Why should girls be sent to school? Today, we would say it’s because education is a fundamental human right. However, only 150 years ago the answer would have differed wildly – as shown by a parliamentary report from 1860. According to that report, girls should be educated purely so they may become “decorative, modest, marriageable beings”.
From the Middle Ages, female education was tailored to the belief that a woman’s place is in the home, and that she does not have the same intellectual capacity as a man. Therefore, instruction in spinning, sewing and knitting from a female relative was the most education offered to any medieval girl. Schooling as we know it did not start properly until the 17th century – and even then, it was reserved for the upper classes.
In the 1600s, not only did wealthy families begin to engage private tutors for their daughters, but private boarding schools for girls were also established. Gorges House, for example, set up in the 1670s in Chelsea by Jeffrey Banister and James Hart was one of the first. The curriculum, however, was not hugely advanced. While private tutors might teach their female charges reading, writing and even languages, girls were still considered less intellectually capable, needing to be moulded into a suitable marriage candidate. As a result needlework remained a crucial part of her education, as did music and dance. What better way to find a suitable match than by dancing well at a ball?
For working-class girls, school didn’t start until the 18th century. In 1700, Greenwich Blue Coats Girls’ School was founded when, according to a letter written by a “Gentleman at Greenwich”, “several Charitable ladies of this Town join’d their Subscriptions for setting up a School for Teaching and cloathing 30 girls”. The school taught poorer girls how to read, write and make clothes, among other domestic skills.
Outside of London, ‘dame schools’ had grown in popularity. For a small fee, young, working-class children of both sexes were taught simple literacy and numeracy in the home of a local woman. However, the standard of teaching varied greatly, and, in some areas, dame schools were more a form of childcare than an educational institution.
But, despite greater access to the basics, girls were still extremely behind – until Christian socialist theologian Frederick Denison Maurice and his Committee on Education blazed a trail. Having created the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution in 1841, where governesses could be trained and receive a certificate of proficiency, the committee realised that female teachers first required proper schooling themselves.
Thus, in 1848, they founded Queen’s College, London, the first school in Britain to offer girls and young women a serious education and academic qualifications. Fees were charged per subject, and girls could select classes that would be taught through lectures and essays. An early curriculum included topics such as arithmetic, mechanics and geology.
Two of the first students to enter Queen’s were Dorothea Beale and Frances Buss, who would themselves play pioneering roles in women’s education. Beale’s long career began by becoming the first female maths tutor at Queen’s – all subjects at the school had previously always been taught by men. Buss opened the North London Collegiate School in 1850, the first day school to provide girls with an academic education aimed at the middle class. While the inclusion of Latin and maths in her curriculum was initially controversial, the North London Collegiate was hugely successful; by 1900 nearly every town had a school modelled on it. Buss was also the first woman to use the term ‘headmistress’ in a bid to be equal with male headmasters.
As schooling for girls slowly improved, women began to push for access to higher education. The drive was started by the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women founded in 1867 by Anne Jemima Clough and Josephine Butler, which organised lectures for women.
In 1868, nine women were admitted to the University of London for the first time to sit the ‘General Examination for Women’ the following year. Although separate from the men’s exam, it was in no way easier. Candidates were required to pass at least six papers testing their knowledge of French, German, Greek, Italian or Latin; the English language; history; geography; maths; natural philosophy; chemistry; and botany. Questions included, “Give a dozen prefixes of the English language and state the force of each”, “Extract the square root of 384524.01” and “Explain the terms Thalamifloral, Calycifloral, and Corollofloral”. Six of the nine women passed; however, they were only awarded a Certificate of Proficiency. It would not be until 1878 that the university became the first British higher-education institution to award degrees to women.
The experience of the ‘London Nine’ was very different from that of the first seven women to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. Led by Sophia Jex-Blake, the ‘Edinburgh Seven’ were charged higher fees and were forced to arrange their own lectures. They were also subject to aggression from the other students, who howled at them and shut doors in their faces. When the women sat an anatomy exam, hundreds of men threw mud at them as they entered, and one even let a live sheep into the hall to create further disruption.
Hundreds of men threw mud at them as they entered
Although the seven continued their studies undeterred, the university prevented them from taking their final exams and graduating, and it was only in 1876 that a change in the law allowed medical examining bodies to admit and license women.
Another major turning point for female education came with the 1868 Report of the Schools Enquiry Commission into the state of education in Britain, known as the Taunton Report after its chair Henry Labouchere, 1st Baron Taunton. The report finally highlighted the problems of female schooling, stating, “It cannot be denied that… the state of Middle Class female education is, on the whole, unfavourable.”
The report also crushed the long-held idea that girls were not as intelligent as boys by declaring that “there is weighty evidence… that the essential capacity for learning is the same, or nearly the same, in the two sexes”.
Subsequently, reforms and campaigns began to pick up pace. The 1870 Elementary Education Act brought in state schooling for everyone. The following year, the Women’s Education Union – founded by sisters Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff, and with Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter Princess Louise as president – worked to promote secondary and higher education, as well as improve public opinion on educating women. In 1880, school became compulsory for children between five and 10, and, in 1891, fees for elementary education were abolished. So, by the 1900s, the foundation for serious female education had at long last been laid. And over the next century, girls would make up for lost time; now, they regularly outperform boys in exams.