Manchester High School for Girls was founded "to impart to the scholars the very best education which can be given and to fit them for any future which may be before them."

The future for the great majority of girls throughout history has been marriage and motherhood and this was still true for many girls at Manchester High School in the Victorian period. The school did not, however, believe that their education would be wasted. Rather such girls would become "intelligent companions and associates for their brothers, counsellors for their husbands and wise guides and trainers for the minds of their children." 

New opportunities were opening up, however, for girls in Victorian England. Among the new job opportunities was clerical work which had previously been an almost exclusively male preserve. The school's second headmistress, Sara Burstall, introduced a specialist secretarial course into the curriculum for senior girls. It combined practical skills such as typing and shorthand with academic subjects including mathematics, English, French, Spanish, Germany and later Russian. A full time specialist teacher was appointed called Miss Moore. An inspection report commented on how successful the course at Manchester High School was: "The demand from employers has exceeded the number of girls which the school can put forward for the posts offered, especially in the case of foreign correspondents. The note of purpose and the reality of the work are stimulating to the girls." 

The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of new opportunities for women in higher education. Subjects, especially science, which had previously been thought to be beyond a woman's mental capacity and even injurious to her physical health, were being taught in the new girls' high schools including Manchester High School.

This photograph shows Constance Lightbrowne in the chemistry laboratory at Manchester High School. Constance was one of the new young women who were pushing back the frontiers of women's lives. When she left Manchester High School, she went to Manchester University to study zoology. She was a distinguished student and was awarded the Dalton Natural History Prize. She also played an active part in university life and became a member of the committee of the Manchester University Women's Union. The president, the vice - president and four other committee members were also former pupils of Manchester High School. After she graduated, Constance Lightbrowne trained as a science teacher and so she passed on to the next generation of girls and young women the chance to enter the new world which was opening up for women in the early twentieth century.