Girl's experiences of PE

[WarriorN]

The gap between the proportion of boys and girls in England who enjoy PE lessons is widening, a survey suggests.

Some 59% of girls in secondary schools who responded to a Youth Sport Trust survey said they liked PE or liked it a lot, compared with 84% of the boys.

Obviously I have questions about the survey design in terms of "identity as girls etc" but it seems that it's more important than ever to preserve single sex access to sports / physical activity, as well as more ways to engage girls in sports/ physical activities.

Drop in how many girls like PE, Youth Sport Trust study suggests www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67063845

DD would be in the don't like camp. She definitely feels like she's not good enough at it.

Out of school she does other stuff she does like... running for the fun of it (not competing), climbing, archery, watersports. Stuff not easy to do in a PE lesson.

Girls' my title should be 🙄

I've always had issues with pe in primary for this reason. As I teach children in SEND we do have to adapt quite a bit away from the competitive stuff as it can be too overwhelming.

Also many have significant weight and hypermobile issues

I'm amazed that high a number said they enjoyed PE!

I hated PE more because of team sports and I think my undiagnosed at the time ADHD meant I couldn’t keep track of other people in my team.

Also it was the 70s and Hockey was the sport in my school.
Because I was so bad at it (it scared me) I would be put in goal
Faced with girls with long sticks charging at me hitting a ball that could permanently disfigure/kill me whilst I was wearing only a thin polo shirt, a tiny cotton wrap around skirt, ankle socks and a pair what looked like black hi tops with the thinnest round bit of cushioning no more than a inch in diameter to protect my ankle bones. I used to run to the back of the goal and pray that the net held the ball. This was before helmets and cages to protect the face or cricket type leg protectors or any safety equipment

Dd’s school didn’t do PE they did dance and that was a better workout for everyone than some team sport where you spent an hour freezing on some playing field in the middle of January counting down the seconds when you could go in and warm up whilst the few who enjoyed the sport charged up and down ignoring anyone else

At school I was in the hate PE camp.

But I really enjoyed school hockey (on the school team) and all lunchtime sports clubs...circuit training and basketball being the ones I remember.

The reason for hating PE was I am not naturally good at sport, though I am very competitive and enjoy it. So I was always in the lower groups when the teachers paid no attention to you. We were not 'taught' we were told to get on with it whilst the good players were taught how to improve.
I hope that has changed these days.

I hated changing in from of my bullies.
The female PE teachers were absolute witches and not people I would chose the associate with if I had the choice.

The lunchtime clubs however were run by other staff members who enjoyed what they did. A science teacher and an MFL teacher I remember.

PE lessons involved strict uniform which I could never get to git or look right or be comfy in.
Lunchtime clubs didn't really care if you stopped school shorts for other shorts (or whatever)

I don't know why I am sharing this, but it's just my thoughts about it really.

We were not 'taught' we were told to get on with it whilst the good players were taught how to improve.

This is exactly it @isittheholidaysyet . I was clever, top set for everything, and shit at sports, and I am still baffled by how the fuck PE teachers got away with it.

Other subjects were the focus of intense political, philosophical and ethical debate about how best to address disparity in ability, in order to achieve equitable progress for pupils, but this principle bypassed teachers and regulators when considering physical education.

Of course, girls are disproportionately affected as they are already at a disadvantage in a society in which discourages them from listening to, appreciating, learning about and having ownership of their bodies.

I discovered the benefits of intense exercise for its own sake after having a baby and I am perfectly able to lift weights and run at a very average level with a bit of practice, but spent my life prior to this convinced I was destined to be short, fat and a bit shit.

I am quite cross I have had to employ personal trainers to teach me things and explain how my body works to me in my 30s, in a way I should have been taught at school.

I was short sighted and asthmatic and very pragmatic about my chances of getting to the ball.
However when I started performatively throwing myself in its direction my PE grades went up, even though I was no more effective!

Seconding people who said it was never really explained that if you practiced X, Y and Z then you would improve at the sport. E.g. you could either run or not, GOD FORBID anyone explain that if you ran three times a week you would find it much easier! [Headdesk]

My experience was also negative. PE was humilating (always picked last), embarrassing (short skirts, enforced communal showering) and uncomfortable (out in all weathers). I'd like to say things are better now but dd hates it too - too much competition and the boys monopolise everything.

I was terrified of hockey too! Ice cold hands holding a hockey stick, inevitably getting bashed.

I was very sporty, but the discomfort of getting changed in freezing cold changing rooms, and going outside in thin PE kits in all weathers, was too much for me. It would be around 0C and we wouldn’t be allowed to wear coats, hats, scarves and jumpers! I was about 6 stone wet through, my bones were cold!

Now I swim, do yoga, run, walk and love to keep moving to be strong and fit.
PE at school was not about that. It was all team sports and I can't throw or catch. I hope it's better now.
I also think clothing is important. We had to wear those stupid miniskirts all year round. And I never appreciated the importance of a good sports bra until I was buying my own.

From my children's experience, I think some things in PE have changed for the better. They are not expected to wear skimpy gym skirts or even worse gym knickers - they can wear joggers etc. They also have a variety of activities, but considering there's a proper gym at the school I don't know why they don't make more use of it.

But the big thing which I think could be off putting is PE is taught in mixed sex groups. Surely this can be really off putting to girls? The boys will dominate physically plus girls are likely to be self conscious about their bodies. I don't know if this is the norm in state schools.

@Paperbagsaremine I think that is why things as basic as Couch25K and even ParkRun are so popular and revelatory for people.

Schools didn't even manage to teach the concept that walk-run improves endurance capacity and timing your runs is a good way to monitor progress.

And this happened against a bizarre backdrop of diet culture, crappy teen mags and almond mums. I'm so angry. It would have taken 5 minutes to have educated girls in a way that could have avoided the damage that was done.

I also think there’s a huge blind spot with PE lessons. No other school lesson have you display your ability in direct competition with your classmates. Imagine the outcry if spelling tests were like spelling bees, with only the best spellers getting to spell more often. Also the maths teacher can’t say “Jennie has no ability for maths and needs to try harder” in response to a low grade.

and I’ll just throw is a healthy growth of hair from my eyebrows down but a mother who insisted there was no need to shave before age 18, although times are more enlightened I can’t imagine this issue has vanished.

I didn’t mind PE, depends what the sport/activity was. I was a good swimmer, and although I didn’t much like hockey quite enjoyed being a winger, just running up and down the pitch hoping nobody sent the ball anywhere near me. I remember my bare thighs becoming pink and blue and mottled in a way they never have since leaving school!

We did a term of trampolining which was great fun, and a term of table tennis, also fun. We tried most sports over my secondary school years, usually just for a term, although never rugby or football or cricket, they were the boys’ sports, the girls’ sports were lacrosse, hockey and netball.

I was good at high jump and long jump, after a childhood pretending to be a horse, jumping obstacles while whinnying in a realistic manner. Although I could and did “canter” for miles through the countryside, I wasn’t ever much of a runner, and one sadistic PE teacher always entered me for the sprint races on sports day when she and I both knew I’d come last. She was a cow.

This was my experience exactly. Only one of my three DDs was OK with school PE. She loved team sports like hockey and netball though, and was good at them, which helps. She was and remains very athletic (possibly getting that from her Dad, certainly not from me).

She did and does understand why others can hate it though, including her two sisters.

When I was at school one other girl and I were always the last to be picked for the teams, every single lesson, every single week. It's a feeling you never forget. Then there were the enforced communal showers in front of the whole year group.

PE lessons were quite simply hell on earth, and utter humiliation.

@Caughtinlove yes, my son just started primary school and required a very sensible PE kit of a t-shirt and pair of shorts with a pair of trainers from week 1.

In my entire school career I never wore anything that sensible for PE. In primary school it was vests and knickers and in my inner London girls secondary school we wore a polo shirt, bottle green short gym skirt with pleats (why, FFS?) with bottle green gym knickers underneath that cut your circulation off if you were a bit generous of thigh (I was 8 stone fwiw). And Dunlops for absolutely everything.

And @readingmakesmehappy you are right about sports bras. I was a DD at 13 and a sports bra was never touted as part of a PE kit. They were something I discovered after finishing school.

I might have actually achieved something if put into a t-shirt and shorts and appropriate footwear for physical exercise. That is what I wear to run and lift weights in now, after all...

I see posts on here by mums bemoaning the cost of football AND rugby kit and boots for their teenage sons, and I am bracing for those costs in a decade myself, but... there is a green streak of envy that runs through me to think of all of these teen boys being given adequate time, space and kit to be that physically active that makes me so sad for how teenage girls who weren't were treated in my area when I was growing up.

My teen DD is an elite sportswoman with much of her life dedicated to training/competing but she also hates school PE because

• it’s boring and repetitive
• it’s mostly football
• they have to get changed (back to pre-covid rules) which wastes half the lesson and is a chance to be bullied, belittled, filmed, body shamed, whilst trying to ignore the vaping
• no opportunity to change into sports bra so have to wear it all day if want one
• uncomfortable and old fashioned kit (cotton rather than modern wicking fabrics)
• no time to shower after and no desire to shower in cold communal shower anyway
• limited effort made to ‘teach’
• dangerous practises eg no time for warmup, cool-down, and stretch

If the PE curriculum can’t even engage those kids who are naturally sporty and dedicated, there’s something very wrong with it.

My DDs play a lot of competitive sport out of school but hate it in school. DD2
was in a class with mostly boys while most of the girls where in the other class. She didn’t know why and when I asked at parents evening I was told it was because the classes were set and she was in the “top” set who did competitive sport while the other class did “fitness”. Fine but it meant DD’s experience of being told she was shit by a bunch of boys was even more concentrated and it meant a kid who normal loves sport wanted to avoid it. Also great image for the boys - there are the girls who are the ones who are shit at sport. She got moved into the other class on my request. New school year now and they are all doing football this week which DD is dreading despite her being a member of a girls football team and training twice a week with matches at the weekend. She’s expecting another shower of being told how shit she is despite being better that quite a few of the boys doling out the insults.

I asked why they couldn’t separate boys and girls and do the same sports but the teacher said some of the girls liked playing with the boys. DD1 didn’t like having balls chucked in her face by boys in the year above (despite being taller than most girls) so she also dumped school sport as soon as she could and now sticks to the three sports clubs she plays fir.

My DCs friend took PE as an examinable subject as is very sporty but the emphasis was on football which she isn’t interested in and the teacher tried to restrict her to sitting a lower level qualification. Her parents had to kick up a fuss.

I was fat as a child, hated it, was bullied relentlessly, and was also very, very sensitive. PE lessons were hell on earth from primary level when we were expected to strip to vests and knickers in shared changing rooms and I was stared at and ridiculed by the boys and would weep in humiliation.

Later, in secondary, open showers were compulsory (this was a mixed comprehensive school but the changing rooms were at least girls only) but so morbidly paranoid was I about my size that I don’t think I ever did more than stick my head in to look as though I’d showered. Memories of freezing cold hockey or, even worse, terrifying lacrosse on arctic pitches wearing micro-skirts and short-sleeved Aertex shirts have never left me (the PE teacher meanwhile was on the touch lines wearing a fur coat (!), hands wrapped round a mug of coffee)

Because I wasn’t slim and cute and was mocked, I hated sport and so I didn’t want to do it. A vicious circle. Though ironically enough I had a weird affinity for tennis (and really enjoyed it, too) which was even commented on with astonishment once in a school report. Made no difference though as we were virtually never allowed to play it, despite the school having tennis courts.

if I'd been given C25K as my first term's 'PE task' my whole experience of games/sport/PE at my very sporty school would have been totally different. As it was, I was a bookish, unfit child who started from a point of feeling useless, was told I was useless ho ho, and although I got fitter, I never shook off the belief I was 'bad at sport', even when I went to university and ended up playing for the faculty team.

As PP have said, this sink or swim approach wouldn't have been an acceptable way of teaching a non-French speaker French.

I remember our class teacher - a male PE teacher - giving us girls a “motivational” speech, saying from what he saw out of school, girls give up all sport as soon as they leave school, and become fat and unfit.

@ManyRoads that is such an interesting point about the benefits of being exposed to C25K earlier or at the beginning of a secondary career.

I read an article a while ago by a man who had gone to a major public boarding school who said that when boys start they are all varying levels of fitness, but they start off being made to do cross country runs several times a week until they are all able to keep up during games. So, the value of supporting pupils to obtain a basic level of fitness in order to be able to participate meaningfully in physical education is acknowledged for rich men, but not for poor women.