Education in Elizabethan England was dictated by the monarch and often reflected the prevailing religion of Catholicism or Protestantism. Boys typically began formal education at age 5-7 by attending petty schools, where they were taught basic reading, writing, religious lessons, and behavior by well-educated housewives. From ages 7-14, children from lower social classes would attend grammar schools to learn Latin, English translations, and the construction of sentences. Children from noble families were usually taught at home by private tutors. The curriculum progressed from learning parts of speech to sentence construction to English-Latin translations over the three years.