Bede also records that in 634 a Song School was established at York, where James, the deacon who 'though an ecclesiastic, was also a saint ... acted as master to many in church chanting after the Roman or Canterbury fashion' (quoted in Leach 1915:6).

Grammar schools and song schools

Leach (1915:6-7) notes that grammar schools and song schools 'have often been confounded as if they were one school' but he argues that they were 'distinct foundations, completely differentiated in function as they were in their teaching, and generally in their government', though 'In small places they were sometimes united under one master'.

Song schools 'were in essence special or professional schools for those engaged in the actual performance of the services', whereas grammar schools 'gave a general education, as much needed by the statesman, the lawyer, the civil servant, and the clerk as by the priest or cleric' (Leach 1915:7).

Augustine's concept of education derived from the Roman and Hellenistic schools of rhetoric. It comprised the seven liberal arts and sciences - grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy - which were regarded as a preparation for the study of theology, law and medicine.

However, the only subject taught systematically in the grammar schools was Latin grammar and literature, because the aim of the schools was strictly vocational: to prepare pupils for entry to the Church. 'The conscious object of these early schools, attached to cathedrals and to monasteries, was to train intending priests and monks to conduct and understand the services of the Church, and to read the Bible and the writings of the Christian Fathers' (Williams 1961:128).

Thus 'grammar' at this time did not mean learning about the structure of language - that meaning did not develop until the middle ages. Rather, it was 'a preparation for reading, especially reading aloud, and was taken to involve comprehension and commentary, so that content was inseparable' (Williams 1961:129). This caused problems for the church because, while it was essential that Latin should be understood, there were concerns that students would read a wide range of Latin literature and 'pagan' philosophy. Thus it was that Pope Gregory wrote to Bishop Desiderius in Gaul (France):

A circumstance came to our notice, which cannot be mentioned without shame, namely that you, our brother, give lessons in grammar. This news caused us such annoyance and disgust that all our joy at the good we had heard earlier was turned to sorrow and distress, since the same lips cannot sing the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ. Consider yourself how serious and shocking it is that a bishop should pursue an activity unsuitable even for a pious layman. (quoted in Williams 1961:128)

Many schools were founded in the century after Augustine's arrival, including those at Dorchester in Oxfordshire (around 634), Winchester (648), Hexham (probably 678), Malmesbury in Wiltshire (possibly founded by Aldhelm, who died Bishop of Sherborne in 709), Lichfield, Hereford and Worcester.

Alcuin

In the eighth century the focus of development in English schools moved from Theodore and Aldhelm in the south to Bede and Alcuin in the north.

Alcuin, a Northumbrian, was the schoolmaster in York from 776. Under his leadership the school 'set a new standard of culture' (Fisher 1936:161). Indeed, Fisher argues that:

To the influence of this robust, studious and convivial Englishman we may fairly trace the legislation which defines the educational responsibilities of the church and the episcopal and monastic schools which resulted from it. (Fisher 1936:161)

Scripture was the central subject, and rhetoric teaching was mainly a study of verbal forms in the Bible. Grammar was the teaching of Latin, and versification was in the same context, though at times it extended to relate to poetry in the vernacular. Mathematics, including astronomy, was centred on the intricacies of the Church calendar, simple general exercises being an introduction to the all important 'computus' centred on the controversy about the date of Easter. Music and law were vocational studies for the services and administration of the Church, and the natural history, by contrast with the Aristotelians, was literary and anecdotal. (Williams 1961:129)

There he ... moistened thirsty hearts with divers streams of teaching and varied dews of study; busily giving to some the arts of the science of grammar (grammaticae rationis artes), pouring into others the streams of the tongues of orators; these he polished on the whet-stone of law, those he taught to sing in Æonian chant, making others play on the flute of Castaly, and run with the lyre over the hills of Parnassus. But others, the said master made to know the harmony of heaven and the sun, the labours of the moon, the five belts of the sky, the seven planets, the laws of the fixed stars, their rising and setting, the movements of the air and the sun, the earth's quake, the nature of men, cattle, birds, and beasts, the different kinds of number and various (geometrical) figures: and he gave sure return to the festival of Easter; above all, revealing the mysteries of holy writ, for he opened the abysses of the old and rude law. (quoted in Leach 1915:58-59)

The Vikings and King Alfred

The development of schools in England was interrupted by the long series of Viking invasions which began around 866. The Norsemen were pagans who 'loved war and women, wassail and song, pillage and slaughter' (Fisher 1936:177) and their raids caused 'immense havoc' (Fisher 1936:180).

The one part of England which successfully resisted Viking control was Wessex, where Alfred became king in 871 at the age of twenty-three.

A gloomy interval in the history of English education ensued after the death of Offa and the widespread devastation caused by the Viking invasions. When the curtain rises again, the scene has shifted from the North and the Midlands to the South, and centres in the great figure of Alfred. (Leach 1915:67)

Alfred took 'delight in the songs and literature of his people' and showed 'concern for education' (Fisher 1936:183). His own children were taught English literature and Latin, and it was under his influence that England's system of schools began to be reconstructed. 'The influence and the example of Alfred in his insistence on the importance of education continued to be felt and followed in the reigns of his son and grandson, Edward the Elder and Athelstan' (Leach 1915:76).

Alfred drove the Norsemen out of Winchester, Southampton, London, Oxford, and Chichester, but the invasions continued for another century or so. In 1011 the Danes besieged Canterbury and captured Archbishop Elphege (or Alphege). He - and the monks who came out of the burning cathedral with him - were all murdered.

But the invaders weren't all bad. In 1016 Canute, who had previously become a Christian and married the widow of his predecessor Ethelred the Unready, became king of England. According to Herman, the historian of Bury St. Edmunds who wrote towards the end of the eleventh century, Canute was concerned about the education of poor boys:

whenever he went to any famous monastery or borough he sent there at his own expense boys to be taught for the clerical or monastic order, not only those whom he found among freemen but also the cleverer of the poor, and with his own hand in kingly munificence he also in his progress made some free. (quoted in Leach 1915:91-92)

Two other notable figures in English education during this period were Dunstan, born in 925, who abhorred the widespread practice of flogging and sought to protect the boy monks at Canterbury 'from excessive chastisement' (Leach 1915:81), and his pupil Ælfric, who wrote three educational works: the Anglo-Latin Grammar, Glossary and Colloquy (Dialogue).

The Normans

The next invasion was that of William the Conqueror and the Normans in 1066. According to Leach (1915:96), one of the worst effects of the Conquest was 'the foisting of the Italian adventurer Lanfranc into the See of Canterbury':

It was a misfortune for the school at Canterbury and elsewhere that this late converted monk became archbishop. For a determined effort to expel the monks from Canterbury and the other monastic cathedrals in England and to reinstate the seculars was frustrated by the now monkish Lanfranc. So the school, instead of being restored to its position as a part of the cathedral foundation, as at York and St. Paul's, where it was taught and governed by a resident member of the Chapter, was left to the care, necessarily intermittent, of the generally non-resident and roving archbishop, who was more often than not a busy statesman. (Leach 1915:98)

However, following the Norman conquest secular schools began to flourish and French replaced English as the vernacular medium for teaching Latin:

The main difference caused by the Conquest was the gradual substitution of Norman for English schoolmasters and the translation by the schoolboys of Latin no longer into English but into Norman-French, which, till the reign of Edward III, was the vernacular of the upper classes in the country, of the middle classes in the towns, and of the whole cultured and clerkly class. (Leach 1915:103)

Perhaps most importantly, while education was still seen as a Christian enterprise, the concept of a liberal education - a preparation for the specialised study of law, medicine, or theology - began to develop:

The concept of the Seven Liberal Arts (the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, the quadrivium of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) goes back to at least the fifth century, but it was only now that it began to be realised with any adequacy, as new material from classical learning, and new attitudes towards it, flowed in. (Williams 1961:130)

Universities

Oxford

There is evidence of some teaching in Oxford as early as 1096. This developed rapidly after 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In 1188 the historian Gerald of Wales visited Oxford to speak to the dons and two years later Emo of Friesland became the university's first overseas student.

By 1201, the university was led by a 'magister scolarum Oxonie' and in 1214 he was given the title of Chancellor. The masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation in 1231.

Rioting between 'town and gown' (the townspeople and the students) resulted in the establishment of primitive halls of residence which became the first Oxford colleges - University College was established in 1249, Balliol in 1260 and Merton in 1264. These early colleges were founded by bishops and catered exclusively for wealthy graduates.

Under Henry's leadership, the English Reformation affected education in a number of ways. Some of the old foundation schools were closed and an equal number of new ones were opened. Many older schools were revived, expanded, or converted into free schools. The grammar school remained central to the system, but there was an important change in its sponsorship. Whereas the typical medieval grammar school had belonged to the church, the new grammar schools were mostly private foundations 'supervised in variable degree by Church and State' (Williams 1961:132).

The abolition of the greater monasteries in 1540 resulted in the refoundation of twelve grammar schools as part of the 'new foundation' cathedrals. Here the monks, who had turned out the canons 600 years earlier, were now turned out to make room for canons. 'In all the new cathedrals established in 1541 ... a grammar school, with a master and usher paid on the highest scale of the day, was included' (Leach 1915:312).

In the Statutes of the refounded school at Canterbury, the last chapter concerned 'The Method of Teaching'. It provided for six classes, three under the usher and three under the head master:

The lower books were Cato, Æsop and Familiar Colloquies. In Form III, Terence and Mantuanus' Eclogues; in the Fourth Form, they began to practise writing Latin letters; not until the Fifth Form did they begin to write Latin verses, and polished themes and translated poets and historians. In the Sixth Form, they read Erasmus's Copia Verborum and made 'varyings', that is, turned sentences of Latin from the oratio obliqua to the oratio directa, and from one tense and mood to another, 'so as to acquire the faculty of speaking Latin as well as is possible for boys'. (Leach 1915:316)

Another significant outcome of the Reformation was the translation of the Latin Bible into the vernacular. In 1535 Henry VIII's Vicar-General and chief adviser Thomas Cromwell ordered that copies of William Tyndale's new English Bible were to be placed in every parish church.

Parliament was clearly unhappy with this decision, because in 1543 (three years after Cromwell had fallen from grace and been executed) it passed an Act which banned artisans, husbandmen, labourers, servants and almost all women from reading or discussing the Bible.

The prohibition proved impossible to enforce. Indeed, the brief availability of the English Bible had already encouraged many to learn to read and had made them think about the nature of society and the church. 'This was indeed a cultural revolution of unprecedented proportions, and one whose consequences stretched far beyond the period of the Reformation and the English Revolution' (Chitty 2007:14).

The English Renaissance

The Renaissance came relatively late to England. It is generally viewed as being a feature of the Elizabethan period in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, with writers like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, architects such as Inigo Jones, and composers Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and William Byrd.

However, while the Reformation resulted in changes to the structure of the English school system, the Renaissance appears to have had little effect on the curriculum. As Williams (1961:132) puts it, 'while the schools were reorganised by the Reformation their teaching was not redirected by the Renaissance'.

Greek and sometimes Hebrew were added to the main Latin curriculum (to assist correct understanding of the scriptures), and there was more study of literature. But the education provided by the grammar schools - and by the universities - remained 'rigid and narrow' (Williams 1961:132). Thus:

The major achievements of the Renaissance, in the vernacular literatures, in geographical discovery, in new painting and music, in the new spirit in philosophy and physical inquiry, in changing attitudes to the individual, had little effect on the standard forms of general education. (Williams 1961:133)

... as long as the clergy was sterilized, and yet monopolized a large and ever-increasing proportion of the territory and wealth of the world, progress was checked. The quiet thinker was lured into the cloister, the progressive thinker was under a ban, originality was a crime, and repression prevailed especially in the region, in which it is most dangerous, of religion and philosophy. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, Flanders, the most populous and naturally the richest countries, the Renaissance was strangled almost in its cradle by monasticism in its most formidable development, the Inquisition: while its growth was stunted in France and Germany by the prolonged series of wars and massacres between the upholders of monasticism and the friends of free thought. Its full development was reserved for England and Scotland, where the monasteries, and with them clerical celibacy, were suddenly and wholly swept away. (Leach 1915:331-2)

The main educational theories of the Renaissance - especially the ideal of the scholar-courtier - had little effect on English schools. In fact, Williams argues that they had 'the paradoxical effect of reducing the status of schools' in favour of an alternative pattern, 'drawing in part on the chivalric tradition, of education at home through a private tutor' (Williams 1961:133), a preference which, for many families, would last well into the nineteenth century.

Apprenticeships and chivalry

As early as the 16th century - and more so in the 17th - there was much criticism of the limited curriculum of the grammar schools, based as it was on the requirements of the universities and the learned professions. In particular, it no longer suited the needs of the upper classes, who wanted their sons trained for posts at Court, for diplomacy and for higher appointments in the army.

As a result, two other types of educational provision became popular with the upper classes: apprenticeships in crafts and trades, which were standardised in the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers in 1562; and the chivalry system, which enabled noble families to send their young sons to be pages at great houses and undergo a course of training for knighthood. Williams (1961:131) points out that:

The existence of these two systems, alongside the academic system, reminds us of the determining effect on education of the actual social structure. The labouring poor were largely left out of account, although there are notable cases of individual boys getting a complete education, through school and university, by outstanding promise and merit. For the rest, education was organised in general relation to a firm structure of inherited and destined status and condition: the craft apprentices, the future knights, the future clerisy.

Elsewhere in Europe - in France and in the German and Scandinavian states - knightly or courtly academies were being founded to give instruction to young nobles, not only in horsemanship and the use of arms, but also in modern languages, history and geography, and in the application of mathematics to military and civil engineering.

A proposal for the establishment of a school on these lines in England was made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1572, and in the following century Cowley, Locke, Defoe and other writers urged the setting up of such schools. In the 17th century England's upper classes sent their sons to private tutors, and then to the continental knightly or courtly academies. The development of this type of school designed for the governing class 'was one of a number of movements which reflected the maladjustment between the classical grammar schools and the needs of contemporary life' (Spens 1938:10).

New types of school

Although the traditional grammar school changed little, there were significant developments in the education of younger children. The number of schools increased and there was 'a bewildering variety of forms, ranging from instruction by priests to private adventure schools, often as a sideline to shopkeeping and trade' (Williams 1961:133).

Many of the 'petties' or 'ABCs' were proper schools, with links to grammar schools. Indeed, in a few cases, they virtually took over the running of grammar schools whose old endowments had shrunk.

Another type of school which began to develop was the 'writing school'. The aim of these schools was to meet the secular needs of a society in which trade was now expanding rapidly and whose administration was becoming more complex. They taught 'scrivener's English and the casting of accounts' (Williams 1961:133) and in some cases this teaching was adopted by the grammar schools.

Elizabethan England

Elizabeth I ruled from 1558 to 1603. It was a period of extraordinary expansion: Elizabethan England 'took the world by surprise' - in navigation, commerce, colonisation, poetry, drama, philosophy and science. Much of this was due to 'the immense extension of lay initiative and effort' in every area of national life - 'not least in the sphere of education and the schools' (Leach 1915:332).

One of the most notable educationists of the period was Roger Ascham (1515-1568), the teacher of Queen Elizabeth. He bemoaned the lack of status accorded to education:

It is pitie, that commonlie, more care is had, yea and that emonges verie wise men, to finde out rather a cunnynge man for their horse, than a cunnyng man for their children. To the one they will gladlie giue a stipend of 200 crounes by yeare, and loth to offer to the other 200 shillinges. God suffereth them, to haue, tame, and well ordered horse, but wilde and vnfortunate children. (The Scholemaster, quoted in Nunes, undated)

The ideas of Ascham and Comenius regarding the importance of a suitable education for young children - especially the use of play - were gaining ground. In 1647 William Petty, Physician-General in Cromwell's army in Ireland, wrote:

We see Children do delight in Drums, Pipes, Fiddles, Guns made of Elder sticks, and bellowes noses, piped Keys, etc., painting Flags and Ensigns with Elder-berries and Corn poppy, making ships with Paper, and setting even Nut-shells a swimming, handling the tooles of workmen as soon as they turne their backs, and trying to worke themselves. (quoted in Nunes, undated)

Grammar schools

Meanwhile, the grammar schools, with their narrow curriculum consisting of little more than Greek and Latin, were unable (or unwilling) to meet the new demands for courses of training and education fitting boys for the life of the period.

After the execution of Charles I in 1649, the period of the Commonwealth (1649-1660) saw many proposals made for modifying the traditional courses in schools and universities. Unfortunately, following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 there was 'a virtual abandonment of the interventionist role of the state in education provision' (Chitty 2007:9). The liberal movement was checked and the endowed grammar schools tended to become even more conservative than before.

The policy of ecclesiastical uniformity adopted after 1660 further reinforced the inertia of the grammar schools. As a result, many youths were forced to travel to the continent for 'a training foreign both in aims and in means' (Spens 1938:11).

The growing dissatisfaction with the traditional curriculum was well expressed in Locke's Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693) in which he stressed the importance of a broader intellectual training, moral development and physical hardening (Spens 1938:13).

The grammar schools of the period can be categorised in three groups:

• the nine leading schools, seven of them boarding institutions, maintained the traditional curriculum of the classics and mostly served 'the aristocracy and the squirearchy' (Williams 1961:134) on a national basis;
• most of the endowed grammar schools served their immediate localities and had a reasonably broad social base, but they, too, stuck mainly to the old curriculum;
• the grammar schools which changed most significantly were those situated in the larger cities, serving the families of merchants and tradesmen. During the 18th century their social base widened and their curriculum developed, particularly in mathematics and the natural sciences.

In the universities - notably at Oxford and Cambridge - there was a scandalous decline in teaching standards in the 17th century, though there was some 'serious development in mathematics and the sciences' (Williams 1961:134). The proportion of students from poorer families - sons of farmers, craftsmen, small tradesmen - fell, though it was still quite substantial.

The most significant change in this period, however, was that the universities began to lose their monopoly over professional training. They still educated most of the clergy, but after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 they began to discriminate against Nonconformists.

As a result, new vocational academies began to open at a remarkable rate, preparing students for the law and medicine, commerce, engineering, the arts and the armed services. These 'Dissenting' or 'Nonconformist' Academies, serving 'a different class' (Williams 1961:133) and offering teaching at a higher secondary or university level, varied considerably in quality, but in the best 'a new definition of the content of a general education was worked out and put into practice' (Williams 1961:134).

The Academies were established in considerable numbers from 1670 onwards, and while at first they were intended for the education of ministers of religion, they began to take in many lay pupils. They often provided a wide curriculum, including (in addition to the traditional Greek and Latin), English, modern languages, mathematics and a certain amount of natural science, principally physics. They were far less insular than the grammar schools and were influenced indirectly by educational developments in Scotland, Holland, Germany and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland (Spens 1938:12).

By the end of the 17th century there was much argument between the 'ancients' and 'moderns' over the changes that were gradually taking place in the curriculum, and an increasing demand for 'useful studies' (Spens 1938:12).

Urbanisation

By the beginning of the 18th century, then, the curriculum was beginning to take on its modern form, with the addition of mathematics, geography, modern languages, and, crucially, the physical sciences.

For most children, however, education in England continued to be a 'haphazard system of parish and private adventure schools' (Williams 1961:134), with preparatory schools serving the academies and older foundations.

But increasing urbanisation now began to create new problems which few seemed very keen to to do anything about.

The first significant attempt to meet the needs of children in the growing towns and cities was that of the Charity School movement, which began to develop around the end of the 17th century. This proved to be something of a mixed blessing, however, because the main aim of the Charity Schools was 'the moral rescue as opposed to the moral instruction of the poor' (Williams 1961:135) and because they established the notion that elementary education was that appropriate to a particular social class.

There were many who didn't approve of the idea of educating the masses at all: 'proponents of liberal political economy objected to all forms of education for the poor - and particularly Charity Schools - as dangerous and misconceived prototypes of benevolence' (Chitty 2007:14). Too much schooling, they believed, 'would simply make the working poor discontented with their lot' (Chitty 2004:4).

It was the Industrial Revolution, which gathered pace in the last quarter of the 18th century, which finally spurred the state into providing a national education system, because industry 'required much more than limited reading skills acquired through moral catechism' (Benn and Chitty 1996:1). However, progress in establishing a public education system would prove to be painfully slow.