In ancient times, India had Gurukula system of education in which anyone who wished to study went to a teacher's (Guru) house and requested to be taught. If they are accepted as a student by the guru, he would then stay at the guru's place and help in all activities at home. This not only created a strong tie between the teacher and the student, but also taught the student everything about running the house perfectly. The guru taught everything the child wanted to learn, from Sanskrit to the holy scriptures and even from Mathematics to Metaphysics. The student stayed as long as they wished or until the guru felt that he had taught everything he could teach. All learning was closely linked to nature and to life, and not confined to memorizing some more information.
The modern school system was brought to India, including the learning of English language, originally by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay in the 1830s. The curriculum was confined to “modern” subjects such as science and mathematics, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy are considered unnecessary. Teaching was confined to the classrooms and the link with nature was broken, as also the close relationship between the teacher and the student.
The Uttar Pradesh (a state in India) Board of High School and Intermediate Education was the first Board set up in India in the year 1921 with jurisdiction over Rajputana, Central India . In 1929, the Board of High School and Intermediate Education, Rajputana, was established. Later, boards were established in some states. But eventually, in 1952, the constitution of the board was amended and it was renamed as Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). All schools in Delhi and some other regions came under the Board. It was the function of the Board to decide on things like their curriculum, textbooks and examination system for all schools affiliated to it. Today there are thousands of schools affiliated to the Board, both within India and in many outside countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Universal and compulsory education for all students in the age group of 6-14 was a cherished dream of the new government of the Republic of India. This is evident from the fact that it is incorporated as a directive policy in article 45 of constitution. But this objective remains far away even more than half century later. However, in the recent past, the government appears to have taken a serious note of this lapse and has made primary education a Fundamental Right of each and every Indian citizen. The pressures of economic growth and the acute scarcity of skilled and trained manpower must certainly have played an important role to make the government take such a step. The expenditure by the Government of India on school education in recent years comes to 3% of the GDP, which is recognized to be very low.
The state of Kerala, a small state in the South Western coast of India, has been different from the rest of the country in many ways for the last few of decades. It has, for instance, the highest literacy rate among all states, and was declared the first fully literate state about decade back. Life expectancy, both male and female, is very high, close to that of the developed world. Other parameters such as fertility rate, infant and child mortality are among the best in the country, even if not the best. The total fertility rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 for the last two of the decades. Probably as a side-effect of economic and social development, suicide rates and alcoholism are very high. Government policies also have been very different from the rest of the country, leading to the development model followed in Kerala, with high expenditure in education and welfare, coming to be known as the “Kerala Model“ among economists.
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