Wood's Despatch of 1854 on Education

By 1853 a number of problems concerning education in the country had risen which required immediate solution. 

As a result of an inquiry made by the Government, Sir Charles Wood, the then Secretary of state, sent a despatch popularly known as Wood's Despatch to the Court of the Directors of the East India Company in 1854. 

• The despatch enunciated the aim of education as the diffusion of the Arts, Science, Philosophy and Literature of Europe. 
• It laid down that the study of Indian languages was to be encouraged and that the English language should be taught wherever there was a demand for it, and that both English and the Indian Languages were to be regarded the media for the diffusion of European knowledge; a scheme to establish universities was to be formulated, whose functions were to hold examinations and corder degrees. 
• The despatch also recommended that a number of high schools should-be set up.
• This eventually led to the establishment in the country of the first three universities in 1857. 
• The Despatch was considered to be the " Magna Carta of Education of in India". 
• It was the first authoritative declaration on the part of the British Parliament about the educational policy to be followed in India.
• Macaulay rejected the claims of Arabic and Sanskrit as against English, because he considered that English was better than either of them.