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

[MissHooliesCardigan]

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?

Oh, and in my secondary school, swimming was only in the later years, and by then we chose options - nobody had to do swimming.
As it happens, I had an enormous chest but I didn't feel self conscious at all, because I was used to going to the pool in open sessions and, you know, they were mixed as well. Why would I suddenly start caring?

I went to a mixed school where PE lessons were separate and I actually hated it, the girls were given 'girly' sports like netball, dancing and rounders which I hated and ended up just not participating, whilst I watched the guys across the field do fun things like rugby, martial arts and bodyweight work.
I thought at the time that classes should be mixed and there be two sport choices, and left thinking I wouldn't enjoy any 'sports' and anything I thought looked interesting I shouldn't do because I was a girl.

Took until a couple years ago to discover there are plenty of fun sports and what the hell has being female got to do with it; I do weightlifting now and I love it to bits.

Anyway tell you what I do remember - doing PE in underwear in infant school! Does that still happen now?!

We had mixed PE from year 9 onwards, I think I actually preferred it as girls were so bitchy towards me because I was dyspraxic and didn't know. Mind you, the boys used to make fun of my hairy legs so that was rubbish. I think PE uniform is actually the issue. This insistence on wearing shorts/gym skirts and knickers is unfair on some pupils, especially during puberty.

We didn't have school swimming, thank god!

YANBU I felt self-conscious enough about doing PE with girls. I'd have been even more miserable at doing it with boys. I was small and was knocked over countless times playing netball and hockey with bigger girls. That couldn't be helped, but playing against boys, I'd have been marmelised.

One of the boys' PE teachers once took his favourites to watch us jiggling about playing volleyball once. That was a good experience .

Luckily the head of girls' PE spotted them and came out of her office to tell them to clear off. I expect she probably had words with the teacher who was taking our lesson and did nothing but simper - he was the school heart throb - and a pervert, now I think back.

I was very good at swimming and can still swim faster than many men. But that doesn't mean to say I enjoy being in a pool with some of the more aggressive men who don't like being beaten even though I'm not competing with anyone but myself. They're bigger and what a pissed off over-competitive man does in that situation is rock the water so I end up either moving, or getting out because it's a mixed pool and I accept that.

I'm happy to go to a mixed gym too and like the free weights section which is mostly used by men. I've only met two men who were unfriendly out of hundreds and they were just weird. But I wouldn't do contact sports with a man.

It's all very well PPs saying PE should be about learning to play the game but you cannot take competition out of it - nor should you, really - and when some people's blood is up, they do reckless things.

Interesting points about the culture of the department being more of an issue than whether it's mixed or not.

Does anyone have experience of PE being streamed? I think this might solve some of the demoralisation issues without perpetuating the girls and boys should be embarrassed about each other's bodies issues.

Any experiences?

I can't imagine anything more likely to depress someone always picked last for netball than being put in the PE bottom stream

Oh God, that standing there waiting to be picked and always being last or near to last. The humiliation.

We did single sex PE.

It wasn't popular with everyone as it restricted the sports we could do.

It also eventually resulted in us asking for mixed sessions in addition to single sex, so we could choose we could do. We did eventually get this. This was both girls and boys requesting this.

We even wanted a competitive boys v girls event in sixth form, which we got after much protest from the teachers. I have fond memories of the boys being terrified by the girls running at them with hockey sticks.

I think single sex and mixed both have merits in school, in a learning / fun capacity (slightly different for competitive inter school competition). There are problems with just doing one or the other.

Personally I think there should be more option to do things like yoga and zumba and that sort of thing in PE. I hated PE at school because I was awful at anything involving a ball and always picked last in teams. If PE had involved less balls and teams I'd have realised I actually did quite like keeping fit a bit sooner (swimming, cycling, yoga, dance and trampolining are the sports I enjoy, it turns out).

Its pretty reasonable for a teenage girl to be self conscious at swimming. Mixed swimming just exacerbates that. Fine if you're athletic or thin. Less so if you're not.

If schools want to encourage girls to do more sport (and I'm a real believer in the value of team sports) then they do need to think in a more tailored way.

The reality though is that schools are unlikely to have developed a deliberate strategy on mixed PE - its more likely to be driven by (lack of) availability of facilities, teachers and funds.

My school was separate sexes, i never knew mixed was a thing here until i came on mn ( knew it was a thing overseas).
I would have hated this in school. I was self conscious enough as it was.

YANBU.

I was at a crap mixed secondary in the early 80s and we had separate PE/Games lessons. Very occasionally we might do something together, I remember us all having a go at golf for one lesson.

Almost all sports are segregated in the real world for obvious reasons so why should it be different in schools?

And I thought the same as the OP about the IOC transgender furore and double standards shown here.

Tbh I think mixed lessons would have motivated me more instead of just standing in the corner gossiping with the girls. I think it's a good thing, didn't realise it was the norm though?

I completely understand things like swimming though but I would just give her a note if she's really self conscious.

In my first secondary school we had mixed lessons for gym and separate for games but when I moved and went to a different school it was all separate. I didn't like being separate though, us girls didn't get to do any fun sports, they even made us do line dancing instead of football! Would have much preferred mixed.

We always had single sex pe-except for once a term or so, when we'd do country dancing or cross country running

I was a bit at my y7 dds doing PE with the boys, as I'd never heard of it either. Ds' school always had separate lessons. But they love it-and sportswomen they are not- so I haven't got any issue with it

Mostly mixed PE isn't an issue, but all 3 of my DDs have occasionally been in a mixed team doing football/basketball/benchball/etc where the boys only pass to the other boys like the girls aren't worthy. This happened to DD3 just last week when for some reason the boys were - unusually - playing netball with the girls and one told DD to go and stand on the sidelines 'out of the way'!

Re teenage girls become body conscious and going off sport - this happens in all-girls schools too, and I reckon the larger/big-boobed/uncoordinated kids get as much flack from their own gender as the opposite one.

Sons at mixed school and they do mixed PE. Believe me girls are not at as disadvantage if my sons sporting prowess is typical.

Back in my day I think most PE was separate and we had separate Gym halls etc too but it's just not the way of it now.

I went to an all girls school and believe me girls can put nasty the boys 200x.

I played sport out of school too and could arse against some of the boys.

I prefer DD to do mixed lessons, she does too, girls should be taught their bodies are nothing to be ashamed of, they can be strong and powerful too.

I went to a mixed school. PE lessons were kept separate though. We still did sports the boys did like football. Personally, I preferred being in a group of all girls. That was bad enough (I was rubbish at PE), on a couple if occasions we had mixed lessons and they were a nightmare. The boys mocked our body shapes, the way we ran etc, and I lost count of the number of times they deliberately tripped me up, causing me to fall and stood there laughing.

I always remember one mixed swimming lesson. There was one girl who sat out because she was on her period. All the boys guessed why she wasn't participating and began mocking her, from the last two years of high school she was known to the majority of the boys in our year as 'Menstrual Megan'.

Plot - Yes. At dds school PE is streamed. Ds is in the bottom group for games (rugby/hockey etc) & the middle group for PE. As a consequence he still hates rugby but is really enjoying other aspects of PE. He's enjoying hockey because he's with kids of similar ability whereas at junior school he had a downer on himself - & he loves the cardio/fitness/gym type stuff they do.
He's even giving X country a decent shot.

Ballet girl. That's interesting.

See I don't see how being set bottom for PE is any more demoralizing than being set bottom for maths. It's tough if you had illusions, but then at least you get the opportunity to learn the appropriate stuff. Better to be upset once and then be in a class where you can overcome your barriers than feel shit about yoyourself every lesson cos it's too hard.

I was in high school 10 years ago and beyond primary school there were no mixed pe lessons. There aren't in my LEA overall.

My PE experience was a mixture of single sex and mixed. I'm not sure if there was much difference between competitive boys shouting "lapped you, lapped you twice" and the bitchy girls who would leave me until last when choosing teams then make me substitute thus ensuring I was as crap on the day I left as the day I started.

What mattered more to me was individual activities like dance and areobics which I was better at.

My observations of PE is that single sex is more common. GCSE is mixed because of the option pools.

Went to a mixed school, and we did mixed PE until year 9 but also single sex for rugby/netball - but not hockey or lacrosse! I was always pissed off about the rugby/netball thing because I wanted to play rugby