Page:The despatch of 1854, on General education in India.djvu/26

Rh 61. We desire to see local management under Government inspection, and assisted by grants in aid, taken advantage of wherever it is possible to do so, and that no Government colleges or schools shall be founded, for the future, in any district where a sufficient number of institutions exist, capable, with assistance from the State, of supplying the local demand for education. But, in order fully to carry out the views we have expressed with regard to the adequate provision of schools throughout the country, it will probably be necessary, for some years, to supply the wants of particular parts of India by the establishment, temporary support, and management of places of education of every class in districts where there is little or no prospect of adequate local efforts being made for this purpose, but where, nevertheless, they are urgently required.

62. We look forward to the time when any general system of education entirely provided by Government may be discontinued, with the gradual advance of the system of grants in aid, and when many of the existing Government institutions, especially those of the higher order, may be safely closed, or transferred to the management of local bodies under the control of, and aided by, the State. But it is far from our wish to check the spread of education in the slightest degree by the abandonment of a single school to probable decay; and we, therefore, entirely confide in your discretion, and in that of the different local authorities, while keeping this object steadily in view, to act with caution, and to be guided by special reference to the particular circumstances which affect the demand for education in different parts of India.

63. The system of free and stipendiary scholarships, to which we have already more than once referred as a connecting link between the different grades of educational institutions, will require some revision and extension in carrying out our enlarged educational plan. We wish to see the object proposed by Lord, in 1839, “of connecting the zillah schools with the central colleges, by attaching to the latter scholarships to which the best scholars of the former might be eligible,” more fully carried out; and also, as the measures we now propose assume an organized form,