Supporting Teenage Girls in Physical Education
From September 2025, my national toolkit Supporting Teenage Girls in Physical Education is being rolled out across the UK and aims to have an impact on over a million students.
The toolkit was made in collaboration with afPE and recognises the need to support girls in physical education (PE) and tackle the problems that puberty brings to PE lessons. Research shows that girls’ participation in sport declines steeply during their adolescence years, often due to barriers such as body confidence, menstruation and social pressures. PE teachers often struggle to navigate this terrain given its supposedly taboo nature, so the toolkit aims to provide some guidance to help them to create a more inclusive and supportive environment. By making PE a positive experience for girls, we can help to reduce the staggering number who drop out of sports.
The content was shaped by my own experience as a teenage girl who competes in athletics. Although it is based on my experiences, many of these are universal for teenage girls. Therefore, the toolkit includes snippets of these experiences to provide examples of how teenage girls struggle with certain aspects of puberty in relation to sport. I decided to emphasise sections about kit, sanitary products and menstrual symptoms, as these are factors that teachers can make a significant difference to. Many of these issues have relatively quick fixes, such as putting pads and tampons in changing rooms, offering more inclusive PE kit and having discussions and better dialogue with students.
In practice, the toolkit can aid teachers to foster a more inclusive environment, helping to create a safe space where girls feel comfortable in discussing sensitive topics. The guidance is flexible as it doesn’t go into too much depth, and it only offers suggestions so that it can be adapted to suit different school contexts.
I hope the toolkit will help to remove the practical and emotional barriers that too often lead girls to disengage from PE, and that it will spark positive conversations between teachers and girls in PE. By shining a light on teenage girls’ experiences, and by equipping teachers with practical solutions, the toolkit will help to nurture a lifelong love for physical activity in girls.
Kate Thornton-Bousfield, afPE CEO, added:
“It has been a privilege and pleasure to support Issey on her mission to raise awareness of some of the challenges that teenage girls face when participating in PE, physical activity and sport. As the subject association for PE in the UK, we are here to offer guidance to the profession and provide you with relevant and purposeful professional development. Through Issey’s voice, her personal experiences, the research she has conducted and the army of support she has, the profession is hearing from a young person about the challenges she and many teenagers face in school. Issey’s toolkit will support any practitioner working with teenage girls in PE, physical activity and sport. The messaging and top tips will help to inform your future practice and pedagogy. Thank you, Issey, for being brave and bringing your voice to this issue.”
