In 1842, at the age of four, she began her education at the Chiefs' Children's School (later known as the Royal School). She, along with her classmates, had been formally proclaimed by Kamehameha III as eligible for the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Liliʻuokalani later noted that these "pupils were exclusively persons whose claims to the throne were acknowledged." She, along with her two older brothers James Kaliokalani and David Kalākaua, as well as her thirteen royal cousins, were taught in English by American missionaries Amos Starr Cooke and his wife, Juliette Montague Cooke. The children were taught reading, spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, geography, history, bookkeeping, music and English composition by the missionary couple who had to maintain the moral and sexual development of their charges. Liliʻuokalani was placed with the youngest pupils of the class along with Princess Victoria Kamāmalu, Mary Polly Paʻaʻāina, and John William Pitt Kīnaʻu. In later life, Liliʻuokalani would look back unfavorably on her early education remembering being "sent hungry to bed" and the 1848 measles epidemic that claimed the life of a classmate Moses Kekūāiwa and her younger sister Kaʻiminaʻauao. The boarding school run by the Cookes was discontinued around 1850, so she, along with her former classmate Victoria, was sent to the relocated day school (also called Royal School) run by Reverend Edward G. Beckwith. On May 5, 1853, she finished third in her final class exams behind Victoria and Nancy Sumner. In 1865, after her marriage, she informally attended Oʻahu College (modern day Punahou School) and received instruction under Susan Tolman Mills, who later cofounded Mills College in California.