For what it's worth, the school I attended for the last five years of my secondary education (8th grade plus high school) had uniforms. The girls were all in box pleated skirts in the Black Watch tartan(or some close variation, done up in a small sett). All day. Every day. Nearly every girl I saw for five years of my life was in a box pleated tartan skirt.

That being the case, I've personally never felt that a box pleated kilt reminded me of the schoolgirl skirts to which I was so accustomed to seeing.

...I suspect that Scottish aversion to box pleats may be, rather, a vast Victorian conspiracy!