Lord Stanley’s Despatch, 1859
The recommendation of Wood’s Despatch was followed and strengthened by another despatch known as Lord Stanley’s Despatch of 1859. Many policymakers and rulers of the country failed in practicing some of the recommendations of Woods Despatch and Lord Stanley expressed his concern over this and came up with new recommendations. During this period, the grant in the form of scholarship given to teacher trainees was considerably increased. More teacher education training institutions came into existence during the period from 1881 to 1882. Similarly, the number of normal schools increased to 106, of which fifteen were exclusively reserved for the women of the country. A total of 3886 teachers got trained at these institutions. An amount of one lakh was kept aside to meet the expenditure of teacher training programmes which was a considerable amount at that time.
Those who had primary education were given admission to teacher training programmes. The rules and procedure of teacher education was not rigid, so as to attract more number of students teachers. To attract more women to the field of teaching profession there were no admission criteria for women. The methods and procedures carried out during the process of teacher training were so simple that it motivated teacher trainees to continue the course and complete it successfully.
The students were provided financial assistance in the form of stipend. The initial period of teacher training followed monitorial system (pupil-teacher) then later replaced it with ‘system of apprenticeship’, where students were placed under the custody of an experienced teacher for a particular duration of time. After completion of apprenticeship, they were placed in District Training Colleges to get training for a short duration and to get the certificate of ‘trained teacher’ which certified the students that they were qualified to teach in primary schools.
In the initial stages, teacher training was arranged for teachers at elementary/ primary level. Later, it was extended to middle and secondary level. The Government School, Madras, started in 1856, and Central Training School started in 1877. In 1886, the first training college for secondary teachers was established in Madras followed by the Nagpur Training School in 1889.