Dunfermline College of Physical Education (DCPE), was a college for training teachers of physical education and hygiene in Scotland and was the first college for female trainee P.E. teachers in Scotland. The college was established in Dunfermline in 1905, moved to Aberdeen in 1950, and merged with Moray House College of Education, University of Edinburgh, in 1987.  Although it was established as a women’s college, men were also admitted from 1908 through to 1931 when men were transferred to the new Scottish School of Physical Education at Jordanhill College in Glasgow.

Teaching physical education came to be regarded as a respectable career for women, with PE colleges attracting talented sportswomen. Dunfermline attracted sporting internationalists, as PE teaching was regarded as the occupation of choice at a time when it was difficult to make a living as a sportsperson.

The digitised archive at our Centre for Research collections is filled with film, photographs, gym ware, costumes, and personal mementoes. You can find images of the uniforms worn and strictly adhered to, with students being required to wear different uniforms for different sports and subjects. And a digitised photograph of the college brooch, awarded to students on graduation, which features a spider and a lion rampant and bears the motto “Efforts are Successes” and the founding date of the college.

 

References:

Wikipedia Dunfermline College of Physical Education article

“Dunfermline College of Physical Education”. The University of Edinburgh. 10 July 2015. 

Macrae, Eilidh (2016). Exercise in the female life-cycle in Britain, 1930-1970. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-58319-2. OCLC 956376353.

 

 

Header Image: Dunfermline College of Physical Educaiton, photographs of the 1927-30 set performing exercises in the gymnasium, University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, CC BY 4.0