The term “schools” in Nicholas Orme's title refers to the centers that provided children with their earliest formal education. The subject is one in which Orme has established his expertise through decades of publications: his first book on the subject appeared in 1973. The current book, he notes, is more a survey than a monograph, and covering the period it does, until the reign of Elizabeth, it could hardly be otherwise. Necessarily, given the purpose of the survey, Orme concentrates on the features of early education that tend to endure, century after century. Historians needing details about specific periods will want to consult the more specialized literature referred to in the notes; more could also have been done to place English schools in a European perspective and to connect the learning of the schools with that of the universities or the inns of court. General readers, however, will find much to interest them. Adding to its appeal for a broad readership is the physical appearance of the book, for it is extensively illustrated and handsomely printed. Most of the illustrations, however, date from the fourteenth century or later, including those placed with material dealing with earlier centuries.

Although Orme begins his story with Roman Britain, there is little specifically British evidence to discuss, and he relies mainly on what is known about education elsewhere in the empire. Even in this brief section, however, Orme raises two issues that will run through the book: the relation of local language to Latin, and the connections between Christianity and schools. The evidence is somewhat better for the early Middle Ages when, for some centuries, some Anglo-Saxon monasteries were cultural centers equal to any in Europe. Surviving grammars from the period, and especially from 800 on, document how Latin was taught to students whose native language had little vocabulary in common with it.

The arrival of the Normans, in addition to introducing a second vernacular language, opened a period when ecclesiastical schools would be much better documented than they had been in the Anglo-Saxon period. Orme takes advantage of this comparative wealth of evidence by shifting to a topical presentation for several chapters. His second chapter sketches the hierarchy of schools from those that taught the earliest elements of reading, notably the alphabet, through a variety of grammar schools, to the universities. An entire chapter is devoted to the teaching of grammar: the reading and writing of Latin. The Norman conquest had brought English schools closer to those of the continent, as well as introducing French as a second vernacular. Although French faded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Latin remained at the heart of the curriculum as a subject essential not only for students who aspired to the university but also to aristocrats, gentlemen, and clerks of all kinds. By the late fifteenth century, even humanism—the latest innovation in the study of Latin—was making itself felt in England. The chapters on schoolrooms deal with everything relating to the physical context of education, from architecture, to books and the twigs used to punish lax scholars, to holidays. Chapter 5, on schoolmasters, describes the qualifications and career paths of those who did the teaching; by the fourteenth century, many schoolmasters had graduate degrees, although in the postplague decades of the fourteenth century, schools might not always have been able to maintain this standard.

Chapters 6–10 cover the twelfth through sixteenth centuries in mostly chronological chunks. (The exception is a chapter on the role of religious orders in education.) Orme's interest in these chapters is mainly institutional: the foundation of schools, their endowments, and endowments for scholars. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one sees the emergence of schools for gentry and of endowments, including colleges. In the sixteenth century, education had to adjust to the Reformation, notably the dissolution of the monasteries and uniform curricula for grammar schools as the royal government began to take interest in educational policy. Chapter 10 deals with education under the children of Henry VIII, a period that saw the dissolution of chantries and religious guilds and rather tentative efforts to replace them with new foundations. Despite the tumultuous changes at the institutional level, however, Orme believes that the character of English education retained many of the practices that had taken shape in the Middle Ages. A brief conclusion underlines this point: while education was far from static in the long period covered by this book, innovations occurred gradually and constantly rather than in response to outside events, no matter how dramatic. Local historians will find useful the appendix listing schools attested in England and Wales between 1006 and 1530.