SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 8 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which education-related document, issued in 1854, laid the foundation for modern education in India?

(a)Macaulay’s Minute
(b)Hunter Commission
(c)Wood’s Despatch
(d)Indian Education Act

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Wood's Despatch, dated 19 July 1854, was sent by Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, to the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie.

It planned education from the primary level to the university, called for universities on the London model at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and set up an education department in each presidency → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Macaulay’s Minute — Macaulay's Minute is dated 2 February 1835, nineteen years before 1854. It urged Western, English-medium learning on Bentinck and preceded the English Education Act of 1835.
(b)
Hunter Commission — The Hunter Commission on Indian education dates from 1882, almost three decades later. It was set up to review how far the 1854 Despatch had been carried out.
(d)
Indian Education Act — No 1854 document goes by the name Indian Education Act. The question's 1854 document is a despatch, not an Act.

Concept

British education policy in India moved in stages. The Charter Act of 1813 first set aside funds for education, and Macaulay's Minute (1835) tipped the Orientalist–Anglicist debate towards English.

Wood's Despatch (1854) then planned a whole system: vernacular schools for the many, English for higher studies, grants-in-aid, teacher training, female education, and universities, founded at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857.

Key facts

Wood's Despatch: 19 July 1854, from Sir Charles Wood to Lord Dalhousie.
It proposed universities on the London University model at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.
Macaulay's Minute on Indian education is dated 2 February 1835.
The Hunter Commission on Indian education, under William Wilson Hunter, dates from 1882.

Study next

The Charter Act of 1813 and its education grantThe Hunter Commission (1882) and primary educationThe Indian Universities Act of 1904 under Curzon

Common traps

Picking Macaulay's Minute because it is the best-known education document — the year 1854 rules it out.
Mixing up the two Hunter Commissions — the 1882 one was on education, the 1919 one on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Here the year does the work: 1854 points to one document. The sequence of education milestones is asked at 17 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.7 (keyed: Charter Act, 1813 – allocated funds for promotion of education).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: History — all 218 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.