z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 411
EDUCATION OF DEPRESSED CLASSES 411
especially to command itself for such a retrospect, as in 1850 the second
decenial period commenced, during which the Schools of the Presidency have
come under exclusive control of a Government Board ; and it is obvious that
as a considerable body of information ought now to have been accumulated,
and as the majority of the present members have bad seats at the Board
during the greater portion of that time, they would fain hope that by recording
their experience, they may shed some light on certain obscure but highly
interesting questions, which are certain to arise from time to time before
their successors at this Board.
“Paragraph 10th. We now proceed to give as minute a detail as comports
with our limits, of the principal educational facts A uniform system which have forced themselves upon our notice, and developing itself we think it will clearly appear, when those facts are spontaneously duly appreciated, that many of the disputed questions, both in Bengal which arise in the Indian field of education, will be and Bombay. seen to solve themselves, and that a system is generally
evolving itself in other Presidencies as well as in Bombay, which is well suited
to the circumstances of the country, and which, as the growth of spontaneous
development, denotes that general causes are at work to call it forth.
Paragraph 11th. In the return on the following page, a comparative view is
given of the number of schools and of pupils receiving Statistics of education under Government at the period when the education in Establishments first came under the control of the Bombay. Board, in 1840 and in April 1850. It shows, in the latter
period, an addition of four English and 83 vernacular
schools and a general increase in pupils of above a hundred per cent. The total
number receiving Government education at present is 12,712 in the following
proportions : —
English Education ... ... 1,699
Vernacular Education ... ... 10,730
Sanskrit Education ... ... 283
[comparison from tables : in 1840 there were 97 schools; number of pupils
5,491. In 1850, number of schools 185 and number of pupils 12,712.]
“Paragraph 12th. But the population of the Bombay Presidency is now calculated
by the most competent authorities to amount to ten millions.
Same subject. Now on applying the rule of statistics deduced from the
Prussian census as noticed in a former Report, (1842-43, page
- a population of this amount will be found to containing fewer than 900,000
male children between the ages of seven and fourteen years and of course, fit
subjects for school. It follows, therefore, that Government at this Presidency has
not been able to afford an opportunity for obtaining education to more than one
out of every sixty-nine boys of the proper school going age.