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The very fact that the curriculum was structured by the church gave it the ability to mould the students to follow its doctrine

Unofficially, education started from a very young age. This sort of early education depended on the feudal class of the child’s parents

Even the children of serfs would be taught the skills needed to survive by their parents. The boys would be taken out into the fields to observe and to help their parents with easy tasks, while the girls would work with the animals at home, in the vegetable garden with their mothers, or watch them weave.

Children of craftsmen and merchants were educated from a very young age in the trade of their fathers. Trade secrets rarely left a family and they had to be taught and understood by all male (and unusually, female) heirs, in order to continue the family legacy.

Young boys of noble birth would learn how to hunt and swing a weapon, while the young ladies of nobility would learn how to cook

The main subject of study in those schools was Latin (reading and writing). In addition to this, students were also taught rhetoric – the art of public speaking and persuasion – which was a very useful tool for both men of the cloth and nobles alike.

Lessons frequently started at sunrise and finished at sunset

University education, across the whole of the continent, was a luxury to which only the wealthiest and brightest could ever aspire

Since the creation of the first university in 1088

Students attended the Medieval University at different ages, ranging from 14 (if they were attending Oxford or Paris to study the Arts) to their 30s (if they were studying Law in Bologna)

The dynamic between students and teachers in a medieval university was significantly different from today. In the University of Bologna students hired and fired teachers by consensus. The students also bargained as a collective regarding fees, and threatened teachers with strikes if their demands were not met

A Master of Arts degree in the medieval education system would have taken six years; a Bachelor of Arts degree would be awarded after completing the third or fourth year. By “Arts” the degree was referring to the seven liberal arts – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric

The sons of the peasants could only be educated if the lord of the manor had given his permission

Any family caught having a son educated without permission was heavily fined

Historians today believe that this policy was another way in which authority figures attempted to control the peasants, since an educated peasant/villein might prove to question the way things were done and upset the balance of power which kept the nobles strong.

Students held the legal status of clerics which, according to the Canon Law, could not be held by women; women were therefore not admitted into universities.