There is a general consensus of opinion on the following points:—
‘There is little life, no collective instruction, and nothing to call forth the best powers of either teacher or learner in a school where each class consists of two or three pupils only.’—(Mr. Fitch.)
‘There is a certain number of classes or of girls learning particular things, but there is neither any definite course of studies nor any grouping of classes, so as to play into one another.’—(Mr. Bryce.)
3. Want of proper proportion in arranging subjects.
4. Poor quality of the teaching, due to the inferior education of the teachers themselves.
5. Lack of an external standard to act as a stimulus to the learner and help to the teacher.
Mr. Bryce’s recommendations are of special interest, since they mark out the lines on which the chief reforms have proceeded. They are these:—
1. The establishment of schools for girls under proper authority and supervision. ‘It would be at all events most desirable to provide in every town large enough to be worthy of a grammar school a day school for girls, under public management, where a plain, sound education should be offered at the lowest prices (from £5 per annum or upwards) compatible with the provision of good salaries for teachers, and which should be regularly examined by competent persons thereto appointed.’
2. Considerable changes in the course of instruction for girls of all classes. ‘It would be proper to lay more stress upon arithmetic, to introduce mathematics everywhere, and Latin where there is a fair prospect of a girl’s being able to spend four hours a week upon it for three years.’
3. The foundation of institutions which should give to women the same opportunity of obtaining higher education which the Universities give to boys. The lack of this higher training injures the school education by lowering its tone, and opening up no wider field of knowledge to the more studious and eager scholars. An even worse result is ‘the low standard of education and of knowledge about education among schoolmistresses and governesses.’... ‘It is from the advent of more highly educated teachers that the first improvement in the education of girls is to be hoped for.’
Such was the verdict of this famous Commission, whose ‘revelations’ have figured in so many prizegiving speeches. The report filled twenty stout volumes, which were duly relegated to their place on official shelves, to accumulate dust; and there, thirty years after, they have been joined by the nine volumes drawn up by our latest educational Commission. Truly has it been said that the best way to shelve a question in England is to let a Royal Commission sit upon it. But even a Royal Commission and a twenty-volume report could not shelve the subject of girls’ education; the reformers were too much in earnest. Miss Beale extracted from these ponderous blue tomes all that related to girls, and reprinted it in a compact little volume. Even before its appearance action had been taken. The Cambridge Local Examinations had drawn schoolmistresses together and given them a common interest. They now began to form associations in different parts of the country. One was started in London, with Miss Buss as President and Miss Davies as Secretary. The North of England proved a specially congenial sphere for this form of union. The Ladies’ Honorary Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education was an outcome of the introduction into that county of the Local Examinations, but it soon extended its operations over wider fields, _e.g._ domestic economy and sanitary science, as well as the extension of endowments to girls.