As this year’s GCSE exams begin to slowly creep up around the corner, many students may feel a mix of emotions: nervous, excited, stressed. Today students try to engrave English quotes into their brains while attempting to memorise all of the 20 maths formulas, but have you ever wondered how it came to be this way? Have you ever tried to imagine how a classroom would look centuries ago?

Education in the Ancient world was very different. For example, in Ancient Egypt people’s education was limited to basic reading, writing, and religion. Education was also mainly carried out through priests and formal education was only intended to train priests. In addition, unlike today, education for girls and boys was vastly different. In Greece, girls were not taught the same subjects as boys and in ancient Rome girls did not receive any advanced education beyond primary education. On the other hand, boys received education to a much deeper level – unlike girls they were taught about different aspects of life and also reading and writing to a more sophisticated level.

Although there was no national system of schooling, during the reign of Elizabeth I, education in England increased in both popularity and value as attitudes toward education changed. This was mainly due to the influence of the church which encouraged more people to become literate in order to study the bible. However, education was still minimal and only a small percentage, again mainly boys, attended school at all. Boys of nobility learned a variety of skills such as foreign languages, history, government, and theology. Upper-class girls were also educated in a range of skills from dancing to archery. This was in contrast to farmers and labourers who had no formal school education. They were taught by their parents the skills they would need to carry on the family business and were expected to bring an income at a very young age.

Education was still massively different in the past century. For example, classroom sizes were much larger and were not separated by age. Another difference was the segregation of genders, in the 20th century boys and girls continued to be taught in separate classrooms. Discipline in schools was also much harsher and stricter, with teachers even allowed to use physical discipline to control their classrooms.

Education has been around since the dawn of humanity, from parents teaching their kids to schools now as we know them in which qualified teachers educate a classroom of pupils. All around the globe, education is regarded as an essential experience in every child’s life in which students not only earn certification in areas such as science or maths but also a place to learn key skills such as decisiveness, teamwork, and leadership needed to succeed in life.