Wood's Despatch of 1854

Macaulay's Minute told the Company which language to teach in. It did not build a single school. Twenty years later, Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, sent a despatch to the Governor-General that finally answered the harder question: what should the system actually look like, from a village primary school all the way up to a university degree?

In two minutes

Wood's Despatch of 1854 is often called the Magna Carta of English education in India because it planned a complete, graded system of schools and colleges, capped by affiliating universities, with government finally accepting direct responsibility for education.

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