The Beginnings of the Grants-In-Aid System to Fund School Education in United Provinces in Modern India

Abstract

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the advent of a change in the hitherto followed traditional system of education in India. The East India Company, tasked with the administration of a vast territory, gradually went from a policy of non-intervention and detachment, towards active reform in the structure of education in India, based on the English model. This paper attempts to capture the early stirrings of modern educational development in India. It seeks to streamline years of structured proposals and policies, ranging from the Charter Act of 1813, to Wood’s Dispatch of 1854, coupled with individual efforts of many officials, that ultimately brought about a grants-in-aid system, to establish modern learning on secular grounds. The system, which sought to achieve the uniform development of educational institutions on non-religious grounds, through grants-in-aid provided by the Government, seemed just and participative, but also suffered from limitations on diverse and vernacular interests.

 Even though the education system in India saw further development to reach its present form, this paper highlights the crucial and imperative understanding we must possess, of the ideals and the means that went into introducing modern education in the country.