Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: Jay Wootton on 24th May 2025 at 16:24


"....The word juggler is a 42 year old PE teacher from Essex called Jay. I often automatically use the single letter. What an odd reaction to my comment.....

.......There's a shocking attitude to the teaching world nowadays and PE teachers are at the thick end of it, isn't that proven here quite well by a reaction to my entry into the discussion....."


Jay - my "odd reaction" to your comment was because very few people address us in the way you did - unless you are Acker Bilk, very few people call themselves "Mr.", which, you probably know, is a courtesy title extended to you by others, not an appellation you award yourself.

You say that P.E. teachers are the victims of a "shocking attitude", but have you ever wondered why?. By your own admission you force 18 year old men to run around half naked (" regularly requests/requires (take your pick)") - that sounds extremely condescending. What would you do if an 18 year old man refused?. I had been at work two years when I was 18, and I was never spoken down to. I am sixteen years older than you. If I were 18 today and you were my teacher, I would ignore your "request" or requirement. What could you do about it?. No canes to assist you these days.

You seem, if I may say so, to have a very stiff and old-fashioned attitude. You accuse me of having a "closed mind" - it would seem to me, with the greatest respect, that the closed mind round here is your own., using the devices and attitudes of 50 and more years ago. Teachers in general, in my opinion, seem to live in a world of their own - a world firmly rooted in the attitudes of a long gone time. Martinets reading the "Guardian". The age of deference ended before I was born. Most younger men respond better with a more modern attitude - unless they want to enter the army to be bossed about.

These are just my views. Rest assured to some people on the forum you will be a real hero - they like things the old fashioned way. This just proves that we are all individuals. There IS no one size fits all - some people are instinctively rule takers. It just so happens I am not, and I am sure, if you were interested enough to find out, a good proportion of your pupils are not either, but you force them to adhere to the attitudes of decades ago.

Every PE lesson ended with a group shower to be taken completely naked alongside all your peers. If you were shy it was just too bad, or if you hated what you looked like. Nobody was allowed to pass on going in the showers with everyone else. This was simply how it was and millions who had to get over feelings of self consciousness about themselves. You did get over it too, because when you'd seen all your fellow class naked next to you for about the 12th time in a few weeks how could you remain self conscious or embarrassed and shy about it any longer, it became normal to see people at school stark naked with you and to be seen by your teachers, which I agree with others was the least likeable bit if you had ones that wouldn't leave you alone to get on with it.

But they did take this whole showering ritual, as someone aptly called it, too far at times. We had a PE lesson in 1979 in the school gym where I went (Henry Fanshawe) and there was a sporting visitor who came to give us a pep talk about his sport playing what I think at the time was third division football, his name and team eludes me sadly. We got changed for gym, shorts, no tops, bare feet, and spent the bulk of the lesson period sitting on the gym floor on mats with our legs crossed or sitting along benches listening to this man and watching him demonstrate some of his own skills to us while we did absolutely nothing but look on with mild interest. For the final 5 minutes having sat for almost an hour getting stiff and restless we got up and some were asked to demonstrate ball skills with him, keeping it tapped off the knee or foot and silly stuff like that and counting how many we could do before losing control. Not everyone got a go though. Some of us did no actual PE at all apart from watching all this. Even the boys who had been showing off some barefoot ball control in the gym only did no more than five minutes max. Lesson over, most of us hadn't even needed to change at all, we'd done nothing but watch and listen, but our PE teacher that day licked the showers into life and told us all to get in and use them, and the sporting guest came into the changing room and was talking among us while we did this. We'd sat on our backsides for an hour listening to the guy and were made to shower in front of him at the end of it all. We had to say thankyou to him and act all grateful he had spared some time to come in to talk. For me he'd just wasted our PE lesson.

I've got a feeling he played for Sheffield United, where they a third division football team in 1979 does anyone know. His name evades me, but if anyone knows the team at that time maybe a few names might jog my memory of exactly who he was who watched me shower in our changing room at school in Dronfield. I don't think any of us had any idea why he was brought into the changing room with us afterwards.

Our headmaster Mr Andrews would often come into the gym to watch boys quietly at the side for a few minutes and vanish again, and sometimes appear in the changing rooms even as we all showered away with each other. He even gave permission once for our teacher to raise his plimsoll against the actual bare bottom of a misbehaving boy in our group in front of us all. Yes teachers really did think it was acceptable to hit kids with sporting footwear against thirteen year old boys on their exposed skin while naked as recently as the end of the seventies. A lot of boys got the plimsoll across the hands too. It hit with what sounded like a very loud clap.

It seems a bit hazardous for any PE teacher to join the discussion on here it would seem without immediately being put on the defensive. How many have bitten the dust on here? Nathan Hind, Graham Butterfield, Robert Coulson, now Jay Wootton as soon as he arrived.

Instead of the childish insults, where is a rounded a grown up discussion. We should appreciate those teachers who come on here with a different viewpoint and debate our own perspectives rationally. It now seems that any PE teacher, or another person, who comes on here and speaks honestly as they see it, in favour of something others don't like is going to face the firing line almost instantly. What a shame.

I remember the person on here a few months ago whose name escapes me for now but he met up with a couple of teachers at a reunion in a school he went to where shirtless stuff was all the rage but didn't suggest he had a go at them but had a good chat about it with others, and this was with the very men who had done it to him personally a few years ago.

The people that really win arguments against people they strongly disagree with aren't the ones who fly off the handle at the first opportunity but those who stay cool, calm and collected and state their opinions in an articulate and reasonable way. Going in with a pre-judged attack seems not only counter productive but also plain dum, and we can see where that leads can't we, more than once now.

The word juggler is a 42 year old PE teacher from Essex called Jay. I often automatically use the single letter. What an odd reaction to my comment.

There's a shocking attitude to the teaching world nowadays and PE teachers are at the thick end of it, isn't that proven here quite well by a reaction to my entry into the discussion.

Much as I'd like to engage further I think my initial comment and the reaction to it shows I will be hitting my head against a brick wall if I continue, where I would not be given a fair hearing because there are obviously one or two very closed minds.

Comment by: Alan on 24th May 2025 at 09:52
"not allowing us to know his forename, the somewhat superior mode of addressing us - I pictured him as an "Arthur Lowe character" - would probably say "stupid boy if challenged. They seem definite clues. An awful lot of teachers are still living in the 1950s, I think. The age of deference and all that."



How preposterous can you be on here at times Alan.

There is a lot of talk on here at times about our PE teachers who had bad attitude with us, or gave off sarcasm or personal comments about us. Here you are doing exactly the same as the PE teachers that get talked about, giving off all kinds of judgemental bad attitude about someone you don't even know. It's quite funny really, you don't know just how close your own ways are to some of these PE teachers that get talked of and how they were with us as pupils under their tutelage.

Terry brought up that word you used that almost nobody has ever heard of or used in their life before. You do this on purpose to sound superior yourself I'm sure of it. You've judged "Mr J Wootton" because he used a formal title, but if I recall you correctly there was a discussion on here at one time where you made it clear how you like to be addressed formally by others in certain situations.

Our teachers could make quick instant judgements about us, and PE teachers were great at this. You do it too Alan. You've got more in common with some of these teachers than you might realise.

I've also noticed you still snipe away at Christine who offers her insight yet I fail to see how you can disagree with much she says.

Hi Mark,
I think the reason the strict discipline was accepted by the majority of children was because although the PE teacher could administer summary punishment,he could also send us to the headmaster who could also administer further punishment.Hence that was why boys were not rebellious in any way and I accepted the rules that were given to us.

Comment by: Yours Truly on 22nd May 2025 at 23:59



I know some religious schools do regard themselves as somehow "above" everybody else, but I suspect, in a lot of cases, especially if they are very strict and doctrinaire, they are afraid of the pupils comparing their school and finding it wanting. We were lucky, in that we were not a religious school (and our shower water was lukewarm but never cold - or rarely ever). If I had children I would never have sent them to a CofE or RC school because I think these are matters that the individual should be allowed to decide for themselves, when they are old enough so to do and not imposed on them at birth(our current Prime Minister boasts that he is an atheist at the same time of insisting on his offspring being bought up in the Jewish faith). I do remember one of my friends in junior school, went to a "better" school at eleven and became so snobbish he never spoke to his old friends again. Snobbery in an eleven year old is risible.


Comment by: Mark on 23rd May 2025 at 23:07


"....., you cannot for a minute imagine a situation where the boss tells his employees they must shower together because he's the boss.......

It's one of those curiosities how you could force a large group of children to strip naked and shower with each other in a school but you could never do that with a group of adults in a workplace.......

......Was Mr Wootton a teacher, I thought it sounded so?"


You make a very good point there, Mark. I think the problem with school teachers is that so many are control freaks, and in a few cases very suspect individuals, as well as bullies.

On your final point, I wondered that myself - not allowing us to know his forename, the somewhat superior mode of addressing us - I pictured him as an "Arthur Lowe character" - would probably say "stupid boy if challenged. They seem definite clues. An awful lot of teachers are still living in the 1950s, I think. The age of deference and all that.

Ian,
It was never a foregone conclusion that we would wear a T-shirt for our PE at our secondary modern that I attended,but my mother packed one just in case it was required. On the day of our first PE lesson we were told what we would wear by our teacher and all that would be required would simply be our white shorts and we would all be dressed in this fashion identically.Some of us were slightly perturbed by this and we wondered who would see us in just our shorts.At home when I complained to my mother she didn't object and thought it was a good idea.

I was thinking about the time when I worked in an open plan office with mostly 30 other men a few years ago. If for some reason our boss had taken us off on a team building event involving exercise, you cannot for a minute imagine a situation where the boss tells his employees they must shower together because he's the boss.

It's one of those curiosities how you could force a large group of children to strip naked and shower with each other in a school but you could never do that with a group of adults in a workplace.

Reading many of the comments here has slightly shifted my perspective from where I originally felt I was.

Was Mr Wootton a teacher, I thought it sounded so?

Hey guys nice chat here.

I've got a tale from two schools about shirtless PE actually.

1st my middle school, which laid open the option when I was there that you could do PE in a T-shirt or bare chest, and do it in plimsolls or bare feet. This is what they told our parents , I remember reading it myself, I was a 70's/80's childhood. I think it went about half of boys bare chests and the rest T-shirts, in pure numbers that meant about 8 boys of each. I think I mixed it up a bit between the two options. Lessons included the girls like they did at middle school in PE unless the boys were outside playing a team game other than rounders.

But it didn't last that way for long, and we got a new male class teacher and when he took our PE and saw half the boys without tops he just told the rest of us to do the same, despite the clear option being either a T-shirt or a bare chest. It was meant to be OUR option not his but he obviously interpreted it as HIS option and of course young kids obediently oblige without a word. So all the boys at middle school were doing PE as bare chests in the end, and he took away the foot option too and we were barefoot.

At secondary school we also had a very nice school vest to stick on for PE, it was royal blue, it looked good on. But when we started PE there in the first month we all got down onto the floor of the gym properly dressed for PE as we should have been, only for that PE teacher to blow his whistle, he told us when he blew the whistle it meant we listen, and one blow of the whistle and it was 'right everyone get your vests off, let's see what they've given me to work with this year' and with that we pulled brand new school shop vest over our heads and off, everyone into bare chests as our PE teacher gazed around at us and made a few sarky comments about some of us. We were not allowed to put the vests back on and did the whole PE lesson in bare chests. Over the next six weeks or so with him and another teacher we wore the vests sometimes and didn't other times but after six weeks we just stopped wearing them completely and I never wore a top in the school gym for PE ever again, a very nice blue vest going completely to waste. Even in the 80's it was so obvious to anyone half sentient that a lot of boys DID NOT like being forced into going bare chested in PE. I wasn't too bothered for myself, but I do remember a friend who always looked very awkward in those lessons.

I think it's fair to say there are rules and then there are rules, and some get made up as they go along, teacher could interpret anything their own way I think.

Patrick your description of compulsory school showers is bang on the money there. I recognise that so much. We had no soap either, just water to do like you say. Our showers sometimes didn't even reach lukewarm, they often went cold on us while we took them when I had PE last thing. The kids who got the school bus were technically allowed to go ten minutes early at the end of the day but they still made the bus children take the PE shower and often kept the bus waiting!

Comment by: Terry on 22nd May 2025 at 13:59



Hi Terry, I was commenting on what Christine had written, this is the part I was referring to:




Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 21st May 2025 at 22:23



"......It's a concern, but there were very few meaningful safeguards in those days of the early 1970's and children were a lot more vulnerable to situations like you describe. When people remember things fifty years later, clearly something made an impression at the time...."


Now it seems to me, with the greatest respect Christine is biased towards the teaching profession, however much she protests she is not. She seems to be implying that questionable behaviour ended back in the 1970s - of course there comes a time when contemporary becomes vintage, and vintage becomes veteran. I was making the point that such questionable behaviour continued well into the 1980s and beyond, and there are probably instances even today. If something was wrong in the 1970s, it was wrong in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s as well.



Comment by: Mr J Wootton on 22nd May 2025 at 18:14



"....Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside. I don't expect anyone (pupil or parent) to have an issue with that at all in the safe and closed confines of the school with their own age and gender present...."


Another word juggler!. It is a bit disingenuous to suggest a requirement is really a "request". As for being "safe and enclosed" - well let us hope it is. I am sure the authorities love having compliant parents like you appear to be yourself.

I was twelve when I took my first ever communal shower at school after a PE lesson. I remember it very well, new at school, fresh faced, still getting to know everyone, and this first PE lesson rolled around and we all had our towel in our bags in anticipation. That towel was for one thing only, the school showers. That innocent little towel that had been sitting on the rack in the bathroom at home was now a sinister symbol of what was pending.

The teacher didn't break us in gently, we were straight to it. I remember us all being asked if we had brought our towel and if anyone had not. Then being informed we had to shower there and then, and that nobody was to act all silly about it because we all look the same. He then walked to switch them on and a cascading sound of running water began. The sound of water actually made my nerves kick off, and strip we did and in we all went, nervous and awkward as hell. That teacher was lying through his teeth though. We were not all the same. I couldn't help but notice just how different everyone seemed to look. The only penis I'd ever seen in my life was my own, yet here were boys my age who had ones twice my size and with hair too. We were all so different and I was the late bloomer as they say, and didn't they like to remind me. Two years before I bloomed at fourteen. I thought it was weird that school PE had put me in that situation face to face with everyone forced to bare their private parts to each other like that, and found the whole thing quite utterly embarrassing. It was a rite of passage that I didn't feel in need of. We were so young when we did this too. You felt the eyes of the teachers all over you.

Hi Patrick,

'The most important bit for the PE teachers wasn't the washing, it was the enforced naked ritual we had to undertake.'

Absolutely. Our showers were soapless just like yours so cleanliness can't have been the real issue. Ritualisation is exactly what I think it was, a ritualisation of the PE teacher's authority over us. It just seems to have been a universally held value that boys going into their teens needed to be kept down.

We were allowed in our form rooms during rainy breaktimes but the teachers did not allocate any staff member to supervise us, which meant that all sorts of high jinks and even bullying could and did happen. This was professional negligence in my opinion.

As for the bus home, oh boy. It was like a riot on a prison bus with kids having fights, settling scores and climbing over the seats. If my school had employed the same rule as yours there would have been constant mass detentions.


Hi Christine,

'I agree that general teaching staff should not have unconditional access to a changing room, and certainly not one with active showering participation where anyone is liable to be without any clothing on at all. In my view it would rarely be necessary for another teacher not connected to PE to be in attendance inside a boys school changing room'

You and me both. I remember one time in my first year at secondary school our Maths teacher came into our changing room just as we were finishing getting dressed. What he had to say had nothing to do with PE and there was no reason for him to be in our changing room. Seemingly several of us had forgotten to hand in items of work and he proceeded to shout and rant at us for several minutes - instead of telling us in a calm and reasonable manner that if we did it again we would get a detention.

What stands out is that he chose to get us in our changing room when he could have got us the next day after assembly, or whenever.

I had always assumed that he had just wanted to catch up with us before the end of that day. But some time ago when I looked on the facebook site for my former school a possibly darker subtext was referred to, with him and another male teacher slippering boys coming naked out of the showers for offences unrelated to PE. This would have been in the 70s. Of course this is facebook where anybody can claim anything without corroboration. But from what I knew of this man and his ugly temper I find it entirely believable.

This is why today's teachers are so harassed by Ofsted. Because back when they had wide powers and leeway they abused them both.


Hi Alan,

'I sometimes think teachers would make damned good MPs - they love telling other people what to do, without having to do it themselves, and they like to treat people like toddlers, who only have the concentration of a goldfish.'

Oh, tell me about schools propagating propaganda!

My parents were Irish catholics. They regarded 'normal' schools - ie. church of England schools - with an emotion somewhere between snobbery and outright revulsion.

When I went to my (catholic) secondary school for my open day prior to starting my mum was taken aside into a parents' meeting taken by the girls' head of year, a woman who I remember as having her nose permanently in the air.

Among plenty of other bullshit. she stated that the school didn't like its pupils socialising with pupils from other locals schools out of hours because it 'lowered the high standards' they were inculcating into us. I'm not kidding. That, according to my mum, is what she actually said.

She spoke as if the school was the unofficial equivalent of a grammar school or even almost on a par with some minor private school.

This was all pure bullshit. My secondary school was a completely bog standard school with middling academic results and lost of discipline problems. But my poor mum, who had never learned any sense of critical discernment, just lapped this drivel up.

My home town had big Irish and Italian communities, two groups who tend to demand catholic educations for their children, and this gave my school a constant captive intake group.

Sorry, that was all gloriously off-topic, wasn't it?

Thank you for your kind explanation, Christine (and thank you, too, Terry). The schools I went to were referred to in their names as an infant school (4-7, 1989-92), a junior school (7-11, 1992-96) and a high school afterwards. With none of them called "primary", that explains my not understanding what the word originally meant.

Comment by: Steve I. on 20th May 2025 at 20:32
School websites don't always paint an accurate picture and seem designed to project a certain image back at the wider world about the school.



Our school, an Essex academy catering for 11 to 18's regularly requests/requires (take your pick) that those who take PE through all the key stages in years 7 to 11 (boys) leave their tops off (bare chest) during indoor PE lessons, sometimes outside. I don't expect anyone (pupil or parent) to have an issue with that at all in the safe and closed confines of the school with their own age and gender present. It remains an appropriate mode of dress for PE in a boys only setting. Showers are required dependant on activity undertaken. I'm pleased you do not have a problem with this. Very few male parents do.

To answer your question Matthew I think this is something that has had a slight change of definition over time and in recent years. Most of us think of a primary school as the middle school we went to, not the youngest and not the oldest, general entry to primary school was considered to be when you were eight year old and you could either leave it after three years at the age of eleven, or four years at the age of twelve depending on your own education authority area. So for me, like many older people, over 35, I think of primary school being for children between 8 and 11 or 12. Also known to some as junior school.

But you are correct Matthew and I don't exactly know how or when this happened but primary does seem to cover the lower school age now too, so anything up to age twelve. There is a good example near me with two old schools within one perimeter fence, one was a lower/infant school for age 4/5 to 8, the other a primary school for age 8 to 12. The lower school was named as a "first school" and the primary was actually named as a "middle" school. Both have recently been merged into one named school and called a "primary" so covering all ages from 4 to 12 now, unlike before just a short time ago.

I think we all understand what we mean by the terms used however and for the purposes of this discussion I shall continue to use the term primary to mean middle school juniors if needed.

Oh yes Patrick you are so right on all that, schools certainly could be odd places when you start listing down the rules of the places. A soapless shower struggling for water, that's a novel one. I had to use soap and there was ample water for everyone and it was hot. At least if you want showers provide the means to do it properly I say. In my case they did. Our teachers not only watched us but once we were all in they would even tell some of us to get properly wet under the shower nozzles, hair fully wet as well, and to be fair they did power the water out quite well, not a power shower but certainly not a trickle, and the water stayed running for ages even when most of us were out.

The school break thing was accurate! If you got seen in the school corridor during lunchtime or morning or afternoon break time by a teacher there was an immediate interrogation on why you were there and an instruction to get out the building promptly. It takes a few years to understand odd school rules I think.

On the eating sweets in school thing, yes they were obsessed with anyone chewing something, or thinking you were chewing, even our pens! Someone I walked to school with used to drop in to our local sweet shop for a quarter of midget gems weighed out on scales and slipped into a little paper bag. He got accused of chewing in class on one one day in a geography lesson and that teacher emptied his bag, found the sweets and confiscated them, saying he'd enjoy them, and spent the lesson sitting at his desk while we worked in silence eating the entire bag. One rule for them, another for us. That was theft too!

Comment by: Alan on 22nd May 2025 at 09:25

VERISIMILITITUDE?

'Oooh, get you' as the girls would say at school if you said or did something fancy.


Comment by: Matthew S on 21st May 2025 at 23:21
The term "primary school" seems to have been used in two different senses.


It's a good question, I'm sure raised before. My understanding of a primary school is that it is a place for ages 8 to 12 but that may be an outdated answer now. The first school I went to was definitely not known as a primary school, but a 'first school' or 'the infants' and that went to the age of 8.

Comment by: Christine Sanderson on 21st May 2025 at 22:23



I think it needs to be pointed out, Christine, for the sake of verisimilitude that the rather unpleasant habits of the 1970s, went on at least until the next decade, as I said before our teacher would lean up against the wall watching us intently, and any of his visitors would wait in the changing area, so they got the same chance to gawp at us, except we were dry or semi dry by that time. It shouldn't have happened in the 1970s, 1980s or indeed at any time.


Comment by: Patrick on 22nd May 2025 at 02:40



Patrick your school sounds worse than mine - they couldn't give a toss what we did once school was over, but you do have to wonder why schools adopted that ludicrous militaristic outlook. Prior to the 1960s, arguably it might have been employed to get lads used to the lack of privacy they would encounter in the army, but national service ended as that decade began, I believe, and certainly by the 70s and 80s very few P.E. teachers would have had military experience. Today with their list of do's and dont's they make themselves a hideous, laughable anachronism

Mike,Christine,it did happen to me where a female teacher whose husband taught the boys PE would enter the boys' changing and showering area.
I was not conditioned to being seen naked by females apart from at home so it came as a shock . As she probably made a habit of this she must have seen a lot of boys naked.

The soapless - indeed almost waterless school showers of the 1970's did have a ritualistic quality. The whole set up seems bizarre to me now and what they put us all through every week of the school year. We couldn't use soap in the showers at school, and the water trickled pathetically out of a silver spout in the wall, and it was only ever lukewarm. You sort of splashed what water you got gold of onto your body and half heartedly rubbed it about a bit with your hands, mostly across your chest and arms, trying not to bend over too much, everyone going through the motions doing the same ritual time after time with an adult teacher viewer. The most important bit for the PE teachers wasn't the washing, it was the enforced naked ritual we had to undertake. Group nakedness was compulsory at the finish of PE before you could go. You must get naked for your PE teachers, and wet. The actual wash was the least important part, and they forced all this on us all the time!

Schools in the 1970's could be really odd places for a determination to implement rules. Ours had a visceral horror of boys going to their form room at lunchtime. Heaven knows what they thought we would do in there. Unless a positive monsoon was falling, we had to go outside. Guards were stationed on every door to make sure some pathetic specimen did not try and sneak in and read a book. If there was impossibly heavy rain we were allowed to mill round pointlessly in the hall, shoving each other and kicking the walls with boredom.

We were also prohibited from saying the word 'ok', from wearing boots, even in the snow, from bringing even the tiniest snack from home, and from eating sweets in school uniform even on the bus home. All these things were punishable in some quite draconian ways.

Christine Sanderson, thank you for sharing your professional knowledge here. Please may I ask a question about a small thing, just from curiosity?

The term "primary school" seems to have been used in two different senses. Several commenters here recall attending a "primary school" (in England, between the seventies and nineties) which educated children only from eight to twelve or so. The usage I've seen recently on the Ofsted site, in newspapers and implied by many school names, is that a "primary school" now educates those from four to eleven. The Oxford English Dictionary definition, updated in 2007, says "a school where young children are taught" and more specifically "(in the United Kingdom) a school for children between the ages of about five and eleven".

Unfortunately, I accidentally offended someone a while back on this site, not realising there are apparently two senses of the term. Given your long experience, inspecting many schools, would you mind saying something about how the term "primary school" has been used? Thank you.

The points you raised on the accuracy of the website of the school your child goes to Steve were interesting to me. I don't think I would expect the website to specifically try and cover all aspects of what a PE teacher might require in his (or her) lessons, such as a periodic loss of top for example but a showering requirement would and should be mentioned in my opinion, if such a thing is being required there.

Whether some of these things are said or not, these things cannot be hidden and parents will all become fully aware, like you have, of what their child does in school because parents ask their children what they do and children tell them. There is nothing about what you described that would cause me any particular issue other than one of complete transparency, but if school wishes showering after PE why is the towel not part of the PE list in that case.

I do agree with you on the presentation of many school websites. Many I've looked at often seem to hide all the most important information that parents want out of the way in harder to find areas, like term dates or uniform, and promote other areas more so. I think you forgot the actual link when posting but I was able to find it and take a look.


Mike Tusa, although it was a very long time ago in your own case I like the way you made your point. School inspectors have access all areas for obvious reasons of scrutiny, but in many schools all the teaching staff, certainly of old, would treat all areas of the school premises as access all areas to them also, and I agree that general teaching staff should not have unconditional access to a changing room, and certainly not one with active showering participation where anyone is liable to be without any clothing on at all. In my view it would rarely be necessary for another teacher not connected to PE to be in attendance inside a boys school changing room like you maintained on many occasions and so it is quite possible that some of the children at your school in those days had a good antenna, children often do. It's a concern, but there were very few meaningful safeguards in those days of the early 1970's and children were a lot more vulnerable to situations like you describe. When people remember things fifty years later, clearly something made an impression at the time. If my own son had made such comments at the time he was in school like you did I would have made discreet inquiries. Access to the PE changing room should be strictly limited, even if it is just changing clothing, never mind showering too, except for emergencies.

Mike you've asked for anyone else to come forward with anything similar to yourself, and I'd agree and would like to know if there are others and if this was a common theme of school changing rooms, for boys especially.

Comment by: Mike Tusa on 20th May 2025 at 15:36





".....In my comprehensive school I was at for five years from 1971 to 1976 even this area was open to anyone. I remember lots of non-PE teachers coming in on us in our changing room/showers. I remember many times I was in the school showers after PE and walking back out to discover there was some random teacher standing in the middle of the room gassing away to another PE teacher, lots did this. They didn't treat the boys changing rooms like any kind of private area at all. We used to joke about one or two of them, if you know what I mean........."

We were lucky, Mike, in that our building was so old that there was a sort of deep archway between the changing area and the showers, so that it wasn't that easy to see us IN the shower, but of course, as we were not allowed to take our towels into the shower area, the teachers(s) had the chance to get an eyeful as we came out of the area. We had two pervert teachers - I have already mentioned the proclivities of the P.E. teacher (though the current government would no doubt describe him as "brave" - he wasn't he was an old fashioned perv who liked looking at boys) - the other one, our science/Technical Drawing teacher was more of a "discipline fetishist", in that he loved caning and slippering boys - he would have you bend over a desk, and he had the temerity to feel your backside, before he administered the punishment. It was noticeable that two teachers always took the opportunity to come into the changing area, because they suddenly remembered they had something vitally important to say to Roberts, the P.E. teacher, and once the message was delivered, they would have a chinwag like a couple of old women - one was the deputy headmaster - I think he just enjoyed our discomfiture at humiliating us, and the other was a harmless old bugger, who I assume, got his only cheap thrills through looking at us. I have to say, of course, that all the lads had them sussed early on. There was one lad, whose dad ran a local mission hall, and he was as green as grass, but even he said there was "something peculiar" about the behaviour of old cane-happy and the P.E. teacher.

I always hope such "men" were weeded out of the profession when CRB checks became the norm, but, in truth, though there might now be less, you can be sure there are a few scoundrels still hovering around in plain sight, as the many court cases that go on to this day attest..




Comment by: Steve I. on 20th May 2025 at 20:32


"School websites don't always paint an accurate picture and seem designed to project a certain image back at the wider world about the school.

My 15 year old chap goes to school in Nottingham at Oakwood Academy. But if you look at the current website for example, there is no mention of how he really does PE. I don't mind but I'm told the boys spend a lot of time doing gym in school in bare chests at the teachers request, more than one teacher infact......"


I sometimes think teachers would make damned good MPs - they love telling other people what to do, without having to do it themselves, and they like to treat people like toddlers, who only have the concentration of a goldfish. I can never understand why P.E teachers, in particular, are given so much autonomy. It also makes you wonder why schools are so embarrassed about painting a true picture of what goes on in their establishments, if it is all above board. They probably know that many parents, let alone the pupils, would not be happy with their arrangements.

That's an interesting comment Steve I.

I looked on the website link you provided and it does say there is a change of PE kit, but why so long to change it over from old to new. Will that mean an end to shirtless PE there then. It just looks like another school where the PE teachers don't have to adhere to the exact PE kit if they don't want to. Like many of us seem to remember. Perhaps things haven't changed quite as much as we think.

School websites don't always paint an accurate picture and seem designed to project a certain image back at the wider world about the school.

My 15 year old chap goes to school in Nottingham at Oakwood Academy. But if you look at the current website for example, there is no mention of how he really does PE. I don't mind but I'm told the boys spend a lot of time doing gym in school in bare chests at the teachers request, more than one teacher infact.

Also, there is no mention anywhere on the school website about bringing in towels with PE kits, or that scary word - showering, yet this school maintains a need to shower after PE which my own chap has done since he started. No mention anywhere on the web pages though.

I don't mind any of it, he's a boy and boys should expect that kind of thing. I'm 53, grew up in the 80s and did all that. But nowhere on the school website does it mention a need to shower after a PE lesson, or any sense that PE can be done in bare chests, so it's being a little dishonest.

Luckily I don't mind this but I thought it was worth dropping on here for a discussion point about school honesty and why they might be trying to pretend some things do not happen in school when I know full well they do.

Comment by: James on 20th May 2025 at 10:25
I also found it excruciatingly embarrassing to be seen naked in the showers by so many boys,some of whom I didn't know and some that I had known for some time.Some of us were teased unmercifully if we hadn't got the 'right' physique.



WHY JAMES?

What was the right physique you should have had?

Quoting comment by Alan on 20th May 2025.
"Also, the shower was one place where decrepit old teachers couldn't barge in, as they did in our gym, taking a short cut to the other half of the school, as walking down two corridors was too much trouble."



In my comprehensive school I was at for five years from 1971 to 1976 even this area was open to anyone. I remember lots of non-PE teachers coming in on us in our changing room/showers. I remember many times I was in the school showers after PE and walking back out to discover there was some random teacher standing in the middle of the room gassing away to another PE teacher, lots did this. They didn't treat the boys changing rooms like any kind of private area at all. We used to joke about one or two of them, if you know what I mean.

If you looked at the timings on our school timetable for example, like any other school, you would know what time in the day lessons were ending, so when I think of it now, there would have been four times each school days when the lessons were ending, including PE, and in the final ten minutes of each of these times that would be the obvious time the PE showers were flowing with a bunch of naked PE lads made to get into them and under the water. So back in those days lessons ended at 10.30am, 12 noon, 2.30pm and 4pm, meaning if you went back ten minutes from those times and popped along to see a PE teacher as it ended you got access to the changing room, you'd hear the noise and know we were in there anyway, and would almost surely guarantee a faceful of boys all stripped and milling about, which now leads me to wonder if some teachers did use this as an "opportunity" and possibly with the connivance of a PE teacher. It's all pure guesswork and possibly over suspicion on my part, I don't know, but lots of male teachers with no direct PE connections came into our changing rooms while we were in them in various stages of undress or fully naked from showers we had to take and it was easy to do if they were there to look at us because nobody stopped any of them. I'm sure the school secretary even once dropped in on us.

The showers at school were not avoidable, they were mandatory requirement, everyone had to do them, you own personal feelings of insecurity or shyness about showing your body with nothing on with others was of little concern to any of our teachers. I think it's fair to say the attitude was boys don't do modesty.

Whether the girls at my school had a similar experience with their women teachers would be something to know.

Has anybody else ever encountered something similar to this?


When we went to the local leisure centre to go swimming as a class in those days they gave all the girls the private individual changing booths that were there but the boys had to make do with the communal changing area and we were supervised in this quite often by a leisure centre worker and not our teacher who was with the girls. The girls booths had a small crack in the build of each one of them where some of the booths allowed a view into the communal changing area and some girls told stories of how they were able to privately without anyone knowing look through at us and see us, but it was just a hazard we had to put up with!

Someone here has mentioned a modern day 20 year old struggling to grasp the realities of school a few decades ago. I've been asked this question before myself about what it was like. Whilst I never ran a cross country in my bare feet like someone suggested doing, I did do quite a few without my top on at school, not my decision, and when it comes to school gym we had a flimsy vest at times but went without it more than we wore it and shirtless was more the way it ended up being.

Not long after I started school in 1971 there was a boy who answered a PE teacher back and he took his plimsoll off his foot and threw it at him, picked it up and then, I lost count, hit him with it what must have been ten times, all because as he was being hit he kept shouting "more" which made the teacher lose complete control and give him more. At the end this lad even smiled about it and treated it like something that made him a hard man to have taken that from a teacher. For the rest of us we learnt one thing, don't answer back.

I don't think the early seventies sound like the greatest period in the history of teaching do they!

I also found it excruciatingly embarrassing to be seen naked in the showers by so many boys,some of whom I didn't know and some that I had known for some time.Some of us were teased unmercifully if we hadn't got the 'right' physique.
Same as when we had to go topless and bare foot for PE and we just had wear our shorts.I was the only boy to wear satin shorts as other boys wore cotton.My mother chose them and they were bought to fit perfectly which gave a shiny shimmering effect.I was just as embarrassed to wear those as I was to go in the showers.

Comment by: James on 19th May 2025 at 22:31


......The shower thing - I like showers myself, and didn't object to taking them, it was our pervy P.E. teacher sizing us all up, so to speak, which I objected to.




"I don't really understand this Alan. You objected to being told to do school PE in a bare chest total shirtless, but you actually liked taking showers where you lost the bottom half as well as the top half at the same time, kind of naked was fine but semi naked was not! Ugh?........"

Probably does sound a bit mixed up, James, but I will try and explain: I have included that small piece from myself because in a way that sums it up in a nutshell. When you are 13/14 it is very unpleasant to know that a middle aged man is getting off on watching - I think we can all agree on that. Also, the shower was one place where decrepit old teachers couldn't barge in, as they did in our gym, taking a short cut to the other half of the school, as walking down two corridors was too much trouble, I remember once our school secretary, a lovely woman called Mrs. Fennemore walked in to the gym because she had an urgent message for the teacher - it was only once, but it had to be in our lesson. I don't want people seeing me at my worst.

The fact is I perspired very easily from a young age, and it is very uncomfortable. There were times, for example, when playing trumpet, with lights overhead that I reminded myself of Louis Armstrong, who made a feature in his act about sweating - the pile of handkerchiefs on the piano which he would constantly dab his forehead with, and draw attention to. Like you, perspiration would be dripping off my back, and I can remember instances where in the middle of winter, I would be wearing a lightweight summer suit, shirt and tie, standing on a tube train platform with the sweat drying on my back and getting very cold. Of course the adrenalin and indoor heat, turned very icy when you were outside, and my suit would still be damp next morning, so it would be off to the dry cleaners, as I couldn't wear it a second time. I had two "playing suits", and they alternated but the dry cleaning bills were quite expensive. I have always liked being physically clean. These days I don't perspire quite so much, but even so, when we have weather like we have recently, I still shower in the mornings and then again in the evening, and often do in cooler times, if I have been dismantling some really dirty equipment. Of course, these days I shower in privacy.

All that said, I would still prefer lads (and girls) to make the decision to shower or not a matter of choice. Though Lynx won't make perspiration disappear it does mask it, and I am sure that many shower when they get home from school.At the very least adults should not be allowed into the shower area, unless there is some emergency - they should not be allowed to have their free peep show.

One final point, in answer to a message yesterday (I have forgotten the name as I have been busy recently and just saw it without registering the name) regarding making lads to PE in their underpants - what sort of creep makes boys do that?. Some underpants have fly holes not always secure to do up. Are such teachers like my one was and it gives them an extra cheap thrill. It is demeaning and it should be stopped if it is still going on.