Based on Macaulay’s Minute, the English Education Act was introduced in ________. 

The correct answer is 1835.

Key Points

• In 1834 Thomas Babington Macaulay came to India as a Legal Member of the Council of India.
• He formulated his policy proposal in his Minute on Indian Education, delivered in Kolkata on 2nd February 1835.
• As per Lord Macaulay’s “Minutes on Indian Education” ‘Literature’ meant English literature and not Sanskrit or Arabic or Persian literature.
• He emphasized that the medium of instruction should be English.
• His thinking was to change Indian culture.
• The Governor-General of India, William Bentinck, approved the proposal of Lord Macaulay on 7th March 1835.
• It became the cornerstone of British-Indian educational policy until Independence (and remained largely in force after that as well)

Additional InformationHunter Commisssion

• The Hunter Commission has an important place in the field of education in India.
• At the primary level, the commission emphasized on teaching useful subjects in the local language.
• Lord Ripon set up a commission under the chairmanship of Sir William Hunter in 1882 AD, whose task was to consider the irrelevance of the Woods Dispatch of 1854.

Woods Dispatch

• The education system of present India is the gift of Charles Wood.
• The East India company policy to change renews the charter after every 20 years, so that time in 1853.
• The parliament board surveyed Indian Education System and determined that there was a huge need for education.
• Wood was the President and he sent the report to East India Company the report was forwarded as a dispatch to the Indian Government on 19th July 1854 and this is known as Wood’s Dispatch 1854.
• The Wood’s Dispatch is considered the Magna Carta of English education in India.
• Despatch expressed that education in English, as well as Indian local languages, should be enhanced and encouraged throughout the Nation.
• They wanted to establish a Department of Public Instruction in every province.