[2] She also attended Newnham College, Cambridge, beginning at age 30, and becoming the first woman in the university to take first-class honours in Moral Sciences.

[2] In 1887 she was asked to join an Education Department committee looking at the "Pupil-teacher" system chaired by the chief inspector of schools, Thomas Wetherherd Sharpe.

Only three women were asked: Hughes, Lydia Manley of Stockwell training college and school inspector Sarah Bannister.

The committee's report resulted in a policy that caused the closure of the Pupil-teacher centres that had been established by the end of the century.

[6] During a 1901 lecture and study tour of the United States,[9][10] she met Julia Ward Howe and Mary Tenney Castle,[11] and took an interest in prison reform; she was impressed by American provisions for juvenile detention and female probation officers.

[6] She stayed with Tetsu Yasui and Hannah Riddell, and met Umeko Tsuda, while she served as visiting professor of English, and advocated for physical education for women, at the University of Tokyo (1901–1902).