Burnley Grammar School

I always regarded doing barechested PE as a very practical method. Quick and easy for teachers and pupils alike, Everyone knew where they stood. It's a common sense kit for boys

Comment by: Yours Truly on 13th April 2025 at 21:32


and

Comment by: Chris G on 13th April 2025 at 21:29


".....Isn't that the point, Alan. Steven didn't force anyone into minimal kit and didn't make everyone suffer....."


Before I say anything else, I have to say that Steven sounds to me quite a likeable man, if, in my view, a misguided one. At least he responded openly, unlike the drop and run ex-teacher last week, so anything i say here is not a personal attack on him.

I agree with YT that the method employed was about subjugation. I know he meant well, but in my opinion Steven went about it the wrong way. I am sure though, in his case, his methods had no sleazy edge to them. It reminds me of a situation that occurred once with our well named Mr. Burke. Some idiot threw a stink-bomb in his class towards the end of the summer term. I don't know who did it, there were six possible suspects but I don't know if they were acting alone or jointly and severally. Of course, Mr. B wanted to know who did it, and seemed to think the culprit would own up (as if! - he was a demon with the cane). Of course nobody confessed, so all of us got an hour's detention (it was the last lesson of the day) Thirty boys suffered for the crime of between one to six lads.

Now Chris, what can I say?. I can only assume you are a government spokesman, who always manage a pusillanimous excuse!. You juggle with words mate. Steven was the one who changed the rules, so he DID force the boys into minimal kit, and I am sure he is honest enough to admit it. In so doing he probably did make some of the lads feel they were being punished. I know that wasn't his intention, but as they say "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I would only punish the guilty.

Steven, please excuse someone without professional experience asking you something. In your 12th April comment you show thoughtfulness, even kindness, when you say, "I knew I didn’t want to rule through fear or shouting" and "It wasn’t about humiliation or severity". If a pupil new to your classes had shown some clear reluctance or embarrassment at doing PE in shorts only, you would have responded sensitively?

(Incidentally, I note there were some concerns about numbers of overweight children in the United Kingdom even in the nineties).

Also (excuse me if this is foolish), when you say "Especially in the upper classes, I struggled a lot", do you refer to older teenage boys or top-set pupils with ability?

Thank you for any responses you are happy to give, and thank you for sharing your professional knowledge and recollections on this site.

Hi Alan,

Steven's post demonstrates my earlier point about subjugation. Teachers of both genders come to find that while girls can be worked with boys must be worked on. And it is about undermining them, stripping them to make them feel self-conscious and vulnerable.

Boys in particular seem to need to know that there is a line there and will keep pushing until they find one. I have posted previously about the biology teacher at my school, who, no doubt aware that as a petite, young, cute woman she would be particularly vulnerable, ran our first two or three classes like Herr Flick. I have also mentioned several other teachers who failed to establish that line and had unhappy, stressful working lives as a result.

But there is a flipside. Once the teacher has established their authority they can start to build a more genial relationship with their students. Our biology teacher turned out to be interesting and likable. But she had to know the lesson was learned first. And it's my guess that is what Steven did with the boys he taught.

' I would further put it to you that the quieter lads who did not cause trouble, had to pay for those who did.'

I was one of those quieter boys who never played up. (Thankfully there was no shirtless PE at my school.) But you are absolutely right, such boys just get lost in the fray.

Just a final thought. My secondary school was quite rough. But we still got through it with vests for PE and athletics outdoors and rugby-style tops for outdoor stuff. It's a but sad that it still always has to be boys coming in for that sort of treatment.

Comment by Alan, 13th April:

"Would it not have been better, in retrospect, just to have picked out those lads who were causing trouble, and forced them into minimal kit, instead of making everyone suffer?"

Isn't that the point, Alan. Steven didn't force anyone into minimal kit and didn't make everyone suffer. He introduced a new way of doing things that everyone accepted, and brought his pupils on-side without resorting to force or threats.

Thanks for your reply Steve. I can understand your aim, but I know, as I was never a tearaway, for want of a better word, that had I been one of the pupils, who, up until that point, had been allowed to wear a shirt, had that been removed from me (literally), I would very much have resented you.

A lot of lads, as you will have read in these posts, felt very insecure in minimal kit - I have given my reasons before, so I do not intend to rehearse them here.

Would it not have been better, in retrospect, just to have picked out those lads who were causing trouble, and forced them into minimal kit, instead of making everyone suffer?.

I do remember that one of our lads, who was extremely violent even at school (he organised the playground protection racket at our place) ended up serving a term for GBH when he was twenty, so I do not for one moment think all schoolboys are angels, I think if it is your blueprint for life it is going to happen.

Hello Alan,
You're absolutely right to question what "earning respect" really means. It’s a term that can be used too casually, and I don't take it lightly.

When I said I earned the boys’ respect, I didn’t mean it in the sense of dominance or submission. What I meant was this: I learned to create a space where expectations were clear, where structure replaced chaos, and where every student — especially the quieter, more reserved ones — could feel safe, seen, and able to participate without being drowned out by the louder voices.

The shirtless uniform policy wasn’t about punishment. It wasn’t a response to bad behavior. It was about setting a collective standard — stripping away status symbols, distractions, and ego games that so often play out among teenage boys. It was about returning focus to movement, teamwork, and discipline. And I led by example: calm, consistent, present and it did indeed help that my leadership was clearly visible by them being stripped to the waist.

Did that approach feel strict? Yes, to some. But my goal was never blind obedience — it was creating a shared rhythm, a sense of fairness. Over time, I saw something shift: the boys started showing up differently. Not out of fear, but with a clearer sense of what was expected, and why.

And no, not everyone responded the same way. But many of those "quieter lads" you mentioned — they were often the ones who benefitted the most. They told me they finally felt able to participate without being shoved aside by the more dominant personalities.

So no, I don't believe I simply controlled them. I guided them — and in return, many of them offered trust, even enthusiasm which I had never seen to such an extent in a shirted group of boys. That, to me, is a form of earned respect. Not perfect, not universal, but honest.

Thanks again for raising the question — it’s an important one.

Comment by: Steven on 12th April 2025 at 03:35


Forgive me, Steven, but you boast that you "earned respect". Could you enlighten us as to HOW you earned it?.

I'd put it to you, that through your authority, you made those lads subservient to your wishes. I would further put it to you that the quieter lads who did not cause trouble, had to pay for those who did.

You might have "earned respect" from other teachers, but you merely controlled the boys.

I was packed off to boarding school and the PE kit from the age of 9 through to 18 was exclusively bare chests or "skins" indoors and outdoors was usually either skins vs vests for football and rugby and just plain stripped down for cross country, athletics and outdoors fitness sessions regardless of the season or weather conditions. Some here may find this harsh but a lot of boys didn't really bother with tops during summer holidays if they weren't required (they usually became goalposts!) My parents also fully approved of this approach and knowing them I'm sure they actively encouraged the teachers to keep me stripped down as much as possible and It was unusual for me to keep a vest on for a full lesson.

Steven, I experienced something similar with vests. Though the school's official PE vests were sky blue a good number turned up for the first lesson with running vests, others with a whole host of different coloured vests. The PE teachers simply made us all strip outside until everyone had the correct vests.

Comment by: Steven on 12th April 2025 at 03:35:

Well said Steven.
How did you introduce the change of kit? Suddenly overnight, or with advance warning? Did anyone complain or object?

Hope you have your hard hat and thick skin ready!

Back in the early 1980s, I started my career as a young and enthusiastic teacher of boys PE, full of energy and ideas. But very quickly, reality in a difficult inner city comprehensive school hit me. Especially in the upper classes, I struggled a lot. Discipline was shaky, respect was almost non-existent, and every lesson felt like a battle for control.

I knew I didn’t want to rule through fear or shouting. I needed to find another way — something subtle, but firm. After some thought and discussions with fellow teachers, I made a bold decision: I simplified the boys' PE uniform. From then on, they wore only the PE shorts — barefoot and bare-chested. Nothing else. No distractions, no hierarchy among them — just focus, simplicity, and equality.

But I kept my tracksuit on. That deliberate contrast — me in full gear, they in minimal kit — created a clear and immediate shift. It wasn’t about humiliation or severity. It was about structure. They could feel the boundaries now. I was the teacher, the authority — not just someone trying to blend in. And they, dressed alike, were ready to move, to listen, to learn.

It changed everything. The noise faded. The respect returned. The energy in class became purposeful. I finally had their attention — not because I demanded it, but because I earned it.

I continued to teach PE with the boys in shorts only until I left the profession in the early 2000s.

Comment by: Leo on 9th April 2025 at 19:35


"Good to see someone of the old school, Pete, standing up for mandatory shirtlessness in school gyms for boys. How can anyone be against such a thing? A large PE group of shirtless boys look fine and well presented.

Of course a lot of physical education in gyms should be done shirtless, why do you need a t-shirt in a gym at all? Sensible schools mandate this, just like sensible schools mandate that all must shower after PE lessons. As I read an old Christine post, these schools are higher achieving with PE if they do this. It doesn't surprise me, shirts off for PE shows you mean business and expect to work hard, that's how I felt it was when I did this at school in my day, topped off with a shower at the end and a good bit of naked camaraderie as we got the sweat or dirt washed off. Communal showers naked with your classmates had their fun moments......."

Wow, Leo - such enthusiasm! - if you read these postings you must realise that many do not agree with you.


Let's leave the bloody gym for a moment and go to the Mathematics room. Mr. Higham said that he worked as a P.E. teacher for "21 years till 1991". We don't know if he went to a specialist P.E. university like Loughborough at that time, or if he was just an also-ran from an ordinary TTC, and he was forced into becoming a PE teacher. Whichever, he must have been at least 23 by 1970, which suggests he was born at the latest by 1947, so he is an elderly gentleman of 77/78 now, and it would be presumptuous to expect him to have modern ideas - a bit like expecting Johann Sebastian Bach to sound like Bela Bartok.

He is also taking at face value a "one-off" poster's assertion that he has P.E. lessons in 2025 of 1970 (lack of) standards. Call me a cynic but I am always a little bit suspicious of one-off postings. On the internet you can be whatever you want to be.........

You sound just like teachers that made my life an absolute misery at school back in the 1970s Pete Higham.

Most PE teachers ultimately fail in their jobs.

Doesn't the last part of Dominic's post prove that. Most of you used to make people dislike any physical activity and dread it, for all manner of reasons from team selections, shirts and skins, doing games they dislike, forced showers, made to go shirtless, freezing outside, being made to feel inadequate, the list goes on.

Yet a lot of people who disliked PE at school found they liked doing gym or related activities when they left and did so under their own steam, often despite, not because of PE in school.

Matthew when I started at secondary school in 1985 I remember being just one of three boys who appeared to wear a vest under their school shirt. I remember our new PE teacher being very sarcastic to us about it and telling us it was about time mum allowed us to stop doing so. I remember telling him my grandad wore white vests and he was 80, and he said he was from an older generation and boys in my time, mid eighties, didn't need to wear such things anymore. One of the other boys with me said his mum told him it was hygienic to wear a vest, and he said something about what's hygienic about living in a vest that gets sweaty under your shirt or something similar to that kind of thing.

He made us all remove school shirts and vests and turn out for the PE lesson bare chested. We were given no other option, I remember he was sarcastic and said to someone else, you can have a choice, shirtless or a bare chest, which is it? The school gym kit was officially a white vest and a stripe but we hardly ever wore it. I had the same PE teacher much of the time for the gym and he obviously disliked vests of any kind.

When it came to school showers he made it quite clear he did not expect to have to keep telling us to take showers fresh back in the changing room from PE, he expected us to do so without being told and would be looking out for anyone who thought about leaving without having one. Various boys often used to turn the showers on ourselves.

There was no recognition by that PE teacher, or any other, that any of us would have any anxiety about doing PE bare chested or going in the showers stark bollock naked with it all hanging out on view, in front of those in our class or any of the actual teachers who paid quite close attention, or so it felt.

There was a lot of sarcasm in our school from a couple of PE teachers and personal comments made to our faces about what we looked like or how we managed. I really disliked sarcastic smirking teachers, and PE teachers who effectively did what the hell they liked with us.

Was it really 40 years ago, well I can still smell and see the gym and changing rooms and some of the guys there and those teachers as if it was just last year. Such strong, powerful memories.

Keeping fit and active and going to a gym for a while a few years ago was so much more enjoyable than the school one, and I kept my shirt on!

Good to see someone of the old school, Pete, standing up for mandatory shirtlessness in school gyms for boys. How can anyone be against such a thing? A large PE group of shirtless boys look fine and well presented.

Of course a lot of physical education in gyms should be done shirtless, why do you need a t-shirt in a gym at all? Sensible schools mandate this, just like sensible schools mandate that all must shower after PE lessons. As I read an old Christine post, these schools are higher achieving with PE if they do this. It doesn't surprise me, shirts off for PE shows you mean business and expect to work hard, that's how I felt it was when I did this at school in my day, topped off with a shower at the end and a good bit of naked camaraderie as we got the sweat or dirt washed off. Communal showers naked with your classmates had their fun moments, all part of growing up. Kids in school were made not to fear group nudity and forced into accepting it, for most of us it worked well. My teachers never let boys wear tops in the school gym and always made us shower whether any of us liked it or not. If you didn't like it then it was tough, they were determined to make you like it by doing it over and over and over again. That's not cruel, it's just tough love of sorts that makes boys grow up.

Good to also see Jack say he got used to it and doesn't mind it. I'm not sure why schools should feel guilty about telling boy pupils to do PE lessons shirtless, yours Jack clearly doesn't and you admit you don't mind. Four years of such PE sounds like it has had a confident effect on your self image. When I was 12 or 13 I was quite a chubby kid at school who was clearly rather overweight drinking too much cola and eating too many Mars Bars. By doing shirtless PE at school in our gym I wanted to shape up and look better and it made me do so and when I was 16 I had lost the chubby overweight appearance and was taller and average to good shape, and I think being told to do my PE shirtless was a big reason for that. I never felt hard done by getting told to remove my top for PE just because I was a bit plump around the middle. Seeing the better shaped boys each week exposed gave me a great reason to do something about my own fitness and shape.

Pete Higham post.

Twenty one years until 1991 so that covers the whole of the seventies and eighties decades, a time many here went to school and speak about.

I appreciate your honesty there Pete, why pretend otherwise if that's what you think. You actually sound just like many of the PE teachers most of us in those decades had and if I'm being honest I wouldn't expect you to change your mind.

Comment by: Matthew S on 8th April 2025

Matthew, that's interesting. Reading back through this discussion, there appears to be a noticeable correlation, at least among the generation brought up to wear vests as regular daily underwear, between first encountering bare-chested PE and permanently discarding those vests as daily wear.
I should perhaps add that from the time that I entered my teens, my usual night attire was just vest and underpants, so for me, and I suspect many other boys of my age, bare-chested PE led naturally and quickly to bare-chested sleeping.

Comment by: Pete Higham on 8th April 2025 at 19:32




".....I've been a state school comprehensive PE teacher in the past, for 21 years until 1991 and most PE classes I took this was the expectation. I have no reson to doubt those decisions were sound.......

There are no excuses for boys to be silly about being a bare chest top in PE in any circumstance. I apply the same attirude to showering as well......"


Mr Higham. Sir, You were no doubt one of those teachers who were in the "if I'm happy then everybody is happy" brigade.

Clearly you had no empathy, but that was usually the way with teachers of your vintage, however, where I do want to bring you to task is your rather snide sign off " being far more mature than one or two oldies on here are who seem to feel hard done by"

Two points: 1) Some of us had reason to feel that way and.2) By your own admission you left the business 34 years ago. A bit rich referring to men younger than yourself as "oldies".!.

Thank you for your reply, Gerry. I did stop wearing vests completely.

(I had nothing against the garment as such - I just took up my mother's suggestion).

Comment by: Matthew S on 7th April 2025:

Matthew, it sounds as though we both had "sensible" mothers as far as vests were concerned. Did you stop wearing vests completely on your Mum's suggestion, or only on PE days?

The young man's comment just goes to show that boys should be expected to do PE lessons without any requirement to put a top on.

I've been a state school comprehensive PE teacher in the past, for 21 years until 1991 and most PE classes I took this was the expectation. I have no reson to doubt those decisions were sound.

There are no excuses for boys to be silly about being a bare chest top in PE in any circumstance. I apply the same attirude to showering as well.

I'm pleased to see the young man, his friends and school fostering a healthy attitude and being far more mature than one or two oldies on here are who seem to feel hard done by.

Comment by: Jack on 7th April 2025 at 18:23
Hi there
I'm just 16. We've done PE at our school shirtless since I began, it's a secondary academy school in Lincoln. We have to if we go into the gym for PE. It's been like that since I started four and a half years ago. Some boys go down the town together to a gym to keep in shape and look good ready for PE at school. I'm naturally slim but happy with how I look shirtless and don't mind being like that in PE for an hour a week. I was shocked at first though as a fresh eleven year old.





A short but very interesting young point of view here. So because you are asked to do PE shirtless without tops in your school it makes some boys keen to make themselves look as good as they can and has given them motivation to do something gym related away from actual school. I suppose that's got to count as a positive. As long as you're all happy that's what counts.

Not all gym's are expensive Alan, you're just thinking of the major chains. There's one in my area that offers very good discounts for students and you can just pay on the day for a set time rather than take a full membership and it's quite a small local place mostly used by casual users before or after work rather than committed enthusiasts. It stays open until 10pm in the week, opens at 7am.

Eric you have asked me why it was legal for female teachers to supervise boys when they were undressed, even at secondary level? And when was this inequality rescinded, if it has been?

My answer to this question is quite straightforward, it is not a case of whether it is legal or not, it is not illegal let's just say that. Things like this are based more on social norms rather than legalities like you suggest. So there is nothing to rescind as there was nothing formal in the first place. It's about practicing common sense and respect which most teachers are expected to have, not all do I know that, like in any other job.

Technically speaking it would have been quite possible to have had a group of sixteen year olds supervised in a changing room, and showering, by a trainee 25 year old female teacher, or even vice versa but of course this would create a storm of protest, quite rightly and the social pressures would see to it that it would not happen and I'm sure it has not done so.

So at secondary level we can be sure the genders are separated properly on the teacher to pupil situation and nobody would actively set out to create situations like I mentioned above. It would not be illegal but would be unacceptable and rightly so.

At primary school age and lower the situation is less clear cut. In these schools the female to male staff ratio is strongly in favour of female staff as a general rule and has largely stayed that way over recent decades and I think it is seen as socially much more acceptable for 'ladies' to stay with boys at primary age while changing, although not for men with girls I will concede. I note that I have read at least two comments on here from men who say they had their female teachers with them at these ages while changing, mostly it seems through sheer practicality because there was nobody else available. For normal changing I think this is alright at ages less than ten or eleven, although I did also note that someone has mentioned a primary school shower in I think it was the 1970s and being kept an eye on by the female teacher at the age of ten or so. Social norms were different then, that would not happen now or be expected to. Almost no primary schools shower nowadays anyway, legally only schools with pupils aged over eleven have to provide such things.


Stuart, you asked me whether the two well dressed people you saw in your changing room in the late 1970s with your teachers might have been school inspectors at that time, as you mentioned them with notes. I can't possibly know of course, but it's very possible they were, yes. They would have had immediate access to anywhere on request and been expected to have that facilitated for them. Should the pupils be told, no, because the teachers themselves might have been unaware until the immediate moment of asking, although all teachers would be aware that inspectors are in and around the school. Observing the correct workings of the PE department would be expected, although I'd like to think that times had changed by my time and that most of us would have not chosen to impose quite so directly into a situation until everyone was decent. I would not seee it as relevant to see the daily workings of the school changing room quite to that degree and would expect a level of respect for pupils to be observed, but that's Ofsted from the mid 90's onwards, I cannot vouch for some of the older style HM Inspectors before 1980 many of whom will have been brought up with different values from the 1940s and 50s. In your situation Stuart I think it would have been courteous to acknowledge who these gentlemen were, whoever they were, it they were standing observing in your changing area like that. I'm not happy hearing your story as you say it, and having access all areas should come with a responsible attitude and not be taken advantage of. If they were not inspectors they could have been school governors Stuart, but they would not have had any right to be in that room, just a thought though.

I hope that's all been helpful.

And Alan, if you think your teacher may still be alive, tell someone of your thoughts that can investigate him. You owe it to not just yourself, but others too. Give my advice a good think but you do what you think is best, and I'll say no more on the subject.

Comment by: Jack on 7th April 2025 at 18:23

Lincoln must be a very affluent area, Jack, if a group of school students can afford to attend private gyms. The cheapest are not exactly pocket money prices!

Gerry, please don't mind my mentioning a small detail, in case it's of any interest. I wore white cotton vests next to my skin until I started at secondary school, as late as 1996 (my mother then suggested I stop wearing them for ease of changing for PE).

Incidentally, I remember having additional PE lessons at infant school, on my own, with a middle-aged female teacher - I was not the most physically capable child. I would be taken out of my class and the two of us would go down to the main school hall (which was in a Victorian building), or sometimes in a small empty classroom just off the hall. Boys' PE was in shorts only (apart from sometimes also wearing plimsolls) and I remember this lady barking at me, "Vest off", owing to my reluctance to remove the garment.

I should add I was fortunate to have the guidance of a kinder lady for PE activities at junior school.

Oops, my typo two posts down. Blame it on my clumsy fingers on a phone screen!. The date should have been late 1950s. I don't think many kids, or adults for that matter, even owned vests by the end of the 1960s.

Hi there

I'm just 16. We've done PE at our school shirtless since I began, it's a secondary academy school in Lincoln. We have to if we go into the gym for PE. It's been like that since I started four and a half years ago. Some boys go down the town together to a gym to keep in shape and look good ready for PE at school. I'm naturally slim but happy with how I look shirtless and don't mind being like that in PE for an hour a week. I was shocked at first though as a fresh eleven year old.

Count yourself lucky you were allowed to keep your knickers and pants on in those lessons Emma, they didn't have to let you I suppose!

I relate completely to the type of lesson you are talking about. At the time you're so young you don't question any of it, that comes later.

All my shirtless PE came in my schools up to the age of eleven, our middle school for instance would not let boys wear tops in PE lessons and we all went shirtless whoever took us, male or female teachers, including outside in summer term too, with bare feet. Our middle school sports day in June was done shirtless (no choice) for boys with our mostly female audience (mums) watching annually from the age of eight to twelve. All I remember of those events is a lot of running about followed by a lot of sitting about watching a lot of others running about.

I never did very much shirtless PE at comprehensive school other than the occasional skins and shirts situation playing basketball or volleyball in the gym and that didn't bother me after going through the entire middle school being told shirt tops of any kind were simply not required for boys.

At my comprehensive school they took showers very seriously and were often threatening us (detentions mostly) if we didn't take one and do it properly. Christine you said people in your job had access all areas, is that true, because there was one time at my comprehensive school when two of our PE teachers were with us after PE as we were changing and the showers were running, with us all coming and going from them, and there were these two other well dressed important looking men (not teachers at our school or anyone's parents) with our two teachers who seemed to have a lot of notes with them. Nobody explained to any of us who they were and none of us thought to ask, but they seemed to be observing what we were doing but said nothing to anyone other than the teachers, and had no apparent concerns over our personal privacy as a group of naked teenage boys showering away after PE. This will be somewhere around about 1978 or 79 time, do you think they could have been these Her Majesty's Inspectors of School's standing with our PE teachers watching us in such a private sitiuation as that, and if so why did nobody tell us if that's what they were, and if they were why would they need to do that in the first place. It's one of those things that has had me wondering for years.

That picture could well have been my own secondary school gym in the late 1960s, apart from the PE teacher's garb - ours generally wore T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Until I was 13 or so, we always wore tops, usually our underwear vests, which almost all kids wore back then, with the occasional round-neck T-shirt. This all changed the year I moved up to Form 3, as it was called in those days, when the powers-that-be decreed that henceforth all PE would be done topless. I don't remember anyone having any issues with this. I certainly didn't, probably because I had spent much of the preceding summer holiday playing out without either a shirt or vest on, along with my similarly-clad mates, and we had all developed quite a liking for topless freedom.
An unintended consequence was that Mum decided that as I wasn't wearing a vest for PE, then perhaps I didn't need to wear one for the rest of the week, a dispensation that I rapidly adopted.
Although PE in the gym was mandatory topless, tops for outside activities were optional, and mandatory for Sports Days.

Hi Emma,

Welcome to the forum.

I got that idea from my own secondary school where the girls' shower block had curtained partitions whereas we boys had the inevitable, universal communal set-up.

I did know that girls had to do communal showers in some schools because I have met one or two women who cited memories of them and how horrible they felt. But it still seems to have been far less common than for boys. Also numerous people on here have stated how at their schools the girls were not even made to shower while it was rigorously enforced for the boys.

'The only difference being that we girls worried about our developing bosoms and boys were all probably worrying about their developing willies, and whatever gender we were, they put us all through that communal horror show just when all our sensitive bits are growing and it's just about the cruellest age you could do that to anyone, girls and boys, when all are highly sensitive to what we looked like and how we are growing. The last thing most of us wanted was to be "displayed".'

I completely agree with you that even if communal showering was a necessary experience it ought to be implemented later, not before sixteen say, and making developing teens do it was just thoughtless cruelty.

I know that the last thing you need during those first few weeks at 'big school' in which you are probably struggling to process it all, is to be forced into a communal shower naked among loads of other boys, most of whom you don't know and several of whom have already started to single you out for bullying, watched over by a glaring, fuming PE teacher who seems like a bigger bully than the lot of them.

'For many girls just being in the PE kit was bad enough.'

I sometimes wonder why the girls at my school didn't seem to mind their PE kit, which was the standard one for the time of brief gym knickers and tight-fitting aertex polo tops. I don't remember any of them ever complaining about their kit and queuing up for their lessons they always seemed to be laughing and giggling like all girls that age. They just seemed to take it in their stride. Maybe it just depends on how much personal confidence you have.

'It doesn't surprise me to learn a lot of boys had problems doing their PE without tops on. At secondary school in the lower years I remember a number of PE lessons we did that involved boys in the school gym, trampolining stands out as one for some reason. I can remember that most, and probably all of them did not wear any top in those PE lessons and I think I remember some looking less than thrilled by it, or perhaps it was just because we were with them.'

I would have utterly hated to be stripped to nothing but a pair of shorts and then shoved into a room with a load of girls who were wearing a lot more at that age. I don't know what these adults were thinking. I was painfully shy with my clothes on!

'When the boys were much older in secondary school I did wonder why they were not allowed to put on tops for PE and went to gym like they went swimming.'

Well, exactly! There was a recent poster here who said they had to take all their PE lessons like that even to the extent of cross-country, and in the summertime, athletics out on the playing fields and even their sports days, in front of the whole school and all the assembled parents. The girls by contrast were allowed to wear this, that and the other, even to the extent of jogging bottoms outside if they chose. This continued even in to the sixth form where he said one boy was actually expelled for refusing the spartan PE dress code. The school actually derailed his education and his future because he refused the white shorts while at the same time they were allowing the girls to dress in a way they felt comfortable with.

I think you are around the same age as me. I can also remember PE lessons in infant school in our underwear, although we were also allowed to keep our vests on. We were also allowed footwear, plimsolls and socks, if we had it, which just seems odd given that they wouldn't allow us PE kit. Me being the slightly odd child I was I felt comfortable with the undies - everybody else was in the same boat, after all - but I hated having to get my feet out, even at that young age. This continued the whole way through until we turned seven and went to junior school, where we were allowed any t-shirt and shorts.

'Nobody I have ever spoken to has ever been able to explain to me why we were doing PE in our pants and knickers in those days and nothing else'

We never received an explanation either and our parents just seemed to accept it without challenge. Perhaps the rationale was that our school had a lot of children from low-income families, which was true, and that they did not want to force our struggling parents to splash out for PE kit items that at that age would very soon have been outgrown. But I do know that in the 1970s teachers had far more autonomy than they do today and definitely took advantage of it. I even remember being forced strip to my pants and nothing else on a school trip to a public park, in front of whichever passer-by, at the age of six. And that is is a true story.

There is a damn good reason that the pendulum swung so far the other way and that today's teachers are so severely micromanaged.

Anyway, Emma, thank you for your contribution. I appreciate it.