Primary 5 boys & girls have to change for gym together??

[Yogagirl17]

DD (10) just been telling me that her teacher makes them all get changed for gym together in the classroom and also that her male teacher stays in the room while they change. Now I just want to say straight out I like and trust this teach and absolutely do not suspect him of anything untoward, other than possibly being a little naive.

Anyway, DD says she is beginning to feel uncomfortable with this and doesn't understand why the boys (and the teacher) can't go to another room while they change. I can't say I blame her and frankly I'm a little surprised this is even happening - surely 10 is old enough that they should be given privacy? I definitely want to say something to the school but trying to gauge how strongly to react. I mean, should I just ask the head teacher if they can change teh current arrangement or do I make a bigger deal of it?

[CrapolaDeVille]

There is really no excuse for denying a child who wants privacy their right t have it.

[mrz]

You haven't come up with a solution to how to provide it though ...

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

I think the OP is perfectly right to want to respect her daughter's privacy if she feels she needs it, and the school should allow something along the lines of allowing the DD to change in the toilet (leaving quietly and without making a fuss about it so everyone wants to go with her) if she wants to. Presumably even in schools where the toilets are "miles away" children are allowed to go there unaccompanied?

We used to change separately from Year 6 (i.e. 10) with the girls in the classroom and the boys looking through the doors in the area outside. This was mainly because several of us had started growing breasts (but often were not yet wearing bras) and some girls had started their periods etc. The idea of a boy in your class seeing the wings of your sanitary towel or whatever...

[CrapolaDeVille]

mrz....this is not my problem to solve, the school must find a solution. If Muslim children have to be found a prayer room, a disabled child has to be provided with ramps then a developing child must be given privacy.

[Feenie]

None of our Muslim children 'have to be found a prayer room'. THis has nothing to do with Islam, why do you keep saying it is?

[CrapolaDeVille]

I'm just using Islam as an example of things that we do to accommodate children, I couldn't find another example. (nothing pro/against Islam at all)

Do you not have a place for Muslim children to pray?

[teacherwith2kids]

CDV

It is all very well to wash your hands, wave grandly and say 'the school must find a solution'. A school's main purpose is the effective delivery of the national curriculum and to enable all children to make progress in all areas of their learning. It must do so in a way that keeps the children safe and meets their individual needs while balancing the school budget.

So, living in the real world, a typical school (usually built between the Victorian era and the 1970s, and with every nook and corner used for small group support, SEN teaching etc) faces these alternatives:

• All change in one room, supervised by one teacher.
  
• Half change while half wait outside, then swap and repeat - depriving children of their NC PE requirement as it takes twice the time to change.
  
• Where available, withdraw half the class to another space, be that the library (ours is a corridor), a large cupboard (we have none), a 1 to 1 teaching space (again, we have none except a table in the corridor which is in permanent use and anyway visible from all classrooms and from the front door), the cloakrooms (open to the corridor and wholly visible from all other classrooms, thus affording no privacy) or the hall (100% booked for other classes / lunch).
  
• Send some children to the toilets (not the most hygeinic, and in a small school such as mine there may only be 1 set of girls' toilets for the whole school and far too little space for all the girls in one class to change in let alone allow younger children in to the toilets at the same time)
  
• Should there be another private space for half the class to change in, employ another member of staff to supervise them (which means that they aren't teaching or doing their job as TAs at that point)
  
• Should there not be another private space, spend the money to build it. (Hmm, listed building apart, not to mention limitations of the site, what the school REALLY needs is 1 to 1 or small group teaching space, which would be in use 100% of the time and would enable us to improve the progress of struggling kids, stretch the most able and improve the facilities for those with SEN. Changing rooms, in use for 10 minutes 2x a week for each class just aren't worth the same investment... and money invested in buildings = money not avalable to pay staff, buy books etc)
  

Which of those MUST we do? Or is it, as the teachers have said on this thread, often that we have to make the best of a bad job, give privacy within the classroom as much as possible (we have a book corner which has quite high shelving, affording at least a degree of privacy) and get on with doing the best we can within the real life constraints we come across.

[Yogagirl17]

Ok, i get that there is not an easy answer. I also agree that the male teacher is NOT the issue - nor is he a fool or a pervert! The issue would be the same with a female teacher and the boys wanting privacy from both the girls and the teacher. But I do think a solution has to be found and that saying it's just too hard simply isn't good enough. Personally I would much rather the kids be left unsupervised for 5 minutes (after all they're allowed to go to the toilets on their own the rest of the day!) or that they missed an extra 5 minutes of PE, although maybe if DD went to a school like the one emptyshell described I would feel differently.

[Yogagirl17]

teacherwith2kids - sorry but I feel that forcing kids to get undressed together adn in front of opposite sex adults does not "keeps the children safe and meet their individual needs"

[mrz]

We don't have a place for Muslim children to pray either
We do have disabled access and two disabled toilets ... which could be turned into changing rooms if we took the ramps away [lightbulb moment
]

[Feenie]

No, no prayer room - many of our children are Muslim.

[mrz]

Perhaps Yogagirl17 you could sign something saying you take full responsibility for any injury or damage occurred when children are left unsupervised ?

[Yogagirl17]

Maybe schools could have some freestanding screens which aren't expensive, can be kept in a corner/against a wall when not in use but would allow all the kids to get changed in the same room while still having some privacy?

[teacherwith2kids]

Yoga, our girls' toilets are far too small for all the girls in my class to change in at once - and it would mean nobody else in the school would have toilets to use.

It's not an extra 5 minutes of PE, as it would have to be to change and change back. 45 minute lesson, minus normal changing = 35 minutes, 40 if it starts or ends at break time. Minus the business of swapping over groups to change = 20 minutes. Number of those needed to reach the government standard of 2 hours of PE per week = 6. Number of spaces in the timetable = 3.

I'm not saying that it's too hard, I'm saying that with the best will in the world and with appropriate adjustments (grouping within the classroom, use of more private areas) then sometimes everyone changing within the same classroom is the best option.

[teacherwith2kids]

'Keep the children safe' is, as ever, a balancing act..

Safe in a single, supervised classroom, girls separated from boys, furniture used appropriately as screen (most of my kids sit on the floor to change as the desks and chairs screen them)...

Safe in an unsupervised toilet with more people in than it can easily accommodate, wet floor, slightly dubious hygeine...

Safe in another unsupervised room - even where behaviour is good, the REALLY hurtful and bullying comments related to developing bodies in my experience come from one girl to another or from one boy to another...

Equally, meeting the children's individual needs - for exercise and sport, for freedom from bullying, for physical safety and also for privacy is again a balancing act between lots of conflicting factors.

[teacherwith2kids]

[Imagines classroom with freestanding screens and the idea of an unoccupied corner or an unused area of wall to put them against. Laughs extremely hollowlly. My classroom contains 38 children for part of every day, every inch of space is in double or triple use already]

[mrz]

The point is most children are so busy getting changed they don't have time to look at other children's bodies. Get changed quickly in your own area and sit down with a book

[CrapolaDeVille]

Rubbish, of course curious minds would stare at a girl in a bra.

[EdithWeston]

AFAIK (because I'm not there!) our primary timetables PE for the whole year group together. Boys go to one classroom and are supervised by one teacher, girls in the other with the other.

Obviously, there are issues about wider timetable and amount of space for the PE lesson, but it can work.

[teacherwith2kids]

For the 10 seconds it might be exposed when changing a t-shirt? Behind a desk and chair or behind a bookcase across the other side of the room? With a teacher present, who has set extremely clear expectations of behaviour and comes down hard on anything inappropriate, and who rewards quick changing and sets sanctions for those who dawdle and 'make time' for behaving in any way inappropriately?

And as I said, the unkindest comments ever made to me as a developing child in Year 6 were ALWAYS those from other girls - from whom segregated changing would have left me unprotected, and segregated changing in the absence of an adult doubly so.

[mrz]

CrapolaDeVille how many changing sessions have you supervised?
The boys are more interested in football shirts than bras

[mrz]

teacherwith2kids I agree girls can be so catty towards each other and separate changing (unsupervised ) is going to make that harder to police

[teacherwith2kids]

As the mum of a 10.5 year old boy I can absolutely guarantee that he would not notice if a girl was wearing a bra (tbh, I sometimes wonder whether he notices that there are girls in his class, he certainly never speaks about them) - but could tell me to the finest detail what type of trainers / football boots / football kit his mates might have...

However my 8.5 year old girl is highly observant about what her fellow girls wear. Perhaps girls and their parents ascribe to boys the kind of observation that a girl or woman might make and a boy of that age (they after all mature much later) might be absolutely oblivious to...

[CrapolaDeVille]

Basically OP most are saying 'sod your daughters feelings'.

[pointydog]

They should be in separate rooms. One lot could at least change in the toilets if there are no changing rooms.