What were schools like back in the 1500s in England?

Question

I'm doing this project and it requires me to get some info on schools in the 1500s and honestly I can't find any information any where!

Answer 1

A Child's Life in Tudor Times

Education in Tudor Times -

    Schools were mainly for rich children. Most pupils were boys and very few girls were educated. Some were taught at home by a tutor.

    Pupils spent a long time at school. After three years at a nursery school they moved on to a grammar school when they were seven. They only had two holidays of about two weeks each, one at Christmas and one at Easter. For the rest of the year they only had Sundays off.

    The day began at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. Lunch was at 11 o'clock and afternoon lessons lasted from 1o'clock until 5 o'clock.

http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/nettsch/tim...

click on blue links for information on:

Tudor Schools and  Education.

-Lessons

-The School Day

-Punishments

-Types of Schools

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/...

Tudor Education.

-Tudor Education for Girls

-Tudor Education at Home

-Tudor Education - the Petty Schools

-Tudor Education - the Grammar Schools

-University Education

-History, facts and interesting information about Tudor Education.

http://www.the-tudors.org.uk/tudor-educa...

Tudor Schools.

-Interesting Facts and information about Tudor Schools

-Life in the Grammar Schools

-Typical week at Tudor Grammar Schools

-History, facts and interesting information about Tudor Schools.

http://www.the-tudors.org.uk/tudor-schoo...

Tudor Schooldays

http://www.hullwebs.co.uk/content/h-tudo...

Answer 2

In 'Elizabethan England' Alison Plowden writes:

'Responsibility for providing primary education for the masses lay in the hands of the parish priest.  In practice, both the quality and availability of instruction (which was of course chiefly religious instruction), varied from parish to parish according to the zeal of individual incumbents, but in most towns and villages of any size someone was appointed to give the local children the rudiments of education.  In Falmouth the children of the poor were taught by the bell-ringer, while in Launceston instruction was provided by an aged man chosen by the mayor.

Such education tended to be a rather hit-or-miss affair, and the children of the poor had other calls on their time, being expected to start earning their living as soon as they were capable of simple fieldwork, or of helping their parents in the family trade or business.  All the same, a surprising number of them seem to have attended the parish school, at least for a year or two, and there was always the chance that the parson or a squire or a craft guild would take interest in a promising boy  and help him to get to grammar school.

The grammar schools were the backbone of the Elizabethan educational system.  Many of them were re-foundations of schools formerly attached to abbeys or monasteries.  Others were endowed by the craft guilds, and others againd had been founded by public-spirited individuals.  Tuition was generally, though not always, free.  In many cases an entry fee was fixed, in others, parents paid according to their means.  Extras such as fires, candles, and stationery had to be paid for; so did board and lodging when pupils lived in. Such phrases as 'poor scholars' or boys whose parents were 'poor and needy' which appear frequently in school statutes seldom applied to the labouring or very poor classes but rather to the children of tradesmen, skilled craftsmen, yoeman farmers, country squires and small landowners who made up the bulk of the grammar schools' intake.

The average age of entry was six or seven, and certain standards of literacy were required of intending pupils.  At St Paul's the master was to see that applicants knew their catechism and could read and write.  In practice though these standards were not always insisted on, and the assistant master taught the youngest children, or 'pettys' as they were called, the basic essentials before they embarked on the school course proper.  In some places a system of pupil teachers was instituted, with the older boyus helping the usher.  But the aim of the grammar schools was always to get on with their main business, the eaching of Latin grammar - hence their name.

Latin was taught as a living language, which indeed it was.  A sound knowledge of Latin, both spoken and written, was essential for anyone contemplating a professional career, whether in the Church, th elaw, government service or medicine, or for that matter anyone who wished to be regarded as educated.

The study of Greek as a school subject spread slowly, largely because of the shortage of Greek scholars competent to teach it, though this imporved towards the end of the century.   En glish was not yet regarded as a seperate subject, and any knowledge of English grammar was picked up incidentally to the learning of Latin.  Much the same applied to history and geography.  Arithmetic was also a side issue little regarded by the majority of grammar schools - a subject, like calligraphy, taught on saturday afternoons and half-holidays.

School hours were long.  A typical day started at six in the morning, or seven in winter, and lasted till four or five in the afternoon with a two-hour break for the midday meal, usually from eleven to one c'clock, an dholidays were shorter than today's.  Although the drudgery of parsing and construing was occasionally relieved by the performance of a Greek or Latin play, and the better schools devoted a few hours a week to music, school life must on the whole have been unimaginably laborious.  Discipline, enforced by the omnipresent birch rod, was harsh and often brutal, depsite the pleas of a few enlightened educationalists like Roger Ascham.

Modern languages did not figure in the grammar school curriculum.  Tehy were taught by conversational methods mainly by refugess from reliigous persecution abroad, who were either employed as visitng tutors, or else set up private schools in the capital - men like Claudey Hollyband and Peter Erondell, who wrote som delightful little books of dialogue as teaching aids which make it clear that boys were still capable of being boys, despite a ten-hour day of Latin grammar.

There was still no formal provision for the education of girls. All the same, literacy among women in general was becoming more widespread.  The number of cookery books, books on household management, needlework and related 'feminine interest' subjects, as wekk of books of advice and pious exhortations that were published during this period indicate that there must have been a worthwhile market for them.  The wives and daughters of country squires, merchants, traders, shopkeepers and small businessmen of every kind were finding it more and more useful to be able to write a letter, con a legal document and cast up accounts, while among the upper classes the standard of education was higher than at any time until the late Victorian era.

Girls as well as boys attended parish schools and the preparatory forms of some grammar schools, but the majority of girls continued to learn to read and write at home from parents, older brothers or governesses, and at the top of the social scale there would be tutors and visiting masters for music, dancing and French.  Well-brought up girls were also trained in the complicated arts of housewifery.  Richard Mulcaster, a strong advocate for book learning for young girls, wrote "I know it to be a principle commendation in a woman, to be able to govern and direct her household, to look to her house and family, to provide and keep necessaries...to know the force of her kitchen." '

Answer 3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Sch... is what I see. Not a lot of info but maybe some search term ideas.

Answer 4

Here are some sites which should give you the information you need:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/...

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/will...

http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizab...

http://www.the-tudors.org.uk/tudor-educa...

Hope that helps!