Foundation

Johannes Rudbeckius had founded the first Gymnasium (school) for males in 1623. He had the opinion that females should also be given education, and therefore founded a girls' school in 1632. The law had already in the Swedish Church Ordinance 1571 stated that girls should receive schooling, but it had left the responsibility to provide schools for them to the responsibility of the local authorities. In reality no schools had been founded, so this school was the first to implement the law.

Activity

The school was publicly financed and mainly received students from the poor classes and orphans. It was inaugurated with references to the education of the biblical Susanna.

It provided elementary education and the subjects were reading, writing, Christianity, mathematics and handicrafts. The staff consisted of the male principal and a female teacher, who was also his wife. It was under supervision of the bishop, who apparently always had a special interest in its welfare.

It is not known how long the school lasted, but it is not mentioned after the death of the bishop in 1646, so it may have ended after his death.

Legacy

Though there are examples of individual girls who were allowed to study in schools for boys in Sweden during the 17th-century, no other schools for girls were founded in Sweden until a century later, and no school for girls offered any serious academic education to females until the Societetsskolan in 1787.

In the city of Västerås specifically, no new school for girls was founded until a student of Cecilia Fryxell, Natalia Andersson, founded her school in 1858.