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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To be unhappy about mixed sex PE lessons at secondary school?

100 replies

MissHooliesCardigan · 10/02/2016 20:40

I've just found out from DD who's 13 and in year 8 that boys and girls do PE together right up to year 11. This seems totally wrong to me. DD is very sporty but I'd noticed that her enthusiasm has really waned since she started secondary school. I can imagine that many girls feel really self conscious in front of the boys - they even do swimming together but I mainly feel that it's really demoralising for girls competing against boys as the boys will always have a natural advantage. Surely, if they're trying to encourage girls into sport, this is just going to put them off? It certainly has with DD. I love the school but I'm really pissed off about this. AIBU or do lots of schools do this?

OP posts:

ThroughThickAndThin01 · 10/02/2016 20:59

Mixed school here. Swimming lessons done together. And hockey. Rugby and netball separately.

Original poster

MissHooliesCardigan · 10/02/2016 20:59

If it's fine and dandy, why all the fuss about male to female transgender athletes being able to compete as women? Males are biologically stronger and faster than females so mixing the sexes will mean that the girls are always at a disadvantage.

OP posts:

Yankeetarts · 10/02/2016 21:01

Dc at mixed school,all pe single sex

BerylMeeps · 10/02/2016 21:01

I'm a girl. I still kicked butt at swimming and many other sports against the boys. Some girls are better, some boys are better. Perfectly normal just get on with it.

QueenofLouisiana · 10/02/2016 21:05

Swimmers always train together, they don't compete in mixed gender races. I like that fact as it normalises bodies belonging to the opposite sex- our swim team take very little notice- unless someone has a fabulous new costume! At tge start of secondary. End of primary girls are faster swimmer than boys generally as they hit puberty earlier and develop more adult muscles.

I wouldn't be so thrilled about contact sports being taught in mixed groups though.

Sallyingforth · 10/02/2016 21:05

We did mixed PE and most girls loved it because we could tease the relatively immature boys. Looking back it was probably unfair.

RedRideMeGood · 10/02/2016 21:05

When I was at school (I'm 26) all our local schools had separate classes for p.e. The exception at our school was once a year for sports day and twice a year for cross country.

Occasionally if we had a member of staff off they'd put us all in the sports hall together to play volleyball but was always girls one end and boys the other. The only transgender student in our year went to the library to do homework during p.e lessons.

Cleensheetsandbedding · 10/02/2016 21:07

I agree with queen

Bunbaker · 10/02/2016 21:09

DD's school does single sex PE. I have never questioned it. I would have thought that for the more physical stuff like football that the girls wouldn't get much of a look in if they played with the boys.

AdriftOnMemoryBliss · 10/02/2016 21:11

my school was a sports academy with a schmancy government award, all our PE lessons were single sex right from yr7.

I think its weird to do mixed classes in PE and i wouldn't like it AT ALL.

WE all used to have PE at the same time, but the boys and girls had different teachers and were in different parts of the sports areas.

JohnLuther · 10/02/2016 21:11

We did mixed PE lessons when I was at school.

Schwabischeweihnachtskanne · 10/02/2016 21:15

MissHooliesCardigan the difference is whether they are directly competing against one another or not isn't it? So it might be demoralising to have mixed athletics races but not so much to have equally balanced mixed teams for basketball, nor to have them all training at the same time against the clock or whatever for athletics, but not competing against one another.

If you look at all the girls, or all the boys, as a single sex group in any one school year you can also argue that the range is so great that it is unfair that they are competing against one another ... I know if I look at DD's class (first year of secondary) the girls have a height range of at least a good foot and probably a weight range of several stone... its not really fair if they are all "competing against" one another really, but school PE lessons are not mainly about competing against your classmates 1:1!

Lurkedforever1 · 10/02/2016 21:15

I don't see a problem with them doing Pe together, it's only if you mean competing against each other during lessons when the biological difference makes it unfair.

Although I do think if it's a school where gym knickers and cheap white polos are the norm for girls, they should be allowed something less revealing if they feel self conscious.

I would have much preferred Pe with the boys when I was at school, they had much better team sports imo. And I loved beating them hands down in my sport

SoupDragon · 10/02/2016 21:16

If it's fine and dandy, why all the fuss about male to female transgender athletes being able to compete as women?

Perhaps because school PE and competitive sport are not the same thing.

3WiseWomen · 10/02/2016 21:16

Is PE only about winning then? Not about learning how to play a sport, doing the best you can or anythingelse like that?

If you talk abut 'winning' then yes, as soon as puberty really hits (about 13yo with boys) the girls will be at a disandvantage.
If it's about learning how to play a sport, being a team, techniques etc... then surely that shouldn't be an issue.

abbsismyhero · 10/02/2016 21:17

we occasionally had mixed pe lessons at middle school one memorable occasion we were playing cricket i wore a skirt for pe (with no big knickers underneath) and my pe t-shirt was rather tight it was embarrassing one of the boys offered to "run" for me and my mom received a phone call about buying me new kit

we did sit ups in a lesson with the boys once and i kicked ass they wouldnt compete against me for that again

they tended to keep us separate at high school too because we actually had a group of boys who would go out of there way to help the girls in whatever they were doing usually the help they gave me was stand over there i will do this for you (i was fucking useless at sports good at making cups of coffee for the teacher though)

Excited101 · 10/02/2016 21:17

We were mixed but sometimes had or did different options in the classes like girls netball or boys rugby. I thought mixed was the standard.

3WiseWomen · 10/02/2016 21:18

Having said that, when dc1 talks about his PE lesssons, it's all about competting and being the best than everyone else (so beating the opposite team at football, being the fastest on the cross circuits etc etc).
It seems that 'winning' and 'being the best' can't be disociated from 'doing PE' :(

TrashPanda · 10/02/2016 21:18

I genuinely just started thinking about whether I had mixed PE lessons at school and whether it had an effect on my participation levels. Thinking no, pretty sure I never had a mixed PE lesson...couple of seconds later I finally remember I went to an all girls school twat

NickiFury · 10/02/2016 21:19

I absolutely hated PE with the boys and so did all my friends. We didn't try, there was no point, we could never win. Some of the girls could compete and get right into the indoor hockey melee and good for them but they were definitely in the minority. PE was just to be endured. We got nothing out of it whatsoever.

tinofbiscuits · 10/02/2016 21:22

We had single-sex PE in the 80s. I'd have liked to have had a go at the traditionally boys' sports. It wouldn't have bothered me at all to have mixed PE lessons. All the other lessons were mixed. It would have been good to not have to wait to be picked by the sporty queen bee types and have a laugh instead!

Schwabischeweihnachtskanne · 10/02/2016 21:24

Nikki I felt like that about PE but I went to a girls' school - it wasn't anything to do with boys, just to do with not being one of the ones who always won/ was fastest at everything... Mixed PE lessons would only make this worse if the boys and girls are competing against each other in the 1:1 sports, rather than simply training in parallel and playing non contact team sports together.

MetalMidget · 10/02/2016 21:25

When I was at secondary school in the 90s, a good chunk of the sports were separate (boys did football, rugby and cricket, girls did netball, hockey and rounders), others were mixed (athletics, tennis, badminton, gymnastics and swimming). Basically the team sports were kept single sex, the more individual sports were mixed.

I fucking hated them all, but particularly the team sports.

Lurkedforever1 · 10/02/2016 21:26

Good point schwab. My height, fitness and build gave me advantages in sports I wasn't even that good at, as it does dd.

Westielove · 10/02/2016 21:26

I went to a mixed school which did single sex PE, although I did have a couple of mixed classes. I hated PE enough with just the girls, it was hell with the boys (although they were all very sporty which probably didn't help). I didn't realise some schools do it differently.

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