The course of events during the last few years has necessitated these and many other changes. The Elementary Schools Act of 1870, and the spread of Higher Grade schools, while largely removing the need for the third grade, have necessitated some means of transition from the primary to the secondary school. On the other hand, the rise of women’s colleges, technical institutes, etc. and the increasing number of girls who, whether from choice or necessity, expect to earn their own living, necessitates a levelling-up of schools, and a closer connection with places of higher education. Direct connection with the primary schools on the one hand, and the women’s colleges on the other, is now a necessity. Many of the Charity Commissioners’ schemes have attempted to supply this. The Roan School at Greenwich is a good instance. It was founded in 1643 out of money left by John Roan to clothe and educate poor children, and reorganised in 1873, the income of £2000 being divided between 350 boys and 320 girls. There is a special fund for foundation exhibitions for elementary scholars, and others are admitted on passing an examination, at half-fees—£3 instead of £6. Of the total number of pupils, about two-fifths come from the elementary schools. Thus the work of the two is brought into very close connection, and the Roan School includes in itself both second and third grade functions. It provides for the upward passage by exhibitions, many of which are held at Bedford College, or in Wales.

Scholarships of both kinds are also given by the Skinners’ School at Stamford Hill. Some of the entrance exhibitions are restricted to pupils from elementary schools, others are awarded by open competition. The two leaving exhibitions, of the value of thirty-three and thirty guineas respectively, are tenable for four years, at any place of advanced education approved by the governors. The school fees range from £6 to £10. The work of the Sixth Form leads to the higher certificate of the Joint Board or the London Matriculation, both of which serve the purposes of a leaving and entrance examination. This school might therefore be regarded as a combination of the three grades. Similar work is done by the Mary Datchelor School at Camberwell, the Aske’s School, Hatcham, and several others. Such schools, with a definite connection upward and downward, are among the chief educational needs of the day. Those now at work seem to be always full, and they draw their pupils from a class that look forward to a career of steady work. Clerks, civil servants, teachers, typists, telegraphists, milliners, nurses; these, and many others, occur in the lists of old pupils’ occupations. A useful general education, either as an end in itself or as a basis for higher or technical education, is given, and these schools have taken the place of the third rate private schools, which was all that had previously been offered to middle class girls. The expression of opinion by the Royal Commissioners, in 1895, that ‘a second grade school, which prepares for the local University College is often more suitable for a certain section of the population than a first grade school linked to Oxford and Cambridge,’ applies, mutatis mutandis, to girls as well as boys. For both, a part of the highest work must be supplied by boarding-schools.

But when all the endowments hitherto made available are considered, the share of the girls is still far too small. In some counties there is hardly anything available for them. Against this disparity must be set the benefactions of recent years, many of which are specially meant for girls and women. The foundation of the City of London Girls’ School, by William Ward, in 1881, with an endowment of £20,000; the Pfeiffer Charity of £59,000, for the benefit of women’s education, the numerous scholarships given by city companies, the establishment of Holloway and Westfield Colleges, and of many other foundations for both sexes, belong to the twenty years between 1875 and 1895. If girls have lacked much in the past, they are inheriting the present. As the Charity Commissioners remarked, when reviewing a record of a quarter a century: ‘As to one particular branch of educational endowments, viz. that for the advancement of the 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 Act, 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.’

CHAPTER VI
THE WOMEN’S COLLEGES

The chief gain that this half-century has brought to women’s education is their admission to the universities. It is the key-stone of the arch, without which the rest of the fabric could have neither stability nor permanence. The schools look to them for their teachers and their standard, and gain thereby an element of fixity hitherto lacking. If boys’ education may be blamed for excessive conservatism, that of girls has suffered from extreme mobility. Since girls’ schools led nowhere, and acknowledged no outside guidance, their aim was perpetually changing, according to the ever-varying dictates of sentiment or expediency. Independent and unorganised, they lacked all connection with past and future; and it is this that the universities are now giving them.

Apart from its intrinsic importance, this reform is remarkable for the speed and completeness with which it has been accomplished. Thirty years ago it had hardly been seriously contemplated; now eight of the ten universities of Great Britain teach their students without distinction of sex, while two others admit them to lectures, examinations, and many other privileges. All this has not been brought about without hard work and persevering effort; and it would be vain to seek the origin of all the separate forces that, acting and re-acting on one another, have produced this result. Many were the workers, and the honours of the pioneers must be shared, but among those who led the way a chief place belongs to Miss Emily Davies. From the first she realised that the reform in girls’ education must begin at the top. To quote her own words: ‘The incompleteness of the education of schoolmistresses and governesses is a drawback which no amount of intelligence and goodwill can enable them entirely to overcome. It is obvious that for those who have to impart knowledge the primary requisite is to possess it; and it is one of the great difficulties of female teachers that they are called upon to instruct others while being inadequately instructed themselves. The more earnest and conscientious devote their leisure hours to continued study, and no doubt much may be done in this way; but it is at the cost of overwork, often involving the sacrifice of health, to say nothing of the disadvantages of working alone, without a teacher, often without good books, and without the wholesome stimulus of companionship.’[[14]]

But, important as was the improvement in the education of the teachers, Miss Davies had a wider aim in view for the college she meant to found. It was to bring a really liberal education within reach of all women, apart from any special professional aim. Girls, as well as boys, should have opportunities given them to carry on their studies in congenial and stimulating surroundings, unhampered by the cares of earning and unhindered by conflicting duties. To them, too, the college life was to bring that joyous spring-time of youth, friendship, and unfettered delight of study and leisure which had hitherto been withheld from them. Such was the generous purpose in the minds of a few men and women who were trying to fire others with their own enthusiasm.

Even at the time of the Schools’ Inquiry Commission this question had been mooted, and a memorial had been sent up pointing out the want of a system of ‘instruction and discipline adapted to advanced students, combined with examinations testing and attesting the value of the education received.’ The report of the Commission and the discussion it aroused helped to give publicity to the proposal, and at last it was resolved to test the feasibility of the scheme by actual experiment. In 1867 a committee had been formed to consider the possibility of founding a college ‘designed to hold in relation to girls’ schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the universities towards the public schools for boys.’ It was resolved to try an experiment on a small scale, and proceed further as funds became available. At Hitchin, near Cambridge, a small house was hired for the six students who presented themselves, and in October 1869 they began the work prescribed to candidates for degrees by the University of Cambridge. Insignificant as these beginnings may seem, they were of momentous importance in the history of women’s education. The founders of this, the first women’s college in England, had to choose once for all between a women’s university, with its exclusive studies and degrees, and admission to the great universities of the country. The question of a women’s university debated and vetoed in 1897 had really been finally settled in 1870, when the first lady students requested and received permission to be examined in the papers set for the Previous Examination.

The prospectus of the new college issued in the autumn of 1869 contained this clause: ‘The Council shall use such efforts as from time to time they may think most expedient and effectual to obtain for the students of the College admission to the examinations for the degrees of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the College in connection with the University.’ This ambitious programme thus early laid down for the infant College must have provoked many smiles; and looking back now after the lapse of nearly thirty years, we hardly know whether to wonder most at the confidence placed by the founders in the hitherto untried abilities of girls or at the success which so abundantly justified their anticipations.

It was thus made clear from the outset that the new college was to be no self-centred institution, but was to derive its teaching, inspiration, and standard from Cambridge, provided always that the University were willing to accept the new responsibilities thus proposed. For this end it seemed desirable to make an informal experiment, and through the kindness of the individual examiners five of the students were submitted to the test of the Previous Examination. All were successful; four attained the standard required for a First Class, and one that of a Second. Two years later three students entered for Tripos Examinations in the same informal manner, two passing in classics and one in mathematics. Thus three years after the opening of the College three of its students had fulfilled all the conditions required by the University of Cambridge for a degree in Honours. That was a sufficient answer to the doubters; the founders had justified their action. Henceforth the future of the College was fixed.