Yes, and the contrast with Patrick's much hippier school seems designed to point up the fact that K. is really still very strict, old-fashionedly so (for the new age). That said, I vaguely seem to recall that the Chalet School started allowing girls to wear home clothes in the evenings in the 1950s (doesn't Joan Baker bring something fantastically inappropriate from home for evening wear in A Problem for the Chalet School?) and those are much more traditional school stories....although perhaps the school itself is supposed to be seen as modern (but not TOO modern)....