Quiz 3 — Commissions & the Constitution, 1813–1978

All four are correct. Sent by Sir Charles Wood of the Court of Directors, the Despatch laid out a graded system from village vernacular primary schools through district schools and colleges to universities; a Department of Public Instruction in each province; grants-in-aid to private schools; vernacular at the primary level with English for higher education; and teacher-training institutions, encouragement of women's education and vocational instruction. It is called the Magna Carta of English education in India because its recommendations map almost one-to-one onto what was actually built. The complete option is correct, and the item worth watching is the fourth — candidates drop women's education and teacher training because those feel like later, Indian concerns rather than a colonial despatch's.

The first three are correct. Hunter, appointed under Ripon, made primary education the priority, to be delivered through the vernacular and entrusted to the newly created municipal and district boards, and split secondary education into an A course that was literary and led to university and a B course that was vocational and practical. Statement 4 reverses the Commission's actual position: it wanted the State to WITHDRAW progressively from direct secondary and collegiate provision in favour of aided private effort. That withdrawal is what makes grants-in-aid, recommended by Wood in 1854, the operative instrument of the period. Note also what Hunter was NOT — it is a primary-education commission, and the university commissions are Raleigh in 1902 and Sadler in 1917.

All four are Kothari recommendations, and each is a separate examinable item. The Commission proposed the 10+2+3 structure India eventually adopted, a spending target of 6% of GDP, a Common School System with neighbourhood schools to secure equality of access, work experience and social service in education, science and research emphasis, school complexes and teacher status, and internal evaluation alongside external examinations. The complete option is correct. The one to notice is the fourth: internal evaluation is a 1966 idea, which means the continuous-assessment argument in Indian education is nearly sixty years old — and it explains why NPE 1986 could name continuous and comprehensive evaluation as a direction rather than an invention.