Figure 1.--The children in this unidentified English primary school group looks to be about 10 years old. This may have been an Angkican school as one girl has an Anglican badge. It shows the range of garments children wore to school in the 1930s. The boys do not wear any unifirm items, but several wear suits. Maby of the girls wear gym slips--a popular uniform garment. The biys wear short pants abd knee socks. We see both sandals and shoes. Several girls wear strap shoes.

Few new school trends developed in the 1930s. The trends appearing in the 1930s continued. The Eton collar, so common before World War I, were much less common in the 1930s. A few conservative schools did continue to require them, in some cases just for formal dress. Most boys wore soft collars and neckties in the school colors. Sweater (jumper) styles varied, but the V-neck styles began to become widely adopted in the 1930s. Prep school boys commonly wore closed toe-sandals which began to be referred to as school sandals. Most prep schools required short pants and even public schools and state secondary schools began required them for their junior forms. A few public schhools introduced them for boys of all ages, including the senior boys. State elementary schools did not require uniforms A reader sends us this portrait from his grammar school in 1937. He explains, "You see considerable variation at most grammar schools in the 1930s. This lack of uniformity continued until the late 1940s - find attached a detail from a 1937 year picture from my own grammar school. It's not until the 1950s that the standard cap/blazer uniform becomes de rigeur (at least in my own school)." Many schools did require the boys wear the school cap. The tie was also commonly a uniform item, although as seen here, the bnoys were not always required to wear it.

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Created: 4:56 AM 10/12/2021
Last updated: 4:57 AM 10/12/2021