The Social Science Association considered all stages of education – elementary, secondary, higher, and what we would now call continuing – and all aspects of learning, from the curriculum and the training of teachers to the design of school buildings. It placed its greatest emphasis, however, on the promotion of ‘middle-class education’, so-called. This reflected its members' natural interests as well as the objectively poor state of provision for the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie at mid-century. As the Birmingham Daily Press explained after the SSA's first congress,

The Association was able to bring leading figures together to debate the issues and it foreshadowed subsequent national developments in its early discussions. Its pressure forced action from the state at one crucial moment in 1864 when the Schools Inquiry Commission, the so-called Taunton Commission, which examined the subject in legendary detail, was appointed. The Association fulfilled its role as the pre-eminent forum for women's causes by helping to secure consideration of girls' education in the process of reform.