Figure 1.--This is a school cabinet card portrait. The studio was the Home & Colonial Photo Co in Cardiff. The portrait is undated. The dealer suggests the 1890s, we might guess the the late-1890s ior 1900s decade. There seems to be on boy in this girl's school.
Schools around the world have generally been single gender, mostly for boys. Modern public scools are European innovations, beginning in Protestant Europe with Germany and American becoming world leaders. In Europe these schools, especially primary schools opened up for girls. In America, the country's public school became codeucatiinal from an early point, probably because of the Frontier which affected school size amd roles for women. In Britain including Wales, public schools were slower to develop than im many European countries. And we see primarily single gender schools well into into the early-20th century. The primary exception was small village schools where the number of children did not justify two separate schools for boys and girls. We do not know of any significant difference in this regard between English and Welsh schools. After World War I we begin to see more coeducation in the primary schools. Only a fraction of the children continued their education beyond the primary lvel. Most secondary schools contunue to be single gender schools even after World War II when Britain began expabdung the secondary system to accomodate most of the school age population.
