PRESIDENTIAL ADBRESS. 733 



and a means of estimating the progress made. It has often been quoted, but 

 may bear quoting again. The Commissioners say : ' 



' The general deficiency in girls' education is stated with the utmost con- 

 fidence, and with entire agreement, with whatever difference of words, by many 

 witnesses of authority. Want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; 

 slovenliness and showy superficiality ; inattention to rudiments ; undue time 

 given to accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific 

 manner ; want of organisation — these may sufficiently indicate the character of 

 the complaints we have received, in their most general aspect. It is needless 

 to observe that the same complaints apply to a great extent to boys' education. 

 But on the whole the evidence is clear that, not as they might be, but as they 

 are, the girls' schools are inferior in this view to the boys' schools.' 



This was what could be said of schools in 1868, and is certainly in striking 

 contrast to what could be said now. And if we turn from the schools to 

 higher education we find this was practically non-existent for women at that 

 time. Its absence was indeed one cause of the badness of the schools. The 

 schools were bad because the teachers were inadequately educated. ' The two 

 capital defects of the teachers of girls,' as one of the Assistant Commissioners 

 (Mr. Bryce, now Lord Bryce) reported, ' are these : they have not themselves 

 been taught and they do not know how to teach.' These defects were, of course, 

 partly due to the badness of the schools, and the want of any standard enabling 

 the general public and the teachers themselves to judge of their badness. So 

 far it was a vicious circle. The teachers were badly taught in bad schools 

 and handed on the bad resiilts to the schools they later taught in. But the 

 defects were partly due to the absence of opportunity for them to carry their 

 own education beyond that of their elder pupils — to obtain that higher educa- 

 tion which men obtained at the Universities. This was pointed out by the 

 Commissioners, and their Report acted as a great help and encouragement to 

 those who had already realised the need of higher education for women, and 

 gave an important stimulus to the foundation of Colleges for Women first at 

 Cambridge and then at Oxford. 



The Commissioners' Report also greatly encouraged the movement already in 

 progress for the improvement of girls' schools — the movement in which Miss 

 Buss, of the Notth London Collegiate School, and Miss Beale, of the Cheltenham 

 Ladies' College, were among the pioneers, and in which the opening of Local 

 Examinations to Girls in 1865 by Cambridge was an important step. The 

 cautious and anxious way in which the Commissioners refer to the possible 

 effects on girls of more exacting school work and of examinations is amusing to 

 read now. But the Report of the Commission helped in the progress of girls' 

 education in still another way, for it was instrumental in securing the recovery 

 for the secondary education of girls of endowments which had been allowed to 

 lapse into the service of primary education or to be absorbed by boys ; and the 

 division between girls and boys of some endowments not specifically assigned to 

 either sex by the founders. Twenty years ago — in 1895 — the Charity Commis- 

 sioners in their Annual Report gave striking testimony to what has been done 

 both in this way and by new endowments : 



'There is V'cason to think,' they said, 'that the latter half of the nineteenth 

 century will stand second in respect of the greatness and variety of the 

 charities created within its duration to no other half -century since the 

 Reformation. And, as to one particular branch of Educational Endowment, 

 namely, that for the advancement of Secondary and Superior Education of 

 Girls and Women, it may be anticipated that future generations will look back 

 to the period immediately following upon the Schools Inquiry Commission and 

 the consequent passing of the Endowed Schools Acts, as marking an epoch in the 

 creation and application of endowments for that branch of education similar to 

 that which is marked, for the education of Boys and Men, by the Reformation.' 



And the flow of endowments for thi.s branch of education has not ceased 

 since the Report just quoted from was written. As examples of it I may 

 remind you of the St. Paul's Girls' School, the extension and rebuilding of 



' Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, p. 548. 



