ABSTRACT
The Classifying School existed for allocation of girls to suitable Training Approved Schools, after a period of residence during which each girl was observed and assessed, both in daily leisure and work situations—at bed-time and meal-times and even at bath-times as well—and by the reputedly more objective procedures of intelligence, performance and personality testing. The classifying report produced in each case was intended as a practical as well as a descriptive document, and comments from a Head Teacher that a report proved helpful were always welcome. Comments were in fact mixed; according to one school of thought the assessment records were too wordy, and depicted girls' responses to a particular school, namely the Classifying School. Doubtless there were occasional murmurs on reading of difficult behaviour: 'We'll cure that. ..' The sheet of psychological and educational test measures was naturally puzzling on many occasions, with such widely discrepant results sometimes as to be meaningless even to the partially initiated. The fact that some 'average' girls were proved in everyday situations to have the common sense of an 8-year-old was (as can happen in Day Schools) taken as nullifying the intelligence test's reliability.
