Education: Strong foundation, steady expansion, and some striking signals

A successful legacy is not determined by what is bequeathed, but by what is built by the inheritor. This axiom largely holds true for Tamil Nadu’s knowledge economy. The State today stands at the cusp of modern education and remains a forerunner in the field in the country. Its strong foundations were laid in Madras by the British and were subsequently strengthened by the Justice Party’s rational and forward-looking policies rooted in the principles of social equity and access. In post-Independence India, successive State governments consistently adapted and improvised upon these early gains to take education to the masses. Policy continuity — despite changing political pole positions at Fort St. George, the seat of power, over several decades — is what has catapulted Tamil Nadu to an enviable position in the constantly expanding knowledge sector.

Over three centuries ago, the first English-medium school in Asia was established in Madras. In 1715, Rev. William Stevenson, the chaplain of St. Mary’s Church at Fort St. George, started the St. Mary’s Church Charity School with 30 students belonging to the Anglo-Indian community, including 12 girls. Over the course of the next century, the institution moved locations within the State capital, eventually being rechristened as St. George’s School and Orphanage in 1954. Christian missionaries went on to establish numerous such institutions across the State, providing a platform for early access to Anglo-Saxon school education.

Insofar as higher education is concerned, it is significant that the advent of technical and medical education in Madras predated the arts and science streams. In fact, the first technical school outside Europe came into existence in Madras as early as 1794. Michael Topping established the Survey School at Fort St. George with eight students drawn from an orphanage. This institution eventually evolved into the globally reputed College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), which later became the fulcrum of the prestigious Anna University, established in 1978.

Likewise, a private medical hall founded in 1835 by the Superintendent of the Government General Hospital, D. Mortimer, first took shape as the Madras Medical School and later became the Madras Medical College in 1850. From the hallowed portals of this institution emerged Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, who went on to become a renowned social reformer and earned the distinction of being the first woman doctor in India.

Some 45 years after the formation of the Survey School, Lord Elphinstone, the Governor of Madras, proposed that “it is expedient that a Central Collegiate Institution or University should be established at Madras.” This idea gave birth to Presidency College on the Marina beachfront in 1840, which produced illustrious alumni, including Nobel Prize winners C.V. Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Subsequently, the University of Madras was established in September 1857, within months of the unveiling of the Universities of Calcutta and Bombay.

Beyond traditional courses, the State also has the distinction of hosting the country’s first Agricultural School, established in Saidapet, Madras, in 1868. This institution has since evolved into the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore.

Student retention strategies

However, establishing institutions alone does not suffice unless measures are taken to attract students and retain them. Recognising that impoverished families faced difficulties in sending their children to school, the Madras Municipal Corporation, headed 105 years ago by the Justice Party leader Sir P. Theagaraya Chetty, introduced a novel scheme on a pilot basis. In November 1920, he mooted a proposal in the Madras Corporation Council to provide tiffin to students of a Corporation school at Thousand Lights at a cost “not exceeding one anna per student per day.” The objective was to provide some “food for thought” so that student retention could be sustained. The programme was expanded to four more schools, and it paid off handsomely. From a combined student strength of 811 in 1922-23, enrolment rose dramatically to 1,671 in 1924-25 in these institutions.

It was this scheme that Chief Minister K. Kamaraj — who was instrumental in opening schools in rural areas across the State — built upon during the Congress regime in 1956. He extended the free midday meal scheme to all primary schools, benefiting around 65,000 children through 1,300 feeding centres for 200 days a year. Successive regimes headed by M.G. Ramachandran, M. Karunanidhi, and Jayalalithaa introduced innovations such as the inclusion of eggs and nutritious balls in noon meals. Collectively, these measures transformed the scheme into a universally acclaimed model to attract students to schools and prevent dropouts, which has since been replicated across different States. The present M.K. Stalin dispensation has further introduced a Breakfast Scheme to reduce the burden on mothers who struggle to provide nutritious food on time before sending their children to school.

Politics and education policy

Regional identity politics spearheaded by the Dravidian movement also had an unexpected positive impact on the education sector. As early as 1937, the Justice Party launched an agitation against the C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) government for proposing mandatory learning of Hindustani — the lingua franca of northern India — in Classes 6 to 8. The move was eventually withdrawn in 1940. Later, in the mid-1960s, the DMK led a mass agitation against Hindi imposition, which propelled it to power. This movement resulted in the official adoption of the two-language policy in Tamil Nadu under Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai in 1968. The policy mandated instruction only in Tamil and English in schools and colleges. A significant by-product of this decision was enhanced English proficiency, a key driver of global employment opportunities. To this day, the two-language policy remains non-negotiable for successive governments and dominant political parties in the State. Tamil Nadu continues to resist determined efforts by the Union government to impose a three-language policy, even when such efforts are linked to the disbursal of funds for Centre-State school education schemes.

In the mid-1980s, Tamil Nadu witnessed the early stirrings of privatisation in higher education, particularly in engineering. When the M.G. Ramachandran government permitted the establishment of self-financing engineering colleges by politically well-connected individuals, it was widely viewed as an unholy proposition that would lead to a gradual withdrawal of public funding in education. However, over two decades later, when the Information Technology boom transformed the economy, it was these very private engineering colleges — by then mushrooming in every district — that ensured Tamil Nadu was well supplied with qualified human resources for the technology sector. While access to engineering education came at a higher cost to families, it has today created a scenario where many socially backward, middle-class, and rural households boast of a family member working in the United States or other countries.

Such upward mobility among families from historically underprivileged sections was facilitated by several attendant factors. First, Justice Party leaders and their Dravidian Movement successors, driven by the belief that education — not family vocation — is the true instrument of empowerment, pioneered and expanded affirmative communal reservation policies. Notably, the first communal reservation Government Order for public employment was issued in Madras over a century ago. Over time, this policy has been expanded and refined to meet changing needs. Today, Tamil Nadu provides 69% reservation for socially underprivileged communities, with sub-quotas for Muslims (within Backward Classes) and Arundathiyars (within Scheduled Castes). In recent years, a 7.5% horizontal reservation has been introduced for students from government schools seeking admission to medical and engineering programmes, further empowering rural and underprivileged teenagers.

Second, the farsighted decision of the M. Karunanidhi government (1996-2001) to create the necessary infrastructure for the Information Technology and manufacturing sectors ensured that the job market expanded to absorb new graduates. The origins of TIDEL Park trace back to this period. Third, the Tamil Nadu Placement Programme launched by Anna University Vice-Chancellor E. Balagurusamy during Jayalalithaa’s tenure (2001-06) widened access to private-sector employment. This initiative brought job aspirants from across the State onto a single platform and reversed the lopsided corporate recruitment practice of limiting talent searches to elite engineering colleges in cities.

While competitive politics between the principal rivals, the DMK and the AIADMK, resulted in the discontinuation of certain development schemes during regime changes, the education sector largely remained insulated from such disruptions, witnessing only rare reversals. With each government striving to leave its imprint, Tamil Nadu today boasts a wide array of State-run universities offering specialised education in arts and science, engineering, medicine, law, agriculture, music, fisheries, teacher education, open learning, and even sports.

Strengthening higher education

At present, Tamil Nadu has 22 State universities, two Central universities, 29 deemed-to-be universities, and eight private universities. Several deemed universities have evolved into global hubs, attracting students and faculty from across India and abroad, with cutting-edge infrastructure and laboratories rivalling those of national institutions.

The last Karunanidhi regime (2006-11) marked a welcome departure from the privatisation trend, with the State investing in the establishment of additional government engineering colleges across districts. Similarly, the period from 2017 to 2021 proved beneficial for medical aspirants, as Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami initiated measures to establish as many as 11 government medical colleges with the support of the Union government.

These sustained policy interventions have resulted in Tamil Nadu topping the chart in terms of Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER). More than half of students completing school education in the State are enrolled in colleges — a milestone that India as a whole aims to achieve only by 2035. Tamil Nadu’s GER of over 50% far exceeds the national average of 29%. The State continues to incentivise higher education among underprivileged students. The Stalin government now deposits ₹1,000 per month into the bank accounts of girls and boys enrolled in colleges after having studied in government schools from Classes 6 to 12 under the Pudhumai Penn and Tamil Pudhalvan schemes.

Gaps in reform

Early in this millennium, Tamil Nadu also introduced a successful model of activity-based learning at the pre-primary level. Additionally, it sought to bridge disparities in school education quality by merging the State Board, Matriculation Board, Anglo-Indian Board, and Oriental School Board into a Uniform System of School Education (USSE), popularly known as Samacheer Kalvi, over 15 years ago. However, over time, this reform has produced unintended consequences. The number of CBSE schools has grown exponentially — from fewer than 100 in the pre-Samacheer Kalvi period to over 1,750 today. Moreover, several early CBSE schools have transitioned to ICSE and IB/Cambridge boards. Consequently, the objective of USSE has been undermined by the creation of new layers of branding and perceived quality. In the long run, this trend risks widening the knowledge gap between the haves and the have-nots, as non-USSE institutions are largely driven by capitation fees and high tuition costs. Government schools and the USSE framework must therefore be strengthened, teachers empowered to innovate, and freed from excessive non-teaching responsibilities. The assessment system — currently skewed toward rote learning and marks — requires a comprehensive overhaul to evaluate a child’s true potential. Alongside intellectual development, educators must nurture students’ emotional quotient to better equip them for life’s challenges.

Similarly, in higher education, it is deeply concerning that several State universities, including the University of Madras, are grappling with severe financial constraints. As many as 12 universities are currently without Vice-Chancellors due to a prolonged dispute between the Secretariat and Lok Bhavan over appointment procedures. Ongoing litigation and court-imposed stay orders have exacerbated the crisis. The pursuit of State autonomy in Vice-Chancellor appointments appears increasingly political rather than focused on selecting competent academic leaders. Since the turn of the century, State universities have often been headed by politically inclined individuals rather than scholars with demonstrated academic vision and leadership.

Furthermore, universities lack adequate autonomy in determining courses, examination structures, and fee regimes. Policies are urgently required to regulate the quality of academic output from colleges. In recent decades, a troubling trend has emerged, wherein successive governments have pressured universities to inflate pass percentages — particularly in engineering colleges — by diluting evaluation standards. Students must be assessed rigorously by the university system; failure to do so risks producing a growing pool of unemployable graduates, posing serious socioeconomic challenges. Universities need committed, intellectually strong academic leaders and genuine autonomy to shape their academic and administrative policies. The lesser the governmental interference, the better the prospects for higher education.

While the State government has rightly opposed the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, it has yet to articulate a comprehensive policy for higher education of its own. Even the School Education Policy does not markedly diverge from the national framework. The prolonged delay in releasing a Higher Education Policy has left universities and students without clear direction. Addressing this lacuna at the earliest is imperative.

Simply put, while Tamil Nadu’s educational legacy is both rich and robust, the State cannot afford to rest on its laurels. Sustained innovation, revitalisation, and reform are essential to preserve and enhance its leadership in education.

(This article, in parts, draws from previously published works of the author in The Hindu.)

This article is part of The Hindu e-book. Tamil Nadu’s progress: economic growth through social equality