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what we know about the curriculum at the cathedral school at York (shortly before 800) comes from Alcuin's poem 'The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York.' here's what he says about the curriculum there (trans. P. Godman)
https://twitter.com/johnpauldickson/status/1278997229068406789?s=20
https://twitter.com/johnpauldickson/status/1278997229068406789?s=20
we have information about subjects studied at some other centres of learning in early medieval England (like the school set up by Hadrian and Theodore at Canterbury in the seventh century—Bede tells us that students learned metre, astronomy, computus, astronomy, Latin & Greek)
but there centres are not typical, and there are frequently complaints about clergy & monks being uneducated and unable to understand Latin (hence translations of the Lord's Prayer and Creed into Old English—Bede says this is for clergy & monks as much as laypeople)
OP's comment that 'paupers and girls' were educated to the standard of Alcuin is nonsense. women were educated at some monastic schools, but we have basically no evidence about what they might have studied there. and most who entered monastic life were nobles
as noted, this is based on evidence from Carolingian Francia, not England. the most famous statement about the quality of education in ninth-century England is Alfred's (exaggerated) claim that nobody south of the Humber could read Latin https://twitter.com/johnpauldickson/status/1279657957727207424?s=20
some people could definitely read Latin, but generally this was not a good time for education in England! you can't extrapolate from one source about one school at York (which disappeared once the Vikings arrived!) to a general programme of education
like I'm a big respecter of early medieval learning. I can barely translate the example sentences in my Latin textbook and computus is HARD. there were incredible centres of learning centred on monasteries and cathedrals. but this is bad history for reactionary ends
also York wasn't a 'medieval backwater' and they definitely didn't speak Middle English in 800 either. thanks https://twitter.com/GoingMedieval/status/1279727289048104962?s=20
