Establishment of girls' upper secondary education in perm province (second half of XIX - early XX centuries)

The article deals with the evolution of girls' education in Perm province in the period of the 1850-s - 1917. In the process of the establishment of girls' secondary schools, female divisions of male specialized schools were transformed into 8-year gymnasiums that became the leading type of girls' secondary schools in the 19 th century. At the beginning, the development of such secondary schools faced misunderstanding of the Ural patriarchal society because of the necessity to support them at people's expense. However, the demand for girls' education started to grow together with the development of Russian society in a progressive way. At first, progymnasiums that were institutions of incomplete secondary education were opened in Perm province. The necessity of self-financing and dependence on district councils and charity givers made it difficult to modify progymnasiums into fully valid secondary schools. The demand for that type of education was rather high in spite of high price in some schools and a necessity to move to another town to complete secondary education. That is why, every district town and big mining villages aimed to open secondary schools to give girls the opportunity to get the teaching profession, which was particularly needed in rural schools. Due to this, girls' secondary schools (public and private) existed in every district of Perm province, and they exceeded male schools in the number of institutions and students at the end of the analyzed period.