MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 7 of 100

Correct — option (4), the straight-through match: (a)-(i), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iii), (d)-(iv). The four items are the four landmarks of education policy in the first two decades after independence, in the order they occurred. Statement (a), printed here as the Dr. Radhakrushanan Commission and named after Dr S. Radhakrishnan, is the University Education Commission, the first body the new government appointed to examine higher education; it was set up in 1948 and reported in 1949, and its central recommendation was that the existing University Grants Committee be reconstituted on the model of the University Grants Commission of the United Kingdom with a full-time chairman — a recommendation that produced the UGC, inaugurated in 1953 and made statutory by Act of Parliament in 1956. Statement (b), printed as the Mudliyar Commission and named after Dr A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, is the Secondary Education Commission, appointed in 1952 and reporting the following year; it looked at the layer the first commission had left untouched and recommended the diversified multipurpose school, a three-year degree course above it, and the reorganisation of the secondary stage. Statement (c) is the establishment of the National Council of Educational Research and Training in 1961, the body that took over curriculum, textbooks and teacher education for the school system and that still writes the textbooks most examinations are set from. Statement (d) is the Kothari Commission, formally the Education Commission, appointed in 1964 under Dr D. S. Kothari; it was the first body to survey education at every stage as a single system, it gave India the ten-plus-two-plus-three structure and the common school ideal, and its report of 1966 became the basis of the National Policy on Education of 1968. The chain is therefore university, then secondary, then the institution to service the schools, then the comprehensive review — and once that chain is held in order, the year that goes with each is fixed.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — This choice swaps both pairs. It puts the University Education Commission in 1952 and the Secondary Education Commission in 1949, and it puts the establishment of the NCERT in 1964 and the Kothari Commission in 1961. The first swap inverts the order in which the two commissions actually sat, and that order is not arbitrary: independent India looked at the universities first, in the year after independence, and came to school education only in the following decade. The second swap does the same violence to the school story, since the NCERT was created before the Kothari Commission was appointed and was one of the instruments through which the Commission's recommendations were later carried into the classroom.
• (2)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — This is the dangerous choice, because its first two rows are right: it gives 1949 to the University Education Commission and 1952 to the Secondary Education Commission, exactly as the key does. It then reverses the last two, dating the NCERT to 1964 and the Kothari Commission to 1961. A candidate who checks only the first row or two before committing will take it. The discriminator is the relationship between the two institutions: the NCERT of 1961 is a permanent body created to service school education, whereas the Kothari Commission of 1964 was a temporary commission of enquiry that reported in 1966, and the Commission's proposals were implemented partly through the Council that already existed. The order cannot be reversed.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii) — This choice dates the University Education Commission to 1961, the Secondary Education Commission to 1949, the NCERT to 1964 and the Kothari Commission to 1952, and every row of it is out of place. The single quickest way to reject it is the first row: the commission on university education is the earliest of the four items and belongs at the beginning of the sequence, so any choice that pushes it to the middle of the 1960s has misread the whole chronology. Chronological questions of this kind are best attacked by fixing the earliest and the latest items first, which here means the University Education Commission and the Kothari Commission, since the two middle items are then forced.

Education policy in India between 1948 and 1966 was built in layers, each addressing what the previous one had left out. The University Education Commission examined higher education and produced the UGC. The Secondary Education Commission examined the school stage that fed the universities and produced the multipurpose school and the reorganised secondary curriculum. The NCERT was then created in 1961 as a permanent national body for school curriculum, textbooks, research and teacher training, absorbing several existing central institutions. Finally the Kothari Commission, appointed in 1964 and reporting in 1966, treated the whole system at once — primary, secondary, higher, technical and teacher education together — and made the recommendations that shaped what followed: a common school system, the three-language formula, education as a proportion of national income, and the ten-plus-two-plus-three pattern that replaced the varying provincial structures. Its report fed directly into the National Policy on Education of 1968, the first such policy statement, which was revised in 1986 and superseded by the National Education Policy of 2020.

MPSC asks about commissions across every part of the syllabus, and it asks about them by date more often than by content, because a date is unambiguous and a recommendation can be paraphrased. Education commissions come up regularly for a further reason: they overlap with the general studies syllabus on human development and with the state's own record in school and university administration. What makes them awkward is that each commission carries two candidate dates, the year it was appointed and the year it reported, and different compilations quote different ones. The defence is to store both for each body — University Education Commission set up 1948, report 1949; Secondary Education Commission appointed 1952, report 1953; Kothari Commission appointed 1964, report 1966 — so that whichever year the paper prints, the commission can be recognised. Here the item pairs the University Education Commission with 1949 and the Secondary Education Commission with 1952, and a candidate carrying both dates for each is untroubled by the asymmetry.

• The University Education Commission was set up in 1948 under Dr S. Radhakrishnan and reported in 1949; it recommended reconstituting the University Grants Committee on the British model with a full-time chairman, which produced the UGC, inaugurated in 1953 and made statutory in 1956.
• The Secondary Education Commission was appointed in 1952 under Dr A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar and reported the following year; it recommended the diversified multipurpose school and the reorganisation of the secondary stage.
• The National Council of Educational Research and Training was established in 1961 as the national body for school curriculum, textbooks, educational research and teacher training.
• The Education Commission under Dr D. S. Kothari was appointed in 1964 and submitted its report in 1966; it proposed the common school system, the three-language formula and the ten-plus-two-plus-three structure, and led to the National Policy on Education of 1968.
• The English column prints the two names as Radhakrushanan and Mudliyar; the persons are Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, later President of India, and Dr A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Madras.

• Confusing the year a commission was appointed with the year it reported; every education commission carries two candidate dates and different compilations quote different ones
• Reversing the NCERT and the Kothari Commission — the Council of 1961 already existed when the Commission was appointed in 1964, and helped carry out what it recommended
• Assuming the Radhakrishnan Commission dealt with the public services, because the word 'Commission' in an Indian polity list usually does; this one is the University Education Commission of 1948-49
• Checking only the first row of a matching choice before committing, when two of the four choices here agree on the first two rows and differ only on the last two

Education commissions appear in MPSC papers in three shapes: a straight match of commission to year, as here; a match of commission to its signature recommendation, where the UGC belongs to Radhakrishnan, the multipurpose school to Mudaliar and the ten-plus-two-plus-three structure to Kothari; and a chronological ordering question in which colonial and post-independence bodies are mixed together, so that Wood's Despatch, the Hunter Commission and the Sadler Commission have to be sequenced alongside them. Prepare a single table running from 1835 to 2020 with the body, its head, its year of appointment, its year of report and its one signature outcome, and every shape the commission uses becomes answerable from the same page of notes.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The recommendation that the University Grants Committee be reconstituted on the model of the University Grants Commission of the United Kingdom with a full-time chairman was made by which body ?

  • (a)The Secondary Education Commission
  • (b)The University Education Commission
  • (c)The Education Commission under D. S. Kothari
  • (d)The Sadler Commission

  Answer(b) The University Education Commission — the body set up in 1948 under Dr S. Radhakrishnan, whose report of 1949 carried this recommendation. The University Grants Commission that followed was inaugurated in 1953 and given statutory footing by an Act of Parliament in 1956, so the chain from this single recommendation to a permanent regulator is the point the question is testing.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The ten-plus-two-plus-three pattern of school and college education and the common school system were recommended by which commission ?

  • (a)The Mudaliar Commission
  • (b)The Radhakrishnan Commission
  • (c)The Kothari Commission
  • (d)The Hartog Committee

  Answer(c) The Kothari Commission — the Education Commission appointed in 1964 under Dr D. S. Kothari, which reported in 1966 and was the first body to review every stage of education as one system. Its report gave India the ten-plus-two-plus-three structure, the common school ideal and the three-language formula, and became the basis of the National Policy on Education of 1968.