India Educational Policy, 1913 - Being a Resolution Issued by the Governor General in Council on the 21st February 1913 #251713

India have refused to recognise the principle of'com pulsory education; but they desire the widest possible extension of primary education on a voluntary basis. As regards free elementary education the time has not yet arrived when it is practicable to dispense wholly with'fees without injustice to the many villages, which are waiting for the provision of schools. The fees derived from those pupils who can pay them are now devoted to the maintenance and expansion of primary education, and a total remission of fees would involve to a certain extent a more prolonged postponement of the provision of schools in villages without them. In some provinces elementary education is already free and in the majority of provinces liberal provision is already made for giving free elementary instruction to those boys whose parents cannot afford to pay fees.