sympathy with the life of the cultivator. It has even been suggested to us that the end we have in view cannot be attained without a complete cleavage of the Education Department, one section of which would be exclusively concerned with rural needs. But it is not only the outdoor environment that calls for careful thought; the home life of the growing child wields a profound influence on his development, and we have found it necessary, in dealing with primary education for boys, to include in our survey the linked problems of education for girls and adults. As we shall show, it is the wastage in the primary classes, coupled with the subsequent relapse into illiteracy of a proportion of those passing through the primary schools, that are in the main responsible for the slow growth of literacy. If these two obstacles can be overcome, a far higher degree of efficiency will be obtained even with the present expenditure on education and the present number of primary schools. Without a satisfactory all-round advance in primary education, there can be little hope of any widespread economic progress. While we have attempted, in the succeeding paragraphs, to offer criticism of a constructive kind in many fields of rural education, we are not unmindful of the enormous difficulties which confronted those who set out to devise and to initiate a system of primary education in British India; nor, having regard to those difficulties, are we inclined to belittle the amount of success that has been achieved since the first attempts were launched. So long as the level of general education remains as low as at present, the candidates for higher and technical training must be limited. There are, however, under existing conditions, many improvements possible in the higher spheres of education. In pursuing our survey through the secondary and collegiate stages to the universities, we have found numerous problems urgently calling for solution. It should be noticed that the available statistics for pupils, institutions, and expenditure do not distinguish clearly between rural and urban elements. For this reason, amongst others, figures alone, more especially when they appear as percentages of the whole population, are apt to be misleading. The actual condition of literacy among the rural population is certainly worse than the averages suggest, while comparisons between province and province are apt to be vitiated by the varying proportion of the more literate classes within their respective borders. Other points on which caution is required are mentioned in the relevant paragraphs. We have throughout the chapter omitted all reference to the problems of European education, as our primary concern is with the agricultural classes. GENERAL FEATURES OF EDUCATIONAL ADMI 137. Education, with the exception of European education, is a transferred subject in all the major provinces. Technical and professional education is in general allotted to the departments concerned; the education given in agricultural colleges and middle schools thus falls within the province of the Minister who holds the portfolio of Agriculture. The responsibilities of the Government of India in regard to education are NISTRATION. confined to the North-West Frontier Province and the minor administrations, and to the management of certain special institutions. These responsibilities are exercised with the assistance, where necessary, of the Educational Commissioner with the Government of India. For administrative purposes, educational institutions are divided into two classes, those recognised by the departments of education and those which are not so recognised and are, therefore, not inspected by government agency. The proportion the two classes bear to each other varies greatly from province to province, but, except in Burma, unrecognised institutions make no important contribution to education. Over British India as a whole, institutions that are recognised are six times as numerous as those unrecognised. Sixty-five per cent of these recognised institutions are privately managed, though subject to government inspection, and, of the remainder, thirty-three per cent are managed by district boards and municipal councils and two per cent are under direct government management. From the point of view of the services rendered to education, the importance of the institutions under direct government management is out of all proportion to their number, comprising, as they do, the majority of the professional colleges in which such subjects as medicine, agriculture, engineering, science and commerce are taught. At the apex of the educational system of India stand the universities, the constitution of which is regulated by legislative enactments. There are fifteen of these in British India. A more detailed description of the universities and the arts colleges from the agricultural standpoint will be found in paragraphs 463-466 below. FUNCTIONS OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES. 438. It is unnecessary, here, to describe the legislation which governs the educational functions of local bodies in the different provinces. It will suffice to say that the most important additions to this legislation in recent years have been Primary Education Acts, one of the main objects of which has been to empower local bodies to introduce compulsory primary education in selected areas. Although some local bodies maintain or aid secondary English schools, their chief concern is with elementary education in the vernacular. This they provide either directly through the medium of schools under their own management or indirectly by grants-in-aid to schools under private management. The policy adopted in this respect varies greatly in the different provinces. This divergence dates back to the beginnings of vernacular education in this country when Bengal and Madras, for example, adopted the system of grants-in-aid for financing primary education whilst Bombay, the Punjab and the United Provinces developed the system of government or local board schools. The position to-day is that the expenditure on aided schools is far higher than that on government and board schools in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and Burma and that the reverse is the case in Bombay, the United Provinces, the Punjab, the Central Provinces and Assam. In Madras, there is no great disparity between the expenditure on government and MO Y 286-33a board schools and that on aided schools. Bengal relies, to a far greater extent than any other province, on income from fees, some forty-one per cent of its total expenditure on education in 1925-26 being derived from this source. The departments of education aim at securing efficiency in the education provided by local authorities partly through an inspectorate, upon satisfying which, in theory at least, the continued recognition of an institution depends; and partly through the opportunities for persuasion which present themselves by reason of the fact that so large a proportion of the expenditure on education-about forty-eight per cent in 1925-26-is borne by provincial resources. In practice, departmental control over education is generally admitted to be somewhat less effective than the threefold safeguard of inspection, recognition and assistance from government funds might suggest. The standard of recognition is a minimum standard and withdrawal of recognition, once accorded, is rarely resorted to, whilst the assistance furnished from provincial revenues bears, as a rule, some proportion to the amount provided by the local authority from its own resources. The proportion furnished from provincial revenues has greatly increased in recent years. The recognition of privately managed institutions loses much of its value from the reluctance shown in withdrawing recognition. The grant-in-aid, however, furnishes a more potent weapon of control over these institutions, as the majority of the schools which receive such grants are largely dependent upon them for the continuance of their existence. If used judiciously, therefore, they should enable the departments of education, either directly or through the medium of the body administering the grant, to insist upon the elements necessary for a sound education. These elements would include the employment of properly qualified and adequately trained teachers, and the provision and maintenance of suitable accommodation and equipment. IMPORTANCE OF THE INSPECTORATE. 439. The brief outline of the educational system of India which has been given above will have made it clear that, in the long run, the efficiency of that system rests mainly on the efficiency and courage of the inspectorate maintained by the provincial governments. The inspectorate is provided by the Indian and provincial educational services. Recruitment for the Indian Educational Service, as for all services working in the transferred field of the administration, has now ceased and it is intended that its duties should be taken over by the superior provincial educational services. The present position in regard to these services is similar to that of the agricultural services which are described in paragraph 33, Chapter II. Their responsibilities will be heavy. 440. The salient features of the total expenditure on education in British India during recent years are conveniently illustrated by the graphs opposite. STATISTICAL |