Education policy of Punjab

WE have already discussed some aspects of the education policy of the Punjab Government, and have pointed out the intensely communal outlook which dominates that policy. If we leave out of account that vicious tendency to promote the interests of one particular community at the cost of another, and merely look at the results achieved during the last five years, the Education Department deserves to be congratulated on its achievement. As a department run largely for the benefit of one community, it has shown satisfactory progress and carried on its campaign to banish illiteracy from that community with considerable success. The enrolment of pupils has increased by 362,660 during the last four years, the number having risen from 556,989 in 1920-21 to 919,649 in 1924-25. The percentage of pupils under instruction to the total population is now 4.44 as compared with 4.07 a year ago. If the figures for boys are taken, then the percentage is 7.28 as compared with 6.6 last year. Of course, the progress, though substantial, is far from adequate. Even on the orthodox basis of calculation that 14 per cent of the population should be at school, barely half the task is completed so far as the boys are concerned, and if the figures relating to girls are also included, then more than three-fourths of the task yet remains to be done. Considerable leeway, therefore, has to be made up before literacy can be said to have fairly advanced in the province. As to the educational institutions for male students, arts colleges have increased from 17 in 1924 to 21 in 1925, high schools from 237 to 254, middle schools from 1,069 to 1,404 and special schools from 1,579 to 2,427.