Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentified English girl school we think in the 1920s. Th girls look to be about 13 years old. The school had gymslip uniforms. (Americans call them jumpers.) It is clearly a secondary school. We would guess that it is a grammar school. Almost all secondary schools before World War II were single-gender schools. America at the time was a rare country with coeducation.

Our knowledge of girl's schoolwear cahnges with the 20th century. We have a much larger 20th century archive allowing us to follow school trends in some detail. Of course tends varied widely from country to country. And we see more and more girls going to school. In America girls began going tomsecondary school while boys often had to work on the farm or find jobs. The Depression also had an impact. With no other options, more children went to secondary school. This was not the case in Germany where NAZI policy was to discourage girls from continuing their education adter primary school. There were few girls who bwore unifirms to school unless you condider smocks to bev unifirms. The only major exceotions were English public schools and grammar schools. We akso see Yugoslav girls wearing uniforms (figure 1). Where smocks and uniforms were not worn, school wear is basically a relection of popular styles and school portaits are an easy way to follow popular fashions. A major tuning point was World War II. Before the War, girls often attended separate schools. This was especially case beyond villiage primaries. This was not the case in America, but it was in many countries. After the War there was a signifiacnt change toward coeducation. Only a few countries had school uniforms befiore World War II. This changed somewhat with the Soviet creation of an Eastern European empire. Eastern European Communists tended to follow the Soviet example of uniforms and coeducation. The major exception ro coeducation was the Arab countries that were just beginning to build public school system often chose to proceed with single gender schools. Another post-War development is the increasing influence of British school styles.

Created: 11:26 PM 11/28/2019
Last updated: 11:26 PM 11/28/2019