Schools and Education

Basic education is available freely in most regions throughout the Sundered Lands, in the schools attached to the various local temples. There, the acolytes teach children up to eleven years old. The children are taught basic literacy and numeracy skills sufficient to make their way in life, read and write important messages, and the like.
This schooling is typically conducted for between three and four hours each weekday, usually starting at the ninth hour and running until either noon or the first hour past noon. This allows the children time to help with morning chores - particularly in the rural areas - and then time to return to help around the home. For the children from the poorest families, the temple schools may provide a simple meal to break their fast before school starts, and another at midmeal.
Further schooling is available from the monastery schools, which provide education for children and young adults from ages twelve to eighteen. This includes more advanced literacy and numeracy, including the skills to write formal documents and understand basic engineering diagrams and plans. This requires either a monthly fee from the student's family, or for the young person to be committed to a life of piety, joining the monastery once they are an adult.
Advanced education usually requires apprenticeship to a master of the art, such as a gnomish engineer, a craftsman, or the like.
This does not hold true in all areas, however. In some areas such as the Haglands, attempts at setting up schools are destroyed in short order, as it is in the Hags' interests to ensure their victims are uneducated and helpless. Equally, in regions such as Azoria where education is not only prized but considered a necessity, the schools are run by the various arcane colleges. Teaching includes analysis of the student for arcane or divine aptitude, and once they have reached twelve years old, students with capacity to become spellcasters are invited to a suitable college. This is bolstered by home education, as basic magic is considered a necessary fact of life. Almost everyone in Azoria has the ability to cast at least basic hedge magic or a handful of cantrips, even if they did not have sufficient magical capacity to learn spellcasting formally.