provided for other (albeit very small) groups of Indians.
Anglo-Indians were provided with elementary education,
unless the student decided to go on and become a priest.
(33) Further efforts to improve the system had little
effect.
Perhaps, the best example of this was the introduction of
the Bengal Code in 1883. (34) Lytton drew up the Bengal
Code for European Schools (1883) and the Code was put into
practice in 1885 in all the major provinces of British
India, except Bombay and Madras, where the local
governments had control of the education for Anglo-Indians.
The Code was based on the English and Scottish models, and
the objective was the grants-in-aid system which was linked
to a payment by results grant system. The system was
modified in 1896, when the grant was paid annually upon the
basis of attendance and the Inspector's general report.
(35)
The problem which emerged very quickly was linked to the
most important resource in a school, the teacher. In 1883,
the prospects as a teacher were limited, and there were few
if any training colleges for teachers. The status of
Anglo-Indian schools could only be raised by
. . . raising the status of the teacher, but
when teaching is resorted to in many cases as
a mere make-shift, and is adhered to only as
an unavoidable necessity, indifferent men as
teachers, and indifferent results in the end
must be the necessary consequence. (36)
The next section describes the Anglo-Indian community's
attempt to group themselves in order to deal with the
problems in their own community.
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