The short answer is "It really depends on where, when and who". The long answer is that (and I admit this is a very broad statement), across the board, women were educated, privately, but not to the standards or expectations of modern day.

My area of study is Shakespeare and Elizabethan England, which means that my world-view of this time period is, admittedly, quite Euro-centric, so I will speak to those as best I can and leave the other areas for those who know more than me.

The long answer is that I'm on bedrest from surgery so buckle in:

Lt's jump in our handy time machine. Congrats! You're now a 10 year old girl in the mid-16th century England, daughter to a middle-class merchant. So what are your options? According to David Cressey, 90% of the merchant class were literate. We'll say that your family is part of that group. Literacy across the whole of England isn't great, maybe 25%-45%, depending on the area, the year and the social group you're polling, but hey, your family is one of the lucky few!
Some relevant facts to provide some perspective:
In 1533 Thomas More estimated that more than half the population could read English.
In 1535, a copy of William Tyndale's new English Bible was ordered to be placed in every parish church.
THEN, in 1543, The Act for the Advancement of True Religion restricted the reading of the bible to certain social classes. Women below gentry rank, servants, apprentices and generally poor people were forbidden to read it. Women of the gentry and the nobility were only allowed to read it in private. #feminism, y'all. (But conversely, the fact that they had to pass a law about it implies that there was enough of the general citizenry able to read that it was becoming a subversive issue).

So anyway, your older brothers go most days to the Grammar school, where they learn Latin, writing, reading and Rhetoric. These schools existed, to, as Peter Mack writes, "[make] their pupils wise, pious and eloquent. (12)". They used a foundation of Latin texts and rhetoric as a means of teaching, with the thought "that education served to promote religion, moral virtue,wisdom and eloquence, that these qualities were linked and that the training best suited to produce them was a study of classical languages and literature".(14) (Fun field-of-study-sidenote!: you can basically trace Shakespeare's grammar school education through the use of mythological references in his books, which provide almost, to a T, a cross-index of the required reading materials of the Grammar schools of the time. Neat!) If you were from an affluent merchant family, your brothers might stop after grammar school, or go on to University, law school, an apprenticeship in another trade or, possibly, seminary.

Leach estimates that at the start of Henry's reign England had about 400 schools for a population of 2.25 million, (or one school for every 5,625 people)...later this number would expand when, in 1541, he passed a series of laws that mandated that any Cathedral built would be required to also organize a small school for local boys and provided a government salary of about 20 pounds for the headmaster.

Moving on. Why can't you go with them? Well, you might have, depending on where you lived. If you lived in a very rural town, there are some cases of girls being allowed to attend "petty school" (basically, sort of a mishmash of basic foundational education skills like the ABS, 123,s but nothing too in depth) as young children, but everything I could find seems to indicate that by age 10, girls were excluded from this type of school. The thing is that these petty schools were a BIG DEAL. There is a ton of historical evidence that boys and girls from all walks of life were being educated-- books and guides on how to run an effective petty school exist as far back as 1530, and, fun fact, the differing levels of quality in petty schools is one of the reasons why they finally invented a dictionary. The thing is that we just don't know how many people took advantage of these educational opportunities, or whether it just wasn't considered worth recording.

Good news, though! Your dad is a merchant! The rise in the merchant class, meant that for the first time, many people saw the value in educating their daughters in order to preserve the family business. There are several instances of women being left family businesses, so it stands to reason that they were educated enough to run things on a day-to-day basis.

So how -and what - do you learn? We know that women were usually educated at home, through private tutors or by being sent to the home of a more affluent family friend or relative, where a group of girls would get together and study under one tutor (sort of like an early home-school co-op, if you will). Your education will consist of reading, basic arithmetic (to aid in cooking and household bookkeeping). You'll learn music, dancing and wifely arts like sewing, and if you're really lucky, you might learn a language like French or Italian to make you more appealing to suitors.

Much of what we know about the education of women comes from process of elimination. One of my favorite weird side-hobbies is looking up old cookbooks of the time, and we have strong proof that, at least by 1618, there was enough of a market for William Lawson and Gervase Markham to publish a series of books and guides on "housewyferie": advice on gardening, raising animals, baking and cooking. (If you ever get bored, check them out, some of the recipes are honestly really good). So enough of the Real Housewyfes of London had enough interest (and literary ability) to sell out several runs of these books.

So were you totally screwed as a woman in the 16th century? No. While it was rare, there are some REALLY COOL examples of women being well-educated.

One such example is Aphra Behn, a published playwright and poet of the time who was notable in that her writing was well-received enough at the time to be published. She also put out a translation of Aesop's fables, which also indicates multi-lingual talents.

Across other parts of of the world, interesting things were happening: In Poland, the queen founded an all-girls school, but there isn't much in the historical record to know what was taught.

According to the literacy rates that I found (link below), it would seem that our Nordic cousins had far better national averages for both men and women during the period, but I can't speak to that as well as Europe.

One fun side note: Spain had some CRAZY stuff going on with women's education. There are at least five known instances of women teaching at the University level, and a couple of them even earned their Doctrates in philosophy, and honestly it is a CRIME there there is no Netflix series about a group of badass women teaching college in 16th century Spain.

Sara Scalenghe also published a SUPER interesting article about Deaf culture in the 16th century Syria, and it provides some interesting insights on education in that capacity as well.

So, to sum up: Most education of woman was private and incorporated a great deal of religious education as well, but not necessarily JUST that. Access differed from country to country, but I think it might even be more fair to say that access differed from household to household, as there was no set, standard curriculum for women. However, like I said, my field of study is a very narrow window of time in one specific area of the globe, so while I can share some fun facts that I came across, I really can't answer for other parts of the world as well as some other global scholars might.

Hope this was at least semi-informative and helpful.