"A New England Dame school in old colonial times". 1713. Bettman Archive

A Dame School was an early form of a private elementary school in English-speaking countries. They were usually taught by women and were often located in the home of the teacher.

Dame schools were quite varied - some functioned primarily as day care facilities, overseen by illiterate women, while others provided their students with a good foundation in the basics. The inadequacies of Dame schools in England were illustrated by a study conducted in 1838 by the Statistical Society of London that found nearly half of all pupils surveyed were only taught spelling, with a negligible number being taught mathematics and grammar. Dame schools became less common in Britain after the introduction of compulsory education in 1880, whereafter schools that were found to be below government-specified standards of tuition could be closed.

The first school in Australia, started in 1789, was a Dame school in which children were taught basics by a convict, Isabella Rossen.

This article relating to education is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e