534 / 822
EDUCATION
Eternal India
encyclopedia
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Ancient India had a system of Gurukulas which provided all-
round comprehensive education away from parental distraction.
Modern India provides the Public School.
As in the United Kingdom, the Indian Public School is not public
at all. It is a private institution, being privately funded and privately
run by a duly-constituted Board of Governors which generally has
members from the Union Ministry of Education. All Public Schools
are non-profit institutions with the accruing revenue being utilised
for the improvement of facilities or for the sponsoring of meritori-
ous candidates who could not otherwise afford the fees that are
normally charged. There are a few schools that are not privately run
but by the Ministry of Defence that are also Public Schools; these
are the Sainik Schools which are basically Preparatory Schools for
the Armed Forces and are subsidised by the Government.
Contrary to popular belief all residential schools are not Public
Schools. Only residential or partly residential schools that belong
to the Indian Public Schools Conference can correctly be termed as
Public Schools.
There are, at present, 57 schools that are members of the IPSC
and these schools provide a uniform, comprehensive education with
facilities that are unmatched by any of the other schools, both resi-
dential and otherwise. Public Schools are affiliated necessarily to
an All-India Education Board, such as the Central Board of Secon-
dary Education, a Government Board, or the Indian Council of
Secondary Education, a private board.
For a long time Public Schools have been labelled as elitist
schools, perhaps because the fee charged is much more than that
charged by non-residential common schools. While in the late 19th
century this may have been true to a large extent, today, the
schools are patronised by those people who wish their children to
have a comprehensive education so that they can develop into con-
tributive citizens, who will have determined his or her slot in
society before entering the maelstrom of University life. The IPSC
schools all provide large numbers of sponsored seats, that may be
free-ships, bursaries or full scholarships. These are offered to
candidates who have been selected on a purely merit basis by their
respective State Governments or Education Boards. Some stu-
dents are also financed by the schools themselves after a compre-
hensive qualifying examination. Most Public Schools have be-
tween 500 and 900 students and may cater to boys or girls, or both,
between the ages of eight and eighteen, corresponding to Stan-
dards III to XII. The fee structure of such schools varies from Rs.
14,000/- per annum which would account for nine months of school-
ing including tuition, boarding, lodging, educational travel, sports,
extracurricular activities, and all books. The most important char-
acteristic of these schools is that the emphasis for admission is on
merit rather than on financial elitism. Premier among these institu-
tions are The Scindia School in Gwalior, The Doon School in Dehra
Dun and The Mayo College in Ajmer, which are all schools for boys,
The Welhams Schools, Dehra Dun, Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya,
Gwalior, Mayo Girls College, Ajmer, and Maharani Gayatri Devi
School, Jaipur are prominent Public Schools for girls. The Lawrence
Schools in Lovedale, Tamil Nadu and Sanawar, Himachal Pradesh
are premier co-educational institutions.
It has also been argued that Public Schools, and other residen-
tial schools have given rise to the nuclear family and has been, in a
large measure, responsible for the breakdown of the Joint family
system prevalent in the country in the early part of the 20th
Century. This may not be necessarily true since the output of these
schools during the last fifty years cannot match the number of
nuclear families. The change is due to social reasons rather than
educational ones. Nevertheless, the Public School has been re-
sponsible in creating a new breed of Indian that is more outward
looking while rooted in Indian tradition, more adventurous though
differentially courteous, more achievement oriented than subservi-
ent and subdued. Therefore far from being the last bastion of
foreign rule in India the Public School has come of age and is now
producing a New Indian for a New India, while all the time keeping
to the context of a world theater.
The Government of India, in an attempt to bring quality educa-
tion to the rural masses has undertaken a project of establishing
residential or partly residential public school type institutions in
sub-divisional headquarters of various states throughout India.
The intake of these schools would be from the catchment areas
within in the sub-division. . The experiment called the Navodaya
School Project was gradually built up, however the schools have not
reached the expected standard of quality. In many cases, these
schools have been plagued by a lack of highly qualified staff who
are prepared to live in rural conditions, as a result the intake of these
schools has been curtailed to a large extent. It is unfortunate that
such a promising project for value-based education should have
suffered such a setback.
Although schools run by private managements are not
within the ambit of this overview, a brief outline about them will not
come amiss. There has been a mushrooming of urban populations
and as consequence a number of schools have been established.
Whereas the Government has set up different categories of
schools, the resources and constraints faced by them has necessar-
ily affected the quality of these institutions. Private managements
not being faced with such constraints, and motivated by commercial
aspects have set up day-schools that offer an excellent quality of
education, with the best facilities available for the students. The
cost of such education is not low but as a demand for this kind of
education exists, such facilities are provided. The academic per-
formance of these schools are far better than any Government
school and are, in quantitative terms, better than the established
Public Schools. Admissions to Public Schools being limited, these
day-schools provide an excellent alternative to boarding schools.
The fees charged may not be much lower than residential schools,
but they remain popular with parents who would like a good educa-
tion for their children while keeping their children with themselves.
It is notable that most of these schools are Missionary Schools, set
up by Christian Missionaries, primarily for proselytization, but now
providing a secular and value-based system of education. Indeed
the Jesuit and Patrician schools all over India are well known for the
excellence of the services they provide. Indian religions missions of
the Hindu, Sikh and Islamic faiths have also set up schools on
secular quality of their services. There are also non-denominational
schools that offer special education with special facilities and have
become extremely popular in the areas they service
With the edge of competition becoming keener with the passage
of years, Public Schools have geared up to provide the country with
persons who have a clear world-view, discipline and conviction of
secularism and classless society. Every facility is provided to let
the student find his capabilities and to hone them to perfection.
Public Schools have provided, for the Twentieth Century, men and
women to lead the nation in politics, in administration, in the Armed
Forces and in industry. It is certain that they will continue to do so
for the next.
(S.A.R.A)