school thinking much the same thing about their lot in school, but so many were thinking the same thoughts but nobody really said anything about it to anyone, it was a quiet acceptance that as a male pupil in school you should accept shirtlessness without hesitation and care little about it......"

Hi Zac, when I see so many comments on the forum about lads who felt really uncomfortable, what a pity we didn't communicate with each other more as boys in school. I know for a fact many lads in my class - even the-hey-look-at-me sort, were extremely uncomfortable, especially with our pervy teacher's no pants rule. If we had all refused what could they have done?. True, my school used the cane as the ultimate sanction, but there would be a limit to the number of times a teacher could use the cane on the same boys. Now that they don't have the power of the cane, like 16 year old Jack a few weeks ago, who still goes along with this minimal kit jazz, if a teacher told me, especially in the sixth form to take my shirt off I would tell him to get stuffed. As it is, Jack and his pals go along with it. "Just Say No" as a famous pubic service film had it some years back. You are right, though - we just accepted it. I was as guilty as the rest. If I could go back......

Mel, I am absolutely fine with bare chest PE going on anywhere if anyone wants to do it that way, they should feel free and able to do it that way, I have not the slightest problem with that at all, all well and good if the entire school wants it, but don't you find it quite unreal that nowadays in 2025 there are still schools and teachers out there who say to boys you MUST be a bare chest instead of you CAN be a bare chest if that's your preferred choice. It's a perfectly reasonable option to take, but the insistence on it always got to me at school as well in the late eighties and early nineties. My nerves used to jangle the moment I ever heard a teacher scream 'strip to the waist', or 'shirts off now' or 'skins you lot' and the very real reluctance I had following such diktats. It always took me half the lesson to get over the fact I was doing PE that way and I was always glad to get a top back on a soon as possible.

I would have found being at a boarding school like being in a prison. I would have felt very intimidated to be at your school Miles and be faced with having to go out with the whole place bare chests at the same time like that. Whilst I might have felt able to some extent merge amongst all the others I think taking the whole school, you said it was 400 boys, outside for sport in bare chests is crazy to imagine. It's like the school was trying to prove its masculinity to the world outside. I would not have enjoyed being any part of such a spectacle. Your description reminds me of the Hitler Youth in 1938 rather than an English boarding school in 1968. But like I said, if all those boys wanted to then that's not a problem, it just wouldn't have been for me.

Comment by: Steven on 19th April 2025 at 04:02 It is true that boys PE shorts in the 80s were rather short and tight fitting and that with the boy being shirtless an erection was difficult to dissimulate. It is also true that teenage boys could have them rather often. When I could see a boy in my classes being erect, I went to him, tapped him gently on the back or the shoulder and told him to go the changing room for 5 minutes. I did this in the most inconspicuous way possible and was always intent on preserving the boy’s dignity. I would never have shouted at him or exposed him in front of all the others as your teacher seemed to do.
While the action taken of sending the boy away to relieve himself in the changing room was, on the surface, similar to what Alan described, the way I handled it was very different.




You "Sir" are an A* liar.

The way you preserve anyone's dignity in any awkward situation that develops is to not draw any attention to it.

Please don't bring my profession into disrepute with such fairy tales from your own mind. You've never taught in a school in your life.

Nobody probably remembers me or my comment from last year, it was placed on the 8th March 2024, about my son here in Daventry at his school where he'd been doing PE for more than two years, since 2021, in his gym without a top on. Well he's now 15 and still doing PE without a top on. He's a boy who finds removing a top like that quite difficult but has long got used to it. However better late than never I finally decided, after not doing so a couple of times, that this time I wanted to drop a mention of this at his latest parent teacher evening in March just gone and asked the question of a non-PE teacher I got into some small talk with who took me across to one of his PE teachers who I wasn't down to actually meet that night. The response to my query was that I shouldn't worry and I could tell the teacher thought I was being a silly over protective mother when he said my son didn't appear to lack any confidence in PE and he was happy with his attendance and effort. His teacher told me he prefers teaching gym that way with many classes, so it came down to personal preference of that actual teacher who gave me a lot of words on confidence building of young minds and bodies. But why do you insist on it I asked, and he suggested it worked well as an effective teaching method, was hygienic and preferred by a lot of boys anyway. I was told I was only the third person ever to bring that subject up to him in 20 years and that he has never considered it a serious issue. When I told him my son thought it was when he started, he just told me he was sure he didn't think it was anymore. At least I got it off my own chest and said something even if it was a bit of a predictable type of answer.

Friends of mine in other parts of the country act surprised when I say my own son here in Daventry has been doing his PE in a bare chest top since 2021 but I suppose it depends where you go and who you get.

Me and my sister once had a discussion at the dinner table at home not long after I started BIG school, she was already there, and started the mandatory shower rite of passage as to which of us and our friends found it worse. I said it was worse for boys because we all had that little bit extra we could check out and she said it was definitely worse for girls, indicated by what Hazel described as her ghastly view on doing it and all the girls. The bottom line is most of us had issues with it, boys or girls, but never said and put up with it because we seemed powerless to do anything else faced with it. I didn't really mind so much mixing with the boys my own age doing that, we were all in the same boat, but I never liked being naked showering around adult teachers at school one little bit. I know some people suggest that their teachers even ended up in the showers with them, if this was the case, no matter how long ago they should be ashamed of themselves, and it rather reduces that pupil/teacher distance that often gets described here where boys are all shirtless but teacher is in a top, like the photo, to distinguish the authority figure. Any old teachers of the past who showered with their pupils erased that dynamic totally and levelled themselves with the class.

I really don't get why someone posted three consecutive comments under different names earlier, and concur with what has been said about that. Thankfully we have more transparency nowadays and can see when this happens.

It's nice to see another teacher show up with almost perfect sentiments to the job he does, and also another female perspective is always welcome too.

Thankyou for replying direct to my comment Alan.

I was definitely self conscious when I had to do PE shirtless between 1999 and 2003, with a few further times in sixth form from 2003 to 2005. If you feel good about yourself then you project that confidence and if you don't feel good about yourself you project a resulting lack of confidence in how you act, so if you don't feel good about yourself while exposed to being shirtless then you are likely to look less confident.

It seems that there were a lot of self conscious boys out there at school thinking much the same thing about their lot in school, but so many were thinking the same thoughts but nobody really said anything about it to anyone, it was a quiet acceptance that as a male pupil in school you should accept shirtlessness without hesitation and care little about it.

While I don't feel my teachers were setting out to humiliate the couple of fat boys in my own PE class at the time, it may well have still been the net effect on them. I did at the time think it was alright to point out how unhealthy it was to be too overweight so young, but being shirtless in PE was very unforgiving to those boys for showing them up compared to the rest of us. I wonder what they made of it? Being shirtless for me did act as an incentive to remain in good shape.

Reading Miles about boarding school in the late sixties, you said there were four hundred boys there and you all had to be shirtless on sports day each year, your "extravaganza!. That's a big event, no wonder they called it an extravaganza. But you have to think about how many of those four hundred in your school felt good about that. Even if it was three quarters okay that still means a hundred boys might have felt very self conscious, I know I would have done. If the whole school was the same it suggests it must have been mandatory to do that. It must have looked impressive if you were all very fit and active which it sounds they made sure you all were.

I agree that needed to be said Terry, so don't apologise.

I also agree wholeheartedly with you Greg there, another thoughtful offering. Of course the girls should have been told off like the boys were, but at those ages tell me any of us that might not have attempted a peep if such a chance had arisen.

If you look at what Hazel has written here today, she has started by saying how there was equality at the start of school but then actually goes on to show up the emergence of double standards quite soon after, where girls like her could pick and choose a top to wear for their PE lesson but boys were kept to the ongoing rigidity of a shirtless turnout for PE.

Hi Ash,

I don't think Susan F is coming back here. Maybe I offended her, although if I did it wasn't my intention. But she did answer some of what you ask a few weeks back. From what I can remember her saying:

I think the lesson you are enquiring about was gymnastics, which obviously requires tighter health and safety rules than normal classes The boys were normally allowed t-shirts but for gymnastics it was shorts only, which is understandable. On the girls complaining that they found their leotards - which were full-length and so covered them neck to ankle - embarrassing in front of the boys (!), they were allowed to switch their gymnastics rig to t-shirts and shorts - which was the exact same kit explicitly forbidden the boys for the same lessons on safety reasoning. Some boys also complained about how embarrassing it was being made to parade half naked in front of the girls. Their pleas fell on deaf ears and their kit stayed the same. So, still no shirts. Double standards, much?



Hi Hazel,

I'm sorry to hear how much you hated school showers. I did too. Although you kind of undermine your own argument by stating that boys had to go topless all through your school years. Thereagain it is absolutely appropriate that the same rules be enforced for girls as for boys. It is refreshing and seemingly pretty unusual to hear of a school that enforced equal standards that way. But if you ask me there is no real need for either girls or boys to shower at all. Schedule the Games/ PE classes for the last period of the day and then let them go to clean up at home. It's hardly rocket science. But then PE teachers were hardly rocket scientists, were they?

At my infants school we also had to do PE in our underwear, although we were allowed to keep our vests on. And plimsolls if we had them, which looking back now seems vaguely contradictory.

I think it's cruel to force boys to go topless in PE. Plenty of men have spoken up on here to assert how they were fine with it. And that's fine for them. But then plenty more boys, me being one, were not or would not have been fine with it at all. I think what Danny C described is frankly disgusting. Contrary to the way they act and the impressions they project, boys have feelings too.

Given that sports lessons happen out of the public view (well, you hope) there is no uniform requirement. Make PE kit optional! We all got through my junior school's years turning up in any t-shirt and shorts we chose or that our folks could afford, both sexes, and it worked! We could have done the same all through secondary if they had let us.. Really, this national obsession with standardised PE kit is just
ridiculous.

My apologies to the forum for feeling the need to divert briefly but someone should say it so as I'm first here at 2.36pm this afternoon it may as well be me;

To 'fakename', 'Ash' and 'Hall'.

If you want to use an alias, like Yours Truly, that's all well and good if you or anyone else would prefer not to use your real name, although some people are happy to use their full name as we see, or initial the surname incase of confusion with others with same forename, but please do not come on here and use all kinds of different names as the same person, like you have done 'fakename', 'Ash' and 'Hall', all within a few minutes and broadly asking similar questions. What is the point in this and what are you trying to achieve that can't be said or asked under one name or alias?

We all can see you have done this as your IP tag is identical for all three comments under these names and has given you away.

See below;

Comment by: Hall on 25th April 2025 at 08:53
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Comment by: Ash on 25th April 2025 at 08:42
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Comment by: fakename on 25th April 2025 at 08:41
IP Logged: **.***.245.14

Austin, yeah my middle school seemed to be more obsessed and strict about doing PE in bare feet. This was in or out always without anything on our feet, which felt odd sometimes. High school it was mostly bare feet indoors and outside if you wanted to.

John, what exactly did the girls do or say to those boys that you describe as "go in for the kill" and "lot of flack from girls in PE and were teased about their bodies?" Were these boys overweight or had anything that set them apart and made them vulnerable to mockery? What did the girls wear? How old were the pupils when PE was mixed?

Susan F, you said leotards were discontinued because it was unpopular with the girls when they were around boys.
What did the girls wear instead at that point?
Were the boys who asked to wear shirts allowed to do so?

Jane, you said "having boys around us was a distraction for us girls in PE". How did the other girls react to the boys' predicament?
You also said "Our own gym PE kit was horrible clingy black leotards until we got a bit older." So your PE kit changed at a certain point, what was it changed to?
Did the boys' PE kit also change at that point? Were they allowed to wear shirts then?
For clarity, could you specify the ages of the pupils?

andy. someone here has already reported someone to their real work place. that 1 stopped posting after. you remember? you shocked that people use fake names?

Some gentlemen on here have been concerned about the gender double standard working against them as boys and in our favour as girls so I'd like to redress that a small way.

When I began my school life in the infants first school in 1971 and we had to do our PE lessons together, all the boys as well as all the girls like me had to do it, inside, with nothing to wear on top at all, or on our feet. Boys and girls wore exactly the same little set of light green shorts for PE and this was always how everyone at my infants school did PE for all three years I was there from just after my fifth birthday until just after my eighth. There was not a bit of difference there how we were treated, girls were expected to accept being topless for PE just as the boys are.

Even at that very young often unquestioning age I was thinking isn't this only what boys are meant to do.

Only when I finally reached the nearby primary school at the age of eight did I finally get to wear a top for PE, just any old random t-shirt was allowed, but I remember the boys carried on without t-shirts and remained without all the way through for PE indoors that we did alongside them up to almost age twelve. It was obviously compulsory for them to continue that way, while we picked any t-shirt we wanted and liked from home.

I believe the comprehensive school that many of us went on to attend also leant heavily into the bare chest PE ethic for boys there too in gym so it seems that some of the boys I shared my schooldays with might have spent their whole school life doing PE, at least most of it indoors, never actually being able. allowed or expected to put a top of any type on.

At comprehensive school all girls did have to take a communal PE shower entirely nude the same as boys right up until we drew near to the end of our fifth form year, so we matched the boys on that there too, and most of us despised the ritual which I finally saw the back of in the spring of 1982. It could be quite a ghastly experience for many.

Comment by: Darren G on 24th April 2025

I hate anything like this Darren G. No one ever really gave a damn about how some boys might feel when being forced into accepting such a situation, which they could do nothing about. Most boys, I expect, would have said nothing, becoming resigned to it at that young age, as they’d already be bombarded by everything being new and strange while trying to get used to life in their new school. She would have interpreted this as acceptance to her being there. Well how wrong she was, though she wouldn't care, as most boys would have wished they could have told her to clear off. I blame the head teacher (male or female?) for a blatant disregard for the boys and a total lack of understanding. As usual, as long as the girls are not compromised, everything’s okay isn’t it. What an awful situation, and a horrible woman, who I expect enjoyed telling everybody what she did.

I so often resented the many double standards I found when I was growing up. I never thought girls were entitled to more privacy than me, and I would have hated this gym teacher being around us in there at that age. You like to think you’re just starting to grow up around 11, and certainly some boys are more developed than others by that age and you really should be deserving of some respect. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this still happened somewhere today.

I’ll tell of something that happened when we were all around 13 years old in our 2nd year, which some might find amusing, we boys didn’t…for long. I’ve mentioned before how the girl’s gym teacher would frequently walk right through our boys’ changing room at secondary school, no matter what state of undress we were in. She had no need to do this as the girls’ door was just a few metres away, so it was a deliberate decision of choice on her part and I'm sure she thought of it as a little perk. We didn’t routinely share gym lessons with the girls, and at this particular time we boys had a music lesson which was followed by gym, so we’d all go to our changing room at the end of music where we’d often hear the shower water still going and the girls’ voices, as the shower block was in the middle with our separate changing rooms on either side of it. We’d then have to get changed for our gym lesson, and when the girls were ready, they’d go across for their music lesson. We’d later all meet up again for the next period which I think was Geography.

This situation would alternate each week, so sometimes we’d be in the shower when the girls came to change for gym on their side, and on one such occasion, when we’d met up again for geography, a few of the girls began to tell us that they’d just been watching us in the showers, through the keyhole on their side! They were able to give details of how we looked which I remember finding a bit embarrassing as they were so accurate. They said who was more developed than others which was also true. What's more, their very same gym teacher who liked to walk through our room didn’t mind them watching us in the shower, and just smiled and left them to it.

So, on hearing this, we boys thought we’d have to get our own back. When the next opportunity came the following week, after arriving from music, we decided to forego our usual respect for the girls privacy, and take turns to check out our girl classmates just as they had us. I know we all found it just as interesting as they did, but there was one big difference: in walked our gym teacher and caught us. He went berserk, shouting at the top of his voice to get changed. When we’d done so, he stamped in wielding a size 11 plimsoll in hand, selected a group of us to touch our toes in line, and proceeded to give each of us six of the best…obviously waiting until only the thin white cotton of our gym shorts was between his slipper and our skin. Now then, how’s that for a representation of double standards, and what a contrast to how the girls were dealt with on the other side of the shower block. From that moment onwards we often thought the girls continued to watch us whenever they wanted, and we couldn’t do anything about it as our volatile gym teacher never let us miss showering.

Comment by: Mark on 24th April 2025 at 13:03




".....I thought you might have picked him up on this 'forced bare chest rule' line here, where boys have to go shirtless if they come with the wrong style PE shirt. You're mellowing Alan!....."

I think it is perfectly acceptable if the lad brings the wrong kit - assuming - and I am sure it is - made clear what is worn, when, then the teacher is within his rights to inflict that punishment, but if I were one of those lads I would make sure I DID follow the guidelines. I think Simon's classes have little to complain about. Yes you have to take the uniform shirt off, but you can easily turn your back while you do it, and put the P.E. one on, and vice versa, and he doesn't force them to shower, so he is not a prowler. What is there not to like?. If you want me to add a but - if the lad brings the wrong shirt because his mum forgot to wash it, that is tough on the lad. I would do the washing myself. I like down to earth teachers like him, and I sincerely hope most lads have teachers like him who know it is now a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and the boys are not in borstal, and are not forced into things they don't like. Free and easy, that's my style. I could have coped with Simon's school.


Comment by: Nick on 24th April 2025 at 13:56


"...The worst thing you can do to those of school age is to wrap them up in cotton wool and try to protect them from largely imaginary problems.

Why did boys at school excitedly go swimming but then became all coy when the PE lesson required they look much the same? I see that conundrum has been mentioned previously here......"

That's right, Nick - we've got to get them toughened up to go up the chimneys or face the press gangs who will be forcing them to take the King's shilling, haven't we?. Well, no we haven't. Clearly you were never in a school where bullying was on the timetable every day, and aided and abetted by a teacher who was as cracked as the pupils, with a prurient interest in other people's anatomy.

This swimming thing. I can only explain my feelings about it. When you are in water it is like a psychological blanket covering you up, you (or I) would get out and in and back to the changing cubicles as quickly as possible. There is a great deal of difference between that and being on dry land wearing only shorts (especially when you are climbing up ropes or doing exercises with a partner), with teachers of other subjects walking through the gym as a short cut to wherever they are going. It must be even worse in a mixed school.

The year 1968 has been mentioned on here and that was a year I was at a privately run boarding school in Kent with 400 male pupils, and was a fourteen year old that particular year. I will confess that these were not the most wonderful years of my life but I wouldn't say I had a bad time either.

If you were sensitive or shy you had to find ways to try and overcome it.

If you wish to know what a lack of privacy is like you should have been a full time boarder at school like I was after the age of eleven. The kind of day school secondary issues are minor in comparison I would think.

Let me explain. I had to share a dormitory room with nine other boys at school, and sometimes not all of us got on and they would switch someone around with another group. We were not allowed to just go to bed in our underwear and had to put on a proper set of pyjamas to go to bed sleep in. Before bed we all had a mad rush into the bathrooms to do what needed to be done. Lights out was always a set time and silence was expected once that happened.

Each morning the first thing everyone had to do was get out of the pyjamas, grab a towel and go off to the communal showers, big enough for 50 boys to easily use at the same time in our part of school in our year group age. Each morning was exactly the same set routine without fail. There was absolutely no privacy available or expected to be. We were expected to strip naked, get wet through and start washing properly and quietly with each other, seven days a week. If PE was in the morning we still had to do that and would have a second shower of the day before lunchtime arrived. We stayed clean at least! You were not expected to have any reservations about your own nudity or that of others.

Someone has mentioned sixth former looking over younger ones in school. We had prefects doing the same in our school. They could also have the privilege of a bath in the mornings and there were two baths available. It was not unusual to have a prefect in the mornings sitting in his bath giving out instructions and orders while everyone else was showering and coming and going. Prefect could indeed be worse than the teaching staff if you got a bad one, and one or two did seem to over enjoy some of their bestowed authority they were given. Quite unfairly I thought, in our school they were even allowed to administer a slipper to the body of anyone stepping out of line as they saw it. This was abused a lot, although even prefects were liable to corporal punishment if they fell short. One was caned at our school for slippering too many boys for fun. That's how it was then. Hierarchy and control, knowing your place in the order of things. Many of us had an inclination to break free of such strictures.

PE was three days a week and 90 minutes long and some of it could be quite brutally rough and intense even as very young eleven and twelve year olds.

There were no shirts worn in the gymnasium. Your bare chest was your gym uniform. Only the teacher wore his PE vest. I think it was a mixture of plimsolls without socks and nothing on the feet, mostly nothing I think. Our shorts were plain black. Some people say they had to remove underwear, we did not, we kept ours on, but I suppose if anyone wished to remove it they could have done so. That would never have occurred to me to take my pants off and only wear the shorts.

In our PE all of us were expected to reach quite high standards of ability and if we did not we got extra tuition sometimes. We were not allowed to have a can't do attitude to anything, however daunting it may have seemed. It's fair to say we could be run ragged at times. Even if we didn't like doing something we still had to pretend we did and put in the effort. Not putting in effort could result in getting a strap wrapped across your legs or bottom, so you tended to stay focussed in fear the belt or a plimsoll shoe would come out and find its way at you from a teacher.

Anything a teacher said you acted upon immediately without answering back. So it's fair to say that, especially when we were younger, we were all very subservient.

I've just noticed that Simon has said he would not ever send someone outside shirtless for PE unless they chose to in summer term. Well in 1968 at my boarding school it was very different indeed. When we all assembled for the weekly cross country in PE none of us had shirts on. Obviously outside for football, rugby and such like we wore our shirt colours but not for cross country, that was classed just like the gymnasium, and was deemed a real test of our stamina, so all of us ran outside shirtless in any weather at any given time on the calendar. The older we got the longer we were expected to run, ending up at something like 10 to 12 miles by sixteen. Cross country running around 1968 at the age of fourteen was the absolute beast of PE to me which took every ounce of effort and energy out of you on the longer runs on bad days when we were absolute wrecks by the end of it. We would finish up and be laying on our backs too tired to get back up off the school sports field. I remember weak buckling legs, stomach stitch and often still feeling cold after many miles of it, breath puffing out clouds into the air. We then had to race to the showers and be into another lesson within short order sometimes, still aching and feeling quite worn out, but still expected to concentrate and not complain in the next subject.

Annually our parents were invited to our sports extravaganza as they called it, where the whole school took part, it was a sports day by another name. We all stood to attention on the school field in front of our parents, in our school years, every single one of us was shirtless for that event and we lined up in various formations before doing some school exercises in unison by school age, and then a run past the parents before getting on with the extravaganza, which involved a lot of running and outdoors gymnastic prowess being displayed, some between older and younger boys, the only time we did such things out of our age groups. One year the weather was bad so it was called off, they didn't mind us getting wet but didn't want our parents to, or even have to sit under a brolly to watch us. Thinking we'd got off it for that year they went and rearranged it a fortnight later and sent the invites back out again.

The fitter the school made me get and the more stamina it gave me, the more I wanted to get even fitter and gain more stamina. The bashfulness was knocked out of even the most sensitive ones. So in that sense it worked.

The worst thing you can do to those of school age is to wrap them up in cotton wool and try to protect them from largely imaginary problems.

Why did boys at school excitedly go swimming but then became all coy when the PE lesson required they look much the same? I see that conundrum has been mentioned previously here.

I've never understood why it should be a problem for a group of boys all about the same age mucking in together in a group shower and think it's perfectly reasonable to be told to do so, even if that does affect the sensibilities of those on the shy self conscious end of the spectrum. The same applies to shirts coming off during PE.

Comment by: Alan on 24th April 2025 at 06:02
'Welcome Simon. It is really good to hear from a P.E. teacher. Your school's policies seem totally acceptable.'

Comment by: Simon W on 23rd April 2025 at 21:25
'If anyone does not come to PE (indoors gym) with the accepted footwear then it's bare feet, and if an incorrect PE top is worn then it's no top.'


I thought you might have picked him up on this 'forced bare chest rule' line here, where boys have to go shirtless if they come with the wrong style PE shirt. You're mellowing Alan!

If you know what you are meant to bring and you don't do so and that's the end result then I think it's fair, if you end up the one and only boy in PE shirtless and don't like it, do not blame the teacher blame yourself, even if you could probably still wear an incorrect top and make little difference. Yes, I think it's very fair too.

I think a lot of schools are like this nowadays, they have all the facilities like we used to have but nobody uses them. It made me consider how many boys there might be who would secretly love to shower after PE lessons, especially if very sweaty but feel they can't suddenly be the only one doing so because that would look weird to the others. We've heard a lot about boys, and some girls, who didn't want to shower at school, that's most of us to be fair, but what about those out there who didn't mind or actually wanted to, they existed too, and in this day and age at school's such as the one Simon describes feel they simply can't because nobody else does.

Interesting that he suggests there is some shower use after school, but then those who do after school sports are the keen and active sporty types who are motivated so perhaps not so unexpected some might be up for a quick shower in those situations which are probably more relaxed than in the school day itself.

Comment by: Simon W on 23rd April 2025 at 21:25



Welcome Simon. It is really good to hear from a P.E. teacher who is neither a control, freak or a voyeur, and seems a genuinely modern and sympathetic teacher. I hope there are many more like you, and I hope you will contribute as often as you want to. Your school's policies seem totally acceptable.


Comment by: Yours Truly on 23rd April 2025 at 17:33



Hi YT I broadly agree with you. There have been some terrible governments of BOTH parties (and the Lib Dems in 2010, who proved they were just as bad), but, honestly, has there ever been one as bad as this one?. It took their leader FOUR years and a Supreme Court ruling to understand what a woman is, and where I do disagree with you is that in the current instance, ministers are not appointed by rank or birth, on the contrary they are appointed because they tick one of the "minority" boxes. I won't elaborate further. You can see unemployment rising every day - one or two of my larger customers are cutting back on staff, and they cite the rise in NIC and the new employment laws as the reason. Previous governemts have had youth training schemes - this one (and the last one) just keep them cooped up in school.

The last really great PM that I have read of was Harold Wilson (Labour) who told America where to go when their then President (Johnson) wanted us to get involved in the Vietnam war. That was in 1968. That took grit, since we are so often subservient to the USA. He really did put his own country first, as they all should, but don't. I am sure he would have sacked any poor performers in his cabinet

Too damned bad in my senior school if you didn't like going shirtless and taking your top off, a typical mid 1970s northern English state run comprehensive school with classic type stereotypical PE teachers. We boys at our school had to share the PE gym with the girls for my first two years there and none of the boys wore a top in that gym with those girls among us.
What I can recall is how girls can sense exactly who the shy or worried boys are in such situations and go in for the kill. There were two boys in PE who took a lot of flack from girls in PE and were teased about their bodies and none of us could just go grab a top, stick it on and shut some of these girls up once they got going somtimes. This often happened as we all waited outside gym for our teacher while unsupervised but ready in our gym attire.

I also had a male sod of a gym teacher when I was 15 who liked to face up to boys his own size by that age and eyeball them with attitude while treading on our bare toes hard with his training shoe which I was a victim of first hand and it hurt like hell the way this sod perfected his accidentally on purpose foot crushing technique on the floor of the gym.

The same man was a shower sadist who enjoyed giving us a whole class cold shower after PE if even a couple of class had misbehaved during PE.