In scribal schools, students were selectively chosen based on the same date of birth around Egypt. Most of the apprentice scribes were boys, but some privileged girls received similar instruction as the boys in the scribal schools. They could either live at school with their peers or stay with their parents, depending on geographical adjacency. The students were taught two types of writing by their teachers who were priests: sacred writing and instructive writing. Sacred writing was about Maat and its moral as well as ethical values and instructions, while instructive writing covered specific discussion about land-measurement and arithmetic for evaluating the annual changes of river and land configurations; as well as for calculating tax, logging commercial business, and distributing supply.