UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN TEACHERS. 869 
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A well-considered standard was devised, and a certain amount of useful work has been 
done. It was, however, resolved, in order to keep up a high standard, to ask high fees, 
and this has probably acted as a deterrent, and limited the number of applications 
received for examiners. Test papers for private pupils are also set and corrected by 
accredited members, and from the number of this kind of applications it is to be 
inferred that private teachers are becoming more anxious to gauge in this way the 
amount of learning they have been able to impart to their pupils. 
Beyond the various facilities offered by the Association to its members for obtaining 
work and discussing subjects of more or less general interest, the need was felt, espe- 
cially by members abroad, or by those whom distance prevents attending the meetings, 
>f a channel through which members could express their views, detail their experiences, 
and make suggestions; the result was the establishment of a “Journal,” the scope of which 
was to include notes and articles on all matters relating to women’s education and the 
teaching profession, also on work and movements of other kinds in which university 
women are taking part, or by which they are in any way affected. The correspondence 
and discussions on debatable points are perhaps the most valuable feature of the journal. 
The area of the Association is wide, comprising, as it does, Europe, Asia, Africa, America, 
and Australasia ; this naturally gives diversity of interests and width of experience. 
A Home Teaching Scheme was suggested by the late president, in consequence of the 
strong feeling in England, surviving in a considerable class of parents, against the public- 
school system for girls. The training and stimulus of having teachers who have made 
she subject their special object of study was felt to be so valuable that the Association 
indertakes to recommend, to parents, teachers in various subjects, from whom a selection 
s made. They again divide between them the instruction of boys and girls in the 
same families. It is hoped by this means to secure accuracy and clearness in every 
ranch of knowledge, and a more organized and developed system of private teaching. 
Besides the annual meetings for the usual purposes of presenting the report of the 
work done during the year, other meetings are held and papers read on points of special 
nterest to members. Thus, at the time the two bills for the registration of teachers 
were before Parliament, that subject was taken for discussion, and points given to the 
witness delegated by the Association to give evidence in the House on the bill, and 
sxamination has lately been made of the clauses in the Secondary Education bill. Mrs. 
Fawcett has spoken on the utility of association, and Miss C. E. Collet has laid before 
members the salary question, from the trades union point of view, when it was con- 
sidered, on the whole, that the great difference in the rate of efficiency made it impossible 
to do more than fix a minimum, and that it would be unsatisfactory to take that step 
and go no further. 
Part of the most valuable work done by the Association, representing, as it does, not 
one particular body, but all kinds of women teachers, is in the direction of widening 
the interests of its members and helping them to avoid the old danger of teachers 
becoming absorbed in the narrow world of their individual work; of affording, by means 
of the above discussions and similar ones, opportunities of mutual education, not only 
Jor their own benefit but for the benefit of those whom they teach and of education 
generally. 
One word on the function of the Association as mediating between schools and the 
aniversity. Beyond the hope of helping to bring order and consistency into the general 
scheme of girls’ education there was the further one that the U.A.W.T. form the much- 
needed link between girls’ schools and the university. In England the universities are 
the most ancient part of the educational system, while girls’ high schools are compara- 
tively but a growth of yesterday. In England also, except in the lowest grade of schools, 
it has always been to the universities and not to the state that educationalists have looked 
for a standard and for guidance in the education of boys and vouths: and those interested