“Miss Beale of Cheltenham called on me the day I was in London.... She and I think we must form an Association of Head-mistresses, and hold conferences occasionally, in order to know what we ought to assert and what surrender.
“Dr. Hodgson showed me, in the ‘Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,’ a passage about the ‘membre à question,’ and the ‘membre à by-laws;’ the latter is called ‘un Empereur manqué,’ and is the member who awes the rest of a committee by his rigid adherence to by-laws.
“Just think of men discussing for hours the arrangements of girls’ boarding-houses—how the beds should stand, etc.!”
All who have been behind the scenes in the development of public schools for girls can read in between the lines here the various stages by which the Association of Head-mistresses came into being.
The question of the management of these new schools was naturally one of supreme interest to the women who had made such schools possible. When Miss Davies was asked by Lord Taunton, during her examination by the Commission, to mention any point of importance in connection with the education of women, she fixed on the point of the presence of women on the councils of girls’ schools, on equal terms with men, and not on any separate ladies’ committee. She was warmly supported by Miss Beale and Miss Buss in this view that, for the management of girls, women were essential. Miss Buss, in a letter written some time afterwards, but before the change in her own schools, sums up the whole question concisely—
“If your plans lead you to prefer a committee to a board of trustees, I advise you not to allow two committees—one of gentlemen for money matters, and one of ladies for internal arrangements. Two committees always clash, sooner or later. The mistress disagrees with the ladies’ committee, the gentlemen interfere, and the usual result is that the ladies resign in a body. I do not think any better plan can be devised than a single council of men and women, with certain well-defined duties to perform, but with no power of continual and daily interference with the mistress. In this opinion I am unbiassed by personal feeling, because, as this school is my own property, I have never had to work with a committee. But I hear on all sides of the difficulties which arise, and which are, apparently, to be prevented only by the plan I have suggested.”
Mrs. Grey, when examined on March 25, 1873, before the “Endowed Schools Committee,” gave her opinion in favour of women on the governing body of every school, on the ground that a ladies’ committee “was powerful only to object and interfere, but powerless to carry into effect any of their suggestions, however valuable these might be.”
It is evident that what is wanted is a consultative body—a sort of Privy Council—to advise and help in matters external, and in cases of special difficulty; whilst, in the internal affairs of the school, the head must be held responsible. It would follow that, to make a council really useful, there must be some principle of selection to secure the right persons, so that it should not be said in the future, as has been so often possible to say in the past, that “head-masters and mistresses are chosen with care, their degrees, experience, etc., all sifted, and then they are set to work under a governing body chosen haphazard, or anyhow!”
Most of the great schools owed their prosperity to the skill and character of some one man or woman, and, even after they had attained success, were still dependent on their head, who, instead of being allowed free play, was checked and thwarted by this haphazard council—the “expert” being under the control of the mere “amateur.”
In such cases, the “managing committee” is clearly not what is wanted. Here are weighty words from a head-mistress, who must take highest rank among the “experts”—