Withdrawing from PE lessons

This is great advice. Make a list of different clubs and make her choose the equivalent amount of time she would miss if she dropped pe. You may find these issues magically disappear, or you may help her find a sport she loves

PE is compulsory though, right?! Sell it to her as an opportunity to build resilience

Schools absolutely do let children drop subjects, if it’s the last resort. But it’s certainly not just a case of you requesting so.

How do they split PE? My school and my children’s school has a girls, boys and mixed. Mixed is for the less able. Can she ask to swap groups, if that would help.

Many 14 year old girls don't want to do PE (teenage, hormonal, periods). But that doesn't mean they shouldn't it's very good for them and help keeps their fitness up, you shouldn't condone this or undermine the school.

I hated PE and it put me off enjoyable physical exercise for years! Thankfully discovered in my 30s that I just hate ball games but enjoy things like Zumba or running. Sadly our PE teachers really were not pleasant people.

Personally I’d invent a chronic health issue that requires missing PE and state that it would clearly not be educational to just sit and watch so your DD will go to the library.
By year 10 my mum wrote me endless excuses for PE and I loved her for it, I probably would have skipped school if I had to have gone.

PE is compulsory so I don’t think she can just decide she doesn’t want to do it anymore. It would set a bit of a precedent for other kids to then decide they don’t like (eg) maths and want to opt out

I agree that if at all possible she should go to the lessons. But. The school should be working with the parents on strategies to make this happen. And there is no way the teacher should have said that about making her as uncomfortable as possible. I thought making a girl work with the boys or vice versa as a punishment went out with Just William!

And no, in life you don't have necessarily to get on with anything you highly dislike, just sayin'.

A.D. 1995, somewhere in Europe across the pond, I was 13 moving to high school after middle school where PE was a nightmare. I told my mum that either she found a way to withdraw me permanently, or I'd had thrown everything into the bin and gone to work at 14 (there at the time it was possible).

She found the way and now I have multiple postgraduate qualifications (and probably undiagnosed dyspraxia).

Listen to her.

She being made to feel as 'uncomfortable as possible'

What is the actual issue here? Why if she starts the lesson does she not complete it? Is she deliberately “forgetting” her kit , disrupting the activity or just going missing? She can’t pick and choose her teachers. Would she be allowed to referee or facilitate rather than take part, although that would still require her to turn up and do as she is told. Are you sure she has reported what was actually said to her.

This. She just needs to put up with it. Tough luck.

She’s being told she has to attend PE lessons with the rest of her class.
There is no shaming, stress or force involved, over and above that applied to any other pupil who has to accept that school lessons aren’t optional.
Behave, fgs.

Resilience is NOT taught through shaming, stress or force. You're thinking of compliance and suppression - and they are not the virtues you believe them to be.

What’s she struggling with?

I think if you excel everywhere else it can sting if you’re rubbish at PE but the lesson there is that sometimes you’re going to suck at something, others are going to be better at it than you can you need to suck it up.

I was never sporty but I remember joining cricket at lunch because my friends went. Now I’m pretty good at throwing and catching. Turns out it’s just practice!

Irrespective of the fact that you legally cannot - you would be doing your daughter a disservice:

1. she needs to learn resilience. Even if you don’t like something or someone or even a group of people - you have to get on with it.
2. she can run away from problems but needs to resolve them - can she communicate with the teachers, can you communicate with the school
3. exercise needs to be a daily part of life

Just be a parent and tell them they have to do it. What’s the big deal? I’m sure you don’t want your child to do no exercise at all, gain weight and become (stay) really unfit?

What’s she going to do when she has a job and doesn’t like some of the coworkers and doesn’t want to do what the boss has told her?

Everyone doesn't hate PE tho. IME (and my job as an MFL teacher involved talking to students about school subjects) it's one of the most popular school subjects.

Obvs not everyone likes it. But plenty do, a d it's much more inclusive as a rule than when I was at school.

It's PE. Everyone hates it. Suck it up and get on with it.

It's a great lesson in resilience.

His GCSE was “wasted” (so presumably he failed the exam) because he didn’t get on with the teacher?
How does that work, because it doesn’t actually make much sense?

What is her specific need and have the school tried to meet it within her normal lesson? Dd1 “opted” out of MFL in y8 onwards and had extra “learning support” but the was the extra English support would overall be beneficial and she was never going to “get” French and would drop it after y9 anyway. She has a diagnosed learning disability. If there isn’t an actual issue beyond not liking the teacher then I don’t think it’s appropriate. If there is an issue due to a disability or specific learning need then they need to try to meet that within the lesson before ditching out altogether. (With dd she was in bottom set French and had “language club” one lunchtime a week but as she can barely spell basic words in her native language it was decided that concentrating on her English skills to give her an overall better chance across all her subjects was better for her than trying to get her to pass a vocab test in a second language).

They shouldn’t be making her feel uncomfortable but then you can easily prevent that happening by making sure she is going with the right kit.

What does not getting on with the teachers look like? Why isn’t she completing her lessons, is she being asked to leave due to bad behaviour or is she walking out? What is actually happening in the lessons?

To many parents, it must seem quite straightforward to remove a child from a lesson they have no investment in and which will have no future negative impact. In practice, it’s not that simple. There would have to be somewhere for them to go and be supervised.

Unless there is something the OP hasn’t mentioned, which would alter the case, sometimes people just have to put up with some things. My child chose Geography as a GCSE option, because he liked the teacher in Year 9. Of course, he got a different teacher and they really didn’t get on and he basically wasted a GCSE. It mattered, but not from the perspective of impacting on his future.

What comment the teacher made and in what context, should be investigated, but otherwise I think the school might push back against withdrawing her completely.

I agree with those who ask what the actual issues are @Geordie2Mam. The only one you specify is the teacher’s comment which is obviously not acceptable – but did they actually say that? Have they accepted that they did?

Not liking teachers – well that’s just how it is in school, as others say. Most students will have teachers they like more and less. Not OK just to opt out.

OTOH if there are other issues at play – your DD is ND for example and there are sensory issues around wearing her PE kit, just to think of one thing – then it may be worth exploring some reasonable adjustment with the school. But we cannot say if that is the case from the info you have provided.

In general it’s not practical for DC to opt out of lessons – where would they go? They need to be supervised somewhere.

She needs to attend her PE lessons with the correct kit and equipment like she does for all other lessons.