Sergeant Plan of Education

The Sergeant Plan (Sergeant was the educational advisor to the Government) was worked out by the Central Advisory Board of Education in 1944. It recommended—

1. pre-primary education for 3-6 years age group; free,

Wardha Scheme of Basic Education (1937)

The Congress had organised a National Conference on Education in October 1937 in Wardha. In the light of the resolutions passed there, Zakir Hussain committee formulated a detailed national scheme for basic education. The main principle behind this scheme was ‘learning through activity’. It was based on Gandhi’s ideas published in a series of articles in the weekly Harijan. Gandhi thought that Western education had created a gulf between the educated few and the masses and had also made the educated elite ineffective. The scheme had the following provisions.

(i) Inclusion of a basic handicraft in the syllabus.

(ii) First seven years of schooling to be an integral part of a free and compulsory nationwide education system (through mother tongue).

(iii) Teaching to be in Hindi from class II to VII and in English only after class VIII.

(iv) Ways to be devised to establish contact with the community around schools through service.

(v) A suitable technique to be devised with a view to implementing the main idea of basic education—educating the child through the medium of productive activity of a suitable handicraft. The system, rather than being a methodology for education, was an expression of an idea for a new life and a new society. The basic premise was that only through such a scheme could India be an independent and non-violent society. This scheme

was child-centred and cooperative.

There was not much development of this idea, because of the start of the Second World War and the resignation of the Congress ministries (October 1939).

universal and compulsory elementary education for 6-11 years age group; high school education for 11-

17 years age group for selected children, and a university course of 3 years after higher secondary; high schools to be of two types: (i) academic and

(ii) technical and vocational.

2. adequate technical, commercial and arts education.

3. abolition of intermediate course.

4. liquidation of adult illiteracy in 20 years.

5. stress on teachers’ training, physical education, education for the physically and mentally handicapped.

The objective was to create within 40 years, the same level of educational attainment as prevailed in England. Although a bold and comprehensive scheme, it proposed no methodology for implementation. Also, the ideal of England’s achievements may not have suited Indian conditions.