To think most schools don't care about this?

[AndHarry]

'Shock' news report from the BBC: Most UK pupils don't take a shower after PE

Too right and two reasons why that was so at my school (not very long ago...):

1. The showers were communal. No one was going to strip off and shower naked infront of their classmates.

2. There were 3 showers in a changing room for 30 girls. There was barely enough time to get changed and get to the next lesson, let alone shower.

If this is going to be an issue then schools need to be set up to actually give teenagers time and proper facilities to be able to take a shower after PE.

I wish showering had been optional after PE at my school (I was at secondary school in the 1990s). The teachers called a register at the start of the PE lesson, and we had to answer either Yes Miss or No Miss (the latter if we were on our period and thus allowed to not shower). Then the teachers checked our names off when we went into the shower. I was late starting puberty and didn't start my period until the end of Year 10, but I pretended to have done so a while before that. I hated the showers so much! They were communal showers and I was very self-conscious (although I don't remember any of the other girls ever saying anything to make be so).

I probably didn't even get that sweaty as I hated PE (apart from swimming) so didn't run around all that much, and I seem to remember that most of the time it was freezing cold when we were outside. I certainly don't think I held back from exerting myself because I didn't want to get sweaty, more because I was rubbish at sport.

Unlike most posters here my secondary school didn't have showers so it was never an option and I can remember thinking how glad I was.

I think the study didn't seem to be very well constructed - it gathered lots of data, pulled out some inferences but didn't ask enough of the right questions to find any useful or actionable results. It also didn't even compare it to a control group of schools without showers to see if there was any difference in the results. I'm sure there are plenty of other things they could have done to make it significantly more robust.

However I found the best way to avoid getting sweaty was to join the computer club - and avoid double house matches every week

My middle school had communal showers but the girls ones were unsafe, they were basically a freestanding wall with showers at intervals, the wall was in danger of falling down so we weren't allowed near it.
I remember being sent (by the male pe teacher who used to stand in the door way of the girls changing rooms) to the boys changing rooms to wash my legs if they were muddy. Both me and the boys (and the other girls sent through) hated it.
At my high school the showers were the same, nobody ever used them and people used to get changed in them as they could hide a bit if they were self conscious.
I was very sporty, on several sports teams but would never have showered at school. The facilities were shit and there was no time.

I went to two very different schools.. One huge state high and one private. Showers were compulsory post PE in both. We were muddy sweaty dirty or at least hot and sweaty

My PE teachers at school forced us to have showers. If they thought we were just putting our feet under they'd pull back the curtain to check.

My schooling was back in the 1960s- early 1970s and showering was compulsory after PE. (We didn't have deodorants then !)
Showers and changing room were communal, no cubicles or lockers; we just hung clothes on hooks and benches.
The same at the public swimming baths.

It was all matter of fact and noone minded, so teachers just trusted us to get clean.

Anyone who had her period was excused PE altogether that day (no PE without showering), so no worries there.

I've wondered, reading several Mumsnet threads about communal nudity, if social attitudes about this have changed over the last 40 years ? Not just wrt kids, but some adults in gyms, too.

Anyway, this was useful practice for later, when I worked in Germany & Sweden, where I went out with groups of colleagues to communal mixed (naked) saunas and showers.
My current gym has communal showers and changing rooms too, even now. No complaints I know of.

TBH I would completely get rid of school PE. It's not the place for it, to me.

Instead, I would have scheduled half-days where children are required to show they attend activities in the community, and then subsidised (free or low-cost) sporting activities in community facilities. So if you're a Thursday afternoon kid, you look to see what is available in a Thursday afternoon in your area this term - dance classes, football club sessions, gyms, ski slopes, swimming lessons, whatever - and get it signed off. You'd be mixing with kids from other classes, other schools, get to do different sports in places that actually have the right facilities, etc., rather than the current PE experience that doesn't work for most kids.

You'd have to have some kind of mechanism whereby community facilities could apply for government LEA funding to run sessions, I guess, and some kind of system to vet them, but this would've been my dream as a school-kid. My parents paid for some sporting activities for me outside of school like swimming, dry ski slope lessons, and archery, which I loved, but school sport was all about standing around in stupid clothes doing sports I hated and having to get changed in front of my classmates. If I could've had slightly subsidised skiing lessons or a cheap pass to the council gym or free badminton sessions instead, with the kind of washing facilities adults expect, I'd have been so much happier.

I think the researchers are overlooking the obvious. They are missing the general correlation with development/puberty and body image etc.

I guess those less able at sport at school are often those less physically confident and less happy being naked.

The showers have fuck all to do with sporting ability and all to do with confidence in showers.

The researchers are typical idiots puffiing up their non-existent findings.

I don't agree the researchers puffed up their findings. The BBC link in OP (which will come from the press release) is pretty dry, really. All it says is inhibition about taking showers has the potential to inhibit fitness development, too. They point out a few other small things, like the social profile correlation (kids from more deprived families took fewer showers) which says a lot about social confidence, too. You all are pointing out that the schools are under-equipped.

I guess I am the only person on the planet who was driven by my terrible lack of fitness & sporty ability in primary school to try to get much fitter at high school age. I'm still truly pants at all things sport, but that total lack of natural ability has only spurred me on to try harder.

That actually sounds like a good idea Fail. I'm not sure how it would work in practice though: rural communities etc.

Yes, who would be expected to get the kids to the activities?

It would still have to be school led I think with all being taken to the same activity.

Given the amount of time children have for PE lessons and Ofsted's insistence that ALL time should be spent 'learning' - which apparently means in a classroom as they don't seem to inspect PE lessons - I don't know when these pupils are meant to to shower?

E.g. The secondary school my 3 are at have 2 x 1 hour PE lessons a week. They have 10 minutes to get to the lesson and change and are given 5 minutes at the end to change back which leaves 45 minutes for the lesson. Add into that mix the time spent sorting equipment and getting the class settled you're probably only left with 30minutes of actual activity time.

If they want secondary age school pupils to have showers regularly they need to rethink what time of day lessons are scheduled and how much time a lesson REALISTICALLY needs to last.

Not forgetting the reluctant pupils and those who are skilled in the art of procrastination!