Public Schools, Safety‐nets and Educational Ladders: the classification of girls’ secondary schools, 1880‐1914

Abstract

Among the obstacles to the study of women's social mobility in the U.K. is the lack of a typology of girls’ schools. For historical reasons no clear‐cut distinction between ‘public’ and ‘grammar’ schools has been applied to girls’ schools; yet they have differed in respect of both academic excellence and social selectivity, and there is a case for testing how far women's career prospects have been influenced by their schooling. The typology proposed here for girls’ secondary schools before 1914 preserves distinctions familiar to contemporaries, between public and private, boarding and day schools, and introduces subdivisions indicating academic quality (shown by the number of pupils at Oxford and Cambridge colleges in 1891‐3 and 1911‐13) and, for public day schools, breadth of recruitment (distinguishing schools which by 1911‐12 admitted 25% free scholars from elementary schools). Analysis of the schooling of orphans at Oxford women's colleges before 1914 may reveal a further subset of schools which acted as a ‘safety‐net'for fatherless girls.