Female entrants to the university of Melbourne's matriculation examination, 1871–1881

Abstract

In September 1871, the Professorial Board of the University of Melbourne an allmale body declared it 'is a general opinion that the education of girls is distinguished from that of boys by a vagueness and flimsiness of quality.' While the Board offered no evidence to support this claim, its dismissive view of the standard of education offered to girls in Victoria was not unique. Only a few months earlier the editor of the colony's leading newspaper the Argus, had bemoaned the poor state of tuition offered in private girls' schools, and accused the proprietors of these establishments the 'talented sisterhood'of being mere 'educational pretenders'.