The report which was issued in 1867 summarised the impression formed by the Assistant Commissioners. ‘It cannot be denied that the picture brought before us of the state of middle-class female education is, on the whole, unfavourable. The general deficiency in girls’ education is stated with the utmost confidence, and with entire agreement, with whatever difference of words, by many witnesses of authority. Want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific manner; want of organisation—these may sufficiently indicate the character of the complaints we have received in their most general aspect. It is needless to observe that the same complaints apply to a great extent to boys’ education. But, on the whole, the evidence is clear that, not as they might be but as they are, the girls’ schools are inferior in this view to the boys’ schools.’ Mr. Norris, one of the Assistant Commissioners, says: ‘We find, as a rule, a very small amount of professional skill, an inferior set of school-books, a vast deal of dry, uninteresting task-work, rules put into the memory with no explanation of their principles, no system of examination worthy of the name, a very false estimate of the relative value of the several kinds of acquirement, a reference to effect rather than to solid worth, a tendency to fill or adorn rather than strengthen the mind.’