Figure 1.--Notice that the girks wear uniforms (gym sliops/jumpers), but the boys do bot. Give the fegree of compliamce, this must have been a school rule. Wer have not idea what kind of school this wasm but it is fedinmitely mot a private school. Fiven thev age of the vchildrem it bwould have been the klast year of primary schoon which at the time ram to an 8-year program or the first year at a secondary modern. The phototograph is undated. We would guess the early-1930s. Put your cursor on the image to see the rest of the class. Click here to see an unidentified class in the 1920 amf how girls dressed when the school did not lay oown and enforce guidelines.
We notice that that there seem to be differences not only in the obvious garments boys and girls wore, but in the regulations and enforcement of those rules. This was most obvious in the 19th and early-20th century when girls commonly wore pinafores to school, but boys wore no such protective garments. Especially in the 19th century when girls first began attending schools in large numbers and Britain somewhat behind several other countries was just beginning to create a free state education system. This of course was counter inutuitive. Given the basically genetic-based behavior of boys, if anyone needed to wear protective garments it was the boys. This refleted standard dress at the time and as far as we know, the pinafore was largely worn as a result of parental choice rather than school rules. Although it is quite possible there were some schools which had rules on this. Unuforms were only worn at private schools in the 19th century. Until the late-19th cenhtury this mean mostly boys. We begin to see some public (elite private boarding) schools founded for girls whuch like the boys' schools had unifiorms. State schiools did not begin to require unifirnms until the mid-20th century. Largely state financed Anglican schools may have begun this earlier. We are less sure about the Catholic schools. We see some coed schools which had required uniformns for girls, but not boys. And girls sschools more likely to have unifirms than biys schi=ools, We are not sure just why this was. Perhaps girls were more amenable to followuing rules. Here we are not talking about private schools, but state schools and the state-financed schools with a religious affiliation.
