III. GIRLS’ SCHOOLS. 
1. Organisation of the Higher Girls’ Schools. 
I'he elementary teaching of girls in the primary schools is 
organised, in Germany, in exactly the same manner as that of boys. 
For girls also compulsory education begins at the age of six, and 
continues, in most of the Federal States, to the age of fourteen, in 
some only to the end of the thirteenth year. In addition to the or- 
dinary primary schools, there are also for girls, in many towns, 
Higher Elementary Schools, so-called Middle-class Schools. Further 
particulars on these are found also in the section dealing with 
Clementary education, to which the reader is referred, But the 
present section will treat of the Higher Girls’ Schools and other 
special branches of the education of women. 
The establishment and management of Higher Girls’ Schools, in 
Germany, was for a long time left exclusively to private enterprise, 
and in the Roman Catholic parts of the country they were prevail- 
ingly in the hands of conventual institutions. Not till the third decade 
of the last century were public Higher Girls’ Schools established as 
municipal institutions, but still in comparatively small numbers. State 
regulations as to the organisation, course of instruction, and inspection 
of these schools have been issued in more recent times, and are in 
general less incisive than those applying to boys’ schools. Three 
quarters of the Higher Girls’ Schools are still under private manage- 
ment. As a rule, the Higher Girls’ Schools that are not exclusively 
hoarding-schools, supply also elementary education. The children