When one moved from the outdoors to the interior school, the world of labour was not left behind. But within the walls of the school, the female students dominated the work as their male counterparts did outside. Work for older girls began as soon as a new group of voting students was deposited at the school's door. It was more often the older girls who were caregivers, whether it was the five female students at Ahousaht school who looked after two-year-old and one-year-old brothers who had recently lost their mother, or younger girls such as the 'newcomers' whose photograph appeared in the 1902 annual report of the Department of Indian Affairs.

       It did not take long for students to outgrow the phase of being looked after and to assume duties themselves. Both small boys and little girls were often pressed into service helping with cleaning and mending. The vast amounts of clothing that had to be made, altered, or mended provided an enormous quantity of work for the female supervisors and their female students at all schools. Student labour was important in furnishing students' clothes and in maintaining them.