‘5. They pay.’ These lectures were in actual fact the beginning of University Extension, but the work of the North of England Council did not stop here. A further aim for study was needed, and some more advanced examination than those for girls under eighteen, if women were to be qualified to instruct girls in anything but elementary subjects. A petition was drawn up and sent to Cambridge with the signatures of over 600 ladies engaged in teaching, 300 interested in it, and six members of the late Schools’ Inquiry Commission. They pointed out ‘the great want which is felt by women of the upper and middle classes, particularly by those engaged in teaching, of higher examinations suitable to their own needs.’ The petition was granted, and the first Women’s Examination held in 1869. Looking back on these past days now that it is the fashion to decry examination as the death of education, it is interesting to realise what this much abused system really did to give it fresh life. The Cambridge Senior and Junior Locals were the first link established between girls’ schools and the university, and it would be difficult to over-estimate their value in this period of chaos. Their utility was recognised at once. They spread all over the country and to the colonies; and they are widely used by schools, both public and private, and by children working with governesses at home. Edinburgh and Durham soon followed suit in the admission of girls, and in 1870 Oxford too relented. London did its part by instituting a special Women’s Examination on the lines of Matriculation, and in 1869 that of Cambridge was held for the first time. These were the germs of future developments. At London the way was paved for opening the degrees to women; the Cambridge Women’s Examination led to the foundation of Newnham. To some extent the work of these examinations is done. Conditions have changed; and the establishment of the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board, and the opening of the universities to women have removed the necessity for this kind of examination in schools of the first grade. But in small private, and in middle-grade schools, and for children working with governesses at home, they are still of distinct use, and their popularity does not seem to diminish, if numbers are any test. Should they ever become needless, owing to a more perfect school organisation, we must still hold their memory in respect, for they can show a good record. It is their merit that at a time when no schoolmistress had a College training and no University examiner ever entered a girls’ school, they supplied a slender link between the school and the university, and when there was no standard for girls’ education, and often neither organisation nor curriculum, they did afford an aim and a stimulus, which, if not absolutely the best, proved at any rate trustworthy guides. If examination is not education it has often led to it, and never more successfully than in the case of girls and women.