Nuns as teachers are historically associated with anything but progress. Often stereotyped as exactors of cruel discipline, nuns in the classroomv are thought of as wielding rulers – and worse – ready to rap disobedient children’s knuckles. And yet, during the 19th century, Catholic sisters were, in their own way, radicals as they engaged in work that challenged the norms of their time: the education of girls.At that time, the education of women was still controversial. Some even argued that academic study was detrimental to women’s health, potentially causing infertility.The standard education for a middle-class girl involved home schooling with an emphasis on social accomplishments in preparation for the marriage market, while working-class girls often started work as early as eight years old. Catholic sisters defied the low intellectual expectations of women of their time by providing education not only for well-to-do girls but also for poor ones.While women in Catholic orders are most often thought of as living in cloistered retreat, the 19th century saw a dramatic rise in women living religious lives out in the world, engaging in education, nursing and other forms of social care. By 1880, these sisters, the term for women in active congregations, comprised 80% of Catholic women in religious orders.The growth of girls’ educationCatholic sisters were not only leaders in education in Catholic countries but also made important contributions to girls’ education in Britain. Following the 1829 Catholic Relief Act, which dismantled the penal laws against Catholics, a flood of religious orders arrived.In the 19th century, approximately 10,000 nuns and sisters lived in England and Wales as part of 105 orders, which grew to 175 by 1937. The majority of these were engaged in education.Congregations such as the Faithful Companions of Jesus, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Ursulines, and the Sisters of Mercy established schools for girls across Britain with particular concentrations in London and the industrialised urban areas in the northwest and west Midlands. These women were contemporaries of better-known education pioneers like Frances Mary Buss and actively participated in the growth of girls’ education. Contrary to the popular notion of convents as finishing schools for elite young ladies, Catholic schools in Britain ran the gamut, from fee-paying boarding schools to “poor schools”, which provided free education to girls from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.Catholic “poor schools” were larger and more rigorous than the contemporary “dame schools” in which local women provided education in their homes and the “ragged schools”, which gave free education and other resources to children in need. They provided religious education alongside reading, writing and functional skills training to serve the needs of a new influx of Irish immigrants.While their focus on religious education might not accord with modern notions of progress, these schools were radical for their time as they countered the rigid Victorian association of women with the private domestic sphere.By engaging in public processions and prize days, Catholic schools celebrated girls as individuals who were visible in the public sphere. The Catholic sisters who taught these girls modelled an alternative to the idea that a woman should exist solely for her family.While the numbers of students taught by Catholic sisters is hard to gauge, we get some sense from examples like the Faithful Companions of Jesus, the first foreign order to set up schools after the Catholic Relief Act. The order ran more than 20 schools across the country in addition to working in primary schools and establishing night schools, teaching thousands of girls in poor parts of Liverpool and Manchester as well as in London.Another order, the Sisters of Mercy, the largest convent network in the UK, taught in 41 elementary schools, 24 schools for middle and upper-class girls, nine orphanages as well as training schools for servants and five night schools. Between the first and second world wars, there were almost 1,600 Sisters of Mercy educating over 40,000 children.Rather than remaining marginal and detached, these schools kept pace with changes in the British education system. As a series of education acts between the late 19th and mid 20th century (culminating in the Butler Education Act of 1944) made free schooling a right, Catholic sisters taught more and more children.In order to keep providing education to a maximum number of students, these schools obtained grants from the government, which meant that they had to conform to national standards. Grant-aided schools also required certificated school teachers, so women’s congregations began to open their own teacher training colleges.Inspection reports by the Board of Education show that Catholic girls’ schools offered rigorous educational programmes that kept up with the latest teaching developments. One 1901 inspection of a school in Birkenhead run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus reports that the geography course was “founded on some of the best modern textbooks. The lessons heard on the days of inspection were carefully prepared and thoughtfully given … The school possesses some good modern maps, and the equipment is constantly receiving additions”. The changes in girls’ education over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries were dramatic. Between 1851 and 1900, female literacy rose from 51% in 1840 to over 90% by 1900. In 1878, the first women were accepted for degrees at a UK university (the University of London).Catholic sisters played a surprising role in these transformations. They opened some of the first formal schools for girls in the country, not only keeping up with developments in national education but sometimes anticipating them. Far from being an obstacle to women’s progress, nuns were significant players in the movement for equal education.Alexandra Verini receives funding from The Faithful Companions of Jesus.