Privileged, Schooled and Finished: Boarding Eduction for Girls

The public school ¹ has moulded a large proportion of the dominant male elite in British society, as well as their wives and mothers. It has also had a wider influence and has affected, albeit elusively, the alternative state form of schooling. While we find considerable research into public schools for boys, ² there is little serious investigation of the girls’ schools, nor indeed of the larger topic of gender differentiation in education. ³ It is assumed either that girls’ boarding-schools are replicas of those for boys, or that they are of peripheral importance. The male and female institutions are not analysed as parts of one system. In addition to the studies of boys’ schools, we have a plethora of autobiographies by men, while little comparable information exists from women, since few achieve the status which calls for an account of themselves. ⁴