Burnley Grammar School

Some of my earliest PE at school memories casting my mind back involve doing it in my pants in classes full of children like me in our underwear with nothing on our feet or our bodies whether boy or girl. But that was the late 1960s.

Then boys at my primary school could only ever wear some dark coloured shorts in PE, but at least it wasn't our underwear, bare feet and bare chests for the boys and a lot more for the girls by then.

Secondary school was a variety on the outside, we wore long sleeved sweatshirts, football tops, t-shirts or vests and also some shirtless days too. The school gym was mostly bare chests with the occasional bib on.

So it was more or less compulsory bare chests when told in PE from quite an early age for me and that went right through to the point of leaving.

I was made to take showers in primary and secondary school. The headmaster at my primary school would come along the corridor and watch us shower when we had our lady class teacher take our lesson because she kept out of that area. He even used to help some of us dry off our shoulders and backs.

You wouldn't have stripped to the waist and been bare chested so you could enter the temple then Alan, even if the others all did? I'm on the shy side of things but I would have taken the plunge and done so like a couple of others have said, certainly on a school trip type visit. Whether I would do so on an adult trip under my own steam I couldn't say for sure unless it was something I really wanted to see.

We had a mosque day out on a trip at school in the early eighties and had to take our shoes off. I remember that, and some people peeled the socks off too and others left them on, that bit didn't seem to matter, socks were okay, shoes were not. I've not heard about the need to go shirtless to enter temples before, you learn something new every day. There do appear to be a lot of pictures online of people doing just like David did 37 years ago at school on the trip, mostly those who practice the religion from what I saw, obviously they made no exceptions even for the white western non believers. I agree with Ronnie's last part.

Comment by: David P on 11th June 2025 at 22:39


"I'm quite shy about taking my own shirt off in public, always was. I counted doing so in a school PE lesson as taking my shirt off in public too, I don't know whether anyone else would agree with me on that definition........."

I quite understand David I am exactly the same myself. In the days when I was employed by others I would never take jobs which required medical examinations, because I am quite shy and private, so I fully understand your feelings. I'd only go to a doctor if I had some reason to do so, not to be told to do so by some pen pusher.

I was astonished to read about your Indian trip. One of the reasons I have no religious affiliations, is because I find them so intrusive with their rules and laws, which have not been made by some deity, but by human leaders who set themselves up as some divine authority - they make no sense, if you are RC you have to go and confess your wrongdoings to some old chap in a booth, every week - he will just tell you to say Hail Mary - just say it and cut out the middleman! if you are Jewish or Muslim you have to have a bit of your anatomy snipped off your anatomy - the C of E is, I think the only one that doesn't have "rules" but I am not even tempted by that. In my personal view religion has caused more trouble and dissension over the centuries than anything else. Still, it was interesting about the practices of the Hindu religion - you learn something new every day, but it still prompts the question in my mind - as do all religions - why?

What an astonishing coincidence that you've written about a school trip to India on History World just last night David and within 12 hours news comes of a devastating air disaster on an Air India flight from there back to the UK.

That was a great sounding school trip and an interesting anecdote on having to take tops as well as shoes off there. Chris G there is quite a bit of information on what David has written out there, it seems confined to a certain area of that country based on the couple of items I briefly read, with associated photos. Like you Chris, if I was on a holiday and visiting I would oblige such a rule too and wouldn't let a shirtless rule stop me visiting such a place. It's meant to be a hot and humid area anyway. When visiting somewhere else of course you should follow their rules if you want to do things, something we here in the UK should require of our visitors and immigrants a lot more.

I've heard that people who go to India either love it or loathe it.

Comment by David P, 11th June
My wife and I spent a fortnight on a trip around Northern India a dozen or so years ago. At our final stopping point, the holy city of Varanasi, we were fortunate to experience both the evening Arti service on the banks of the Ganges, but also to visit a Hindu temple the following day. At no point in either of these events were males required to be bare-chested, something I would readily have done if required, or even invited to do. In fact, I don't remember seeing any bare-chested males at all in the temple, and very few at the riverside ceremony.

It always amazed me how obedient boys were at our school and always did as we were told by our PE teacher.He was in charge of about 30 boys and we were always told to shower naked when he required us to do so,
We were made to do our PE just wearing our shorts and some boys wore satin shorts including myself which was even more embarrassing.

Comment by: Tony on 11th June 2025 at 15:54


"I know there has been a lot of PE teacher comment in the negative on here at times but the line in bold - 'Are PE teachers in the UK really as bad as the reputation they have to the rest of the world?' in the article surprised me. Did British PE teachers really have this appalling reputation that went way beyond our own shores, that's quite a discovery if true"

Hi Tony, I think I may have an explanation, though certainly no excuse. I suspect the majority of P.E. teachers are very interested - perhaps TOO interested because they themselves had ambitions that were never fulfilled, - of becoming professional athletes, and teaching is the only way they can go on enjoying whatever they were interested in and making a living of it. I know a few semi-pro musicians who, like me, when I was young had ambitions of becoming full time professionals and living the life of a musician. Like me, though good, we were not QUITE good enough, (brass players are ten a penny in the business) so most of us go away and do something else that we are more successful at, but a few I knew decided to take up teaching, and they changed more or less overnight from happy-go-lucky players into really bitter and resentful men. I think they genuinely wanted to pass on all they knew, and perhaps had one or two
protégés, , and they resented the rest of the pupils who were not up to that standard, and had little time or patience for them. In one case the teacher began to resent his star pupil, because he was convinced the pupil was better than he was. It's a toxic situation, because they assume everyone will be as committed as they were, and set their ambitions for them too high. That is bound to end in disappointment, hence the hissy fits, temper tantrums and resentment. It must be even worse for them these days, since they can no longer take out their frustrations with a cane or slipper. I suspect the same is true of P.E. teachers - they were not quite good enough at their chosen sport which leads to disappointment and resentment. Teaching is a fairly well paid profession (despite what the teaching unions never tire of telling us), and I suspect most of them enjoy the idea of passing on their knowledge, and regard it as a personal affront if the pupils are not as motivated as they were themselves. I also suspect that both musicians and sportsmen realise that their knowledge is more practical than academic, and, as in all walks of life, they realise that they are regarded as "lesser" in the brainbox stakes, and you will get snobbish colleagues who will not disguise that fact, and treat them somewhat patronisingly . The way they treat the lads and girls they are teaching, adopting the martinet persona, as a compensation for the slights, real or imaginary, makes them their own worst enemy. The only difference is music teachers cannot make kids shower, but they have their own form of punishments - trying to make a kid play C above C at 11.00 on a Monday morning is grim. In the case of P.E. teachers they compensate by treating their pupils as recruits for the Royal Marines - they become merely risible in most people's eyes as a result, Most lads treat this over-enthusiasm as a joke, they have no wish to be an Olympic champion or Wynton Marsalis. Teachers of all subjects should realise that not everybody is as keen on their specialist subject as they are themselves.
.

I'm quite shy about taking my own shirt off in public, always was. I counted doing so in a school PE lesson as taking my shirt off in public too, I don't know whether anyone else would agree with me on that definition. I wasn't made to run the public streets on cross country without my vest on though, it was all within school buildings.

But this happened on a foreign school trip:

When I was in the fifth form, part studying Hinduism in RE (religious education) in 1988 I was lucky enough to be among a group of a dozen selected interested and responsible academic minded pupils who were offered a two week trip to India's southern Kerala region taken by two of our RE teachers, the male head of RE and his deputy a woman during the Easter break. It was a heavily subsidised trip only partly paid by parents and a lifetime opportunity to widen our horizons and see different cultures.

On the trip we had 7 boys and 5 girls and our two teachers. We did normal sightseeing while there but much of it was focussed on aspects of our studying. I was keen to learn about others.

During our fortnight we visited three Hindu temples across the Kerala region in the far south western tip of India. One thing we didn't appear to have been taught before we paid our pre-organised visit to the first temple who were expecting us was that not only do all visitors into the temple have to remove their shoes on entry but that all males must remove their tops before coming into the temple and can only enter them bare chested. I had no idea that would happen, the teacher must have done but he didn't seem like he did. So polite visitor etiquette meant the boys on our visit had to take all we were wearing on our top half off so we were fully bare chested and then we could enter. The females, the five girls and their teacher did not have to do this, just remove the shoes. We spent quite some time in the Hindu temple in Kerala region and it was a calming experience albeit I was a touch anxious about what I was like, our male teacher had to do just the same as us too. We visited another two temples across the Kerala region and had to do the same in those also. The removal of our male tops was seen as a signal of our respect as visitors and dignity, and was also meant to symbolise energy being allowed into our bodies. None of the males on our trip would have been allowed anywhere inside the temples if we had refused to comply and disrobe like that.

So depending on where you are in the world, forcing the male of the species to take his top off can be seen as the polite and respectful thing to do in religious etiquette. It was certainly an experience worth undergoing. One of the girls on our trip did at the time say she felt it removed our dignity and freedom of expression and she felt it made HER awkward because of having to spend time touring the temples with all the boys and our teacher in bare chests on those visits.

Comment by: James C on 10th June 2025 at 22:07
These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!




Yes James, when they are 5, 6 or 7 years old, not 15, 16 or 17....or even anything after 10. It's quite a big difference. Scandanavia may be many things but they are not so easy on things that they do what you describe at secondary age!

When I was reading the short comment by James C which he is entitled to say, I wondered how many actual PE teachers held this view themselves which might just explain why some, or infact most people on here talk about the lack of empathy they felt. It did feel like a teacher trait.

Here is a little read I have found on greatathletes.org.

PE; Physical Education or Public Embarrassment?

https://greatathletes.org/p-e-physical-education-public-embarrassment/#:~:text=Any%20person%20that%20had%20to,but%20their%20vest%20and%20underwear!


I know there has been a lot of PE teacher comment in the negative on here at times but the line in bold - 'Are PE teachers in the UK really as bad as the reputation they have to the rest of the world?' in the article surprised me. Did British PE teachers really have this appalling reputation that went way beyond our own shores, that's quite a discovery if true.

A number of my PE teachers used to split our gym classes up at the start of lessons into an exact half by whatever means, one had this specific method, pointing at one random boy on one of the sides who was told to decide - skins or shirts. Almost every time the answer came back without hesitation - shirts, whoever got picked to make the decision! This way of deciding seemed to be a bit flawed, it gave the same answer every time, until the lesson when my PE teacher pointed at me to answer his binary choice question and I just wanted to be deliberately different and actively choose myself as a bared chest, so I answered - skins. All I can remember was the other half smirking at our half and my half of the class and a few boys being mad at me for saying it. I actually got a lot of aggro after PE for daring to make 'my side' go skins in PE like that, but if I'd chosen shirts I was still making the other half of class go skins anyway. I remember the PE teacher being quite pleased I had broken with the precedent and been bold enough to commit myself and our side to going skins for PE that time.

No way would I ever consider myself a confident shirtless person at school when I first had to keep removing my top in PE lessons, but I found it got easier the more I did it and I thought it was important to show my PE teacher at that time quite clearly that I was not as predictable as the others when choosing. I knew if I got picked again I would have to say skins again, and did when it happened. I was only asked twice though.

I always rather enjoyed having a shower after PE at school. This was soon noticed by another PE teacher of mine who I heard say to some of them in our changing room that they needed to find the eagerness I had for showers. I was one of the quick and keen boys for that. Collective nakedness in a group situation like that in school showers never really concerned me very much at all, I seemed at ease with it almost immediately and didn't mind being told I had to do it because it made sense to me when you saw the state of us sometimes and a shower is the most natural place to get everything off. I class myself as a fairly shy person too.

Depending on who you get teaching you, your school and the whole general set up, the whole experience of shirtless gym or the after-PE showers routine can probably vary and affect your view on it. A good school can calm your nerves on it if you have them, a bad school can play on your fears and make things worse. It can also depend if you are in a good class too with the others.

Comment by: James C on 10th June 2025 at 22:07


"These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!"

James you don't have to read these comments, that is a choice you have made of your own free will. In between your bouts of "despair" and amusement, you ,might like to consider the psychological effects that many people on here can recall events that took place forty/fifty years ago - and more, I suspect

Web got through it, though without resorting to the current ideas that we might be cats or dogs, or that we were transgender &c. so we were not the "soft" blokes you plainly consider us to be. Perhaps you sailed through school with no problems, or problem teachers at all - think yourself lucky. I would also remind you that we are not in Scandinavia. Have you got something more constructive you might like to add to the forum?

Hi Yours Truly,

Thank you for your reply, it was my parent's decision that I should continue wearing short trousers when I attended secondary school as it was not obligatory.They considered it normal and healthy to continue wearing shorts until my later school years.Although I found it disconcerting wearing shorts at secondary school my parents enjoyed the the spectacle of a teenager growing up in shorts.

Comment by: Chris on 9th June 2025 at 02:58
'Only 26, all this (going shirtless in PE and having naked class group showers) was still demanded of me when I was at school and that was only 8 years ago when I left. I refused to do any sixth form PE when they kept on at me to. Fortunately I got away with it but the PE teachers hated me for that. I think I last actually did a PE lesson in my bare chest just over ten years ago some point in the first half of 2015 and it was never a free choice of mine to do it, I think I last had a school shower in the same period actually. There were no refusals that I ever saw up to that point before I was in sixth form.'




While many of us on here were at school in the 60's, 70's or 80's it's good to have more up to date input as well like yours Chris and also the one from Kenny as people who were still in school at the start of the 2010's just over ten years ago now, although I think the country and the world has changed rather a lot even since this point in time. There's been a steady trickle of younger people come on here and say they've done their fair share of shirtless PE lessons as well as teachers say they ask for it to be done still. Clearly mandated showers still happen all over the place too, that current school website Mr Dando linked made that very apparent only a few days ago.

In the month of June most boys used to go out and do athletics on the field in bare chests at my school, many seemed like they wanted to, but as we already did it in the gym we were all very well conditioned to the whole ethos of doing PE shirtless anyway.

These threads make me laugh to be honest and despair at the same time. People have become so soft now that every little thing that they find discomfort in 'traumatizes' them. In parts of Scandanavia both boys and girls shower naked together, yes really, even when they start school, so get over your prudishness its just a bit of flesh and whip it out!

Comment by: Anthony B on 10th June 2025 at 03:34

Your teacher sounds like a genuine creep to put it mildly. Knowing my own ability for occasional backchat at teachers, I might have felt obliged to pull his waistband and check him too even at the risk of a smack from the sports shoe on some part of me. The teachers kept their underwear on in these classes didn't they? Of course they did!

Some people mention on here that when they were allowed to wear trainers/plimsolls for gym they were not allowed to wear socks with them. It's hard to tell for sure but it looks like all the boys in the associated photo here above are in the no socks situation, but the teacher has his white socks on. Now I was always told it was less hygienic to wear trainers without socks on.

The first time I ever heard the term 'birthday suit' was when I was a newby at senior school (1973) and a teacher used those words when we were about to take the plunge into that first over anticipated communal shower as a whole class. I was so naive at the time I thought it meant we had to wear something for a second or two. I then learnt the meaning of the term rather rapidly in front of my eyes.

As we got older I remember a number of boys used to just drop out of PE and not even show up, not feeling up to a cold morning on the gym floor, tops off and doing whatever it was that day, much of the lesson content now a blur. Unauthorised dropping out of PE in the fourth and fifth year got them into massive trouble every time but didn't stop them.

These teachers we used to have could be canny operators though, and we were about to go off for our metalwork lesson one morning and the ones who had dropped out of PE the previous day were made to go to PE with another class instead of to the expected metalwork, and were given spare shorts for the job. This had quite an effect of the hard core PE drop outs, and anyone else thinking of it, that we might just get pulled from our expected lesson the following day, bunged some old spare shorts and sent as extras to another strange class.

Fourth and fifth form boys had to run the school cross country shirtless in those days, but they spared the bottom three years from that. It was well known that once you entered the fourth form at school you were liable to do this and not just stay inside in the school gym shirtless. We had one very young teacher who ran shirtless with us but none of the others ever did that, sometimes we had three teachers running with us, one up front, one in the middle and one at the back all keeping an eye on us for any cheeky shortcuts or deviations along the way. They made us run a very long way indeed, possibly as much as four or five miles I think.

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

Hi James,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Hi Penny, welcome to the forum,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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