History of Education
Feb 15, 2023
India is a country filled with young and avid learners. With around 66 per cent of the total population below the age of 35, there are eager students at primary, elementary, higher and advanced stages of education. But as young as India is, it has a vast history, rooted in the values of educating civilizations.
For India, education has been a story of striving towards equality of access to education. The earliest schooling traditions in India revolve around guru-shishya practices where the students would live with their teachers and learn.
Universities like Nalanda and Taxila were centers of these glorious traditions. However, education at this time was limited to upper caste individuals.
Later on, with the advent of Islam in India, Madrasa based education also began but this was also only for the privileged. During the colonial period, Christian missionaries came to India to spread the message of faith, and in doing so, several missionary schools were established, where the focus was also on education of the downtrodden.
Later on, as India moved towards freedom, the policies of the state also started influencing education practices.
The Union government established the University Education Commission (1948–1949), the Secondary Education Commission (1952–1953), University Grants Commission and the Kothari Commission (1964–66) to develop proposals to modernize India's education system.
The Government of India initiated the National Policy on Education in 1986. Its major objective was to provide education to all sections of society, with a particular focus on scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes and women, who were deprived of educational opportunities for centuries.
Currently, the National Education Policy of 2020 enacts numerous changes in India's education policy. It aims to increase state expenditure on education from around 3% to 6% of the GDP as soon as possible.
In India, Right to Education is guaranteed for children up to the age of 14 and the drive to educate and learn is also profound. With a long history, education in India still has a long way to go.
