National Education Commission (1964-1966), popularly known as Kothari Commission, was an ad hoc commission set up by the Government of India to examine all aspects of the educational sector in India, to develop a general pattern of education, and to recommend guidelines and policies for the development of education in India. It was formed on 14 July 1964 under the chairmanship of Daulat Singh Kothari, then chairman of the University Grants Commission. The terms of reference of the commission was to formulate the general principles and guidelines for the development of education from primary level to the highest and advise the government on a standardized national pattern of education in India. However, the medical and legal studies were excluded from the purview of the commission. The tenancy of the commission was from 1964 to 1966 and the report was submitted by the commission on 29 June 1966.
Structure The commission, under the chairmanship of Daulat Singh Kothari, was the sixth commission in India post independence and the first commission with comprehensive terms of reference on education. It was composed of a member secretary, an associate secretary and fifteen members. Apart from the core group, the commission had a panel of overseas consultants numbering twenty and nineteen task forces, their sub groups and special panels of invitees.
Core group No. Designation Name Position 1 Chairman D. S. Kothari Chairman, University Grants Commission 2 Member Secretary J. P. Naik Head, Dept of Edu. Planning, Admn and Finance Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune 3 Associate Secretary J. F. McDougall Assistant Director, Department of School and Higher Education, UNESCO, Paris 4 Member A. R. Dawood Director, Extension Programmes for Secondary Education, New Delhi 5 Member H. L. Elvin Director, Institute of Education, University College of London 6 Member R. A. Gopalaswami Director, Institute of Applied Manpower Research, New Delhi 7 Member V. S. Jha Director of the Commonwealth Education Liaison Unit, London 8 Member P. N. Kirpal Educational Adviser to the Government of India 9 Member M. V. Mathur Professor, Economics and Public Administration, University of Rajasthan 10 Member B. P. Pal Director, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 11 Member Kum. S. Panandikar Head of the Department of Education, Karnataka University, Dharwad 12 Member Roger Revelle Dean of Research, University of California, USA 13 Member K. G. Saiyidain Educational Adviser to the Government of India 14 Member T. Sen Rector, Jadavpur University, Calcutta 15 Member Jean Thomas Inspector General of Education, France, and formerly Assistant Director-General of UNESCO 16 Member S. A. Shumovsky Director, Methodological Division, Ministry of Higher and Special Secondary Education, RSFSR, Moscow 17 Member Sadatoshi Ihara Professor of the First Faculty of Science and Technology, Waseda University, Tokyo
Consultants A panel of 20 consultants, selected from various parts of the world and deemed experts in education, was constituted for consultative assistance to the commission. No. Incumbent Position 1 James E. Allen, Jr. Commissioner, State Education Department, USA 2 C. E. Beeby Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University 3 P. M. S. Blackett President, the Royal Society, UK 4 Recteur J. J. Capelle Director-General of Education in France, Paris 5 Christopher Cox Educational Adviser, Ministry of Overseas Development, UK 6 Philip H. Coombs Director, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris 7 Andre Daniere Centre for Studies in Education and Development, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University 8 Stevan Dedijer Institute of Sociology, University of Lund, Sweden 9 Nicholas DeWitt Director, International Survey of Educational Development and Planning, Indiana University, USA 10 John Guy Fowlkes School of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA 11 Willis Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering, Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London 12 J. Paul Leonard Professor of Education, Columbia University Teachers' College 13 Gordon N. Mackenzie Professor of Education, Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York, USA 14 C. A. Moser Director, Unit for Economic and Statistical Studies on Higher Education, London School of Economics 15 S. Okita Executive Director, Japan Economic Research Centre, Tokyo 16 A. R. Prest Professor of Economics and Public Finance, University of Manchester, England 17 Lionel Robbins Professor Emeritus, London School of Economics 18 Edward A. Shils Professor, University of Chicago, USA 19 Frederick Seitz President, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, USA 20 W. C. Smith Director, Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University
Task Forces and Working Groups The main front line activities were handled by nineteen task forces or working groups, each handling a specific area of activity.
Task Force on Adult Education The group's main objective was the eradication of illiteracy by focusing on adult education. The group was composed of three foreign members, J. F. McDougall, Welthy Fischer and Hans Simons and fifteen Indian members, V. S. Jha, Abdul Qadir, G. K. Chandiramani, A. R. Deshpande, Durgabai Deshmukh, K. L. Joshi, D. R. Kalia, T. A. Koshy, M. S. Mehra, A. R. Moore, J. P. Naik, M. S. Randhawa, K. G. Saiyidain, Sohan Singh and group secretary, S. M. S. Chari.
Task Force on Agriculture Education The group had 15 members of which two were foreign members, J. F. McDougall and R. W. Cummings. The Indian members included B. P. Pal, Hashim Amir Ali, Anant Rao, Chintamani Singh, V. M. Dandekar, K. C. Kanungo, A. B. Joshi, S. N. Mehrotra, S. K. Mukherji, J. P. Naik, K. C. Naik, N. K. Panikar, C. S. Ranganathan, S. C. Verma and secretary, S. Ramanujam. The group focused on the development of agricultural education.
Task Force on Educational Administration This twelve member group examined the shortcomings on the educational administration and had Prem Kirpal, A. C. Deve Gowda, V. Jagannadham, M. V. Mathur, S. N. Mukherjee, J. P. Naik, H. M. Patel, D. M. Sen, J. D. Sharma, V. D. Sharma, Rudra Dutt Singh and S. Rajan (secretary) as its members.
Task Force on Educational Finance The task before the group was to examine the existing set up with regard to educational finance and identify ways to overcome the shortfalls. The group had M. V. Mathur, D. A. Dabholkar, B. Dutta, R. A. Gopalaswami, K. L. Joshi, D. T. Lakdawala, Gautam Mathur, Atmanand Misra, Sadashiv Misra, J. P. Naik, K. A. Naqvi, Pritam Singh and Gurbax Singh (secretary) as its members.
Task Force on Higher Education The group's objective was to coordinate the higher education system in India and advise on ways of improvement. The group was one of the largest and had 20 members, including three overseas members, J. F. McDougall, Hans Simons and H. J. Taylor. The Indian members were K. G. Saiyidain, J. W. Airan, P. K. Bose, Chandrahasan, V. S. Jha, A. C. Joshi, K. L. Joshi, C. L. Kapur, D. S. Kothari, M. V. Mathur, P. G. Mavlankar, J. P. Naik, P. J. Philip, A. B. Shah, Amrik Singh, R. K. Singh and S. Rehman (secretary).
Task Force on Manpower The group had twelve members which included R. A. Gopalaswami, Abdul Qadir, K. L. Joshi, M. V. Mathur, J. P. Naik, R. Prasad, T. Sen and S. P. Aggarwal. The group had its mandate to examine the recruitment and training of teaching and non teaching staff.
Task Force on Techniques and Methods in Education This seventeen member task force was entrusted with the designing of the functional mechanics of the educational system. The members were V. S. Jha, G. K. Athalye (later replaced by S. L. Ahluwallia), M. L. Bharadwaj, A. R. Dawood, S. Dutt, C. L. Kapur, S. S. Kulkarni, J. C. Mathur, J. F. McDougall, S. K. Mitra, J. P. Naik, Paul Neurath, S. Panandikar, Albert J. Perrelli, S. Rehman, J. M. Ure (later replaced by D. A. Smith) and S. M. S. Chari, who served as the Secretary.
Task Force on Professional, Vocational and Technical Education The group trained its focus on the professional and vocational courses. The group had sixteen members including the associate secretary, J. F. McDougall. The other members were T. Sen, S. K. Bose, G. K. Chandiramani, L. S. Chandrakant, D. R. Dhingra, R. N. Dogra, V. G. Garde, R. A. Gopalaswami, K. L. Joshi, P. K. Kelkar, S. G. Pendse, S. C. Sen, R. K. Srivastav, H. C. Visvesvaraya and secretary, S. Venkatesh.
Task Force on Science Education The mandate of the group was to focus on the science education excluding medical education and consisted of D. S. Kothari, S. Deb, B. D. Jain, P. Florence Nightingale, R. C. Paul, R. N. Rai, T. S. Sadasivan, D. Shankernarayan, Shantinarayan, A. R. Verma, R. D. Deshpande and I. C. Menon (secretary).
Task Force on School Education The group worked on the modalities of school education excluding primary education in India. It consisted of twelve members including the commission secretary, J. P. Naik along with A. R. Dawood, K. L. Gupta, G. S. Khair, K. Kuruvila Jacob, D. R. Mankad, P. N. Mathar, R. Muralidharan, S. Panandikar, H. Radhakrishna, S. N. Saraf, and S. Doraiswami (secretary).
Task Force on Student Welfare The welfare aspects of the students including scholarships and other measures of incentives were attended to by this group which had A. R. Dawood, V. S. Jha, D. R. Mankad, M. S. Mehta, Perin H. Mehta, J. P. Naik, Prem Pasricha, V. Ramakrishna, A. S. Raturi, D. S. Reddy, S. L. Saruparia, Vikram Singh and S. Doraiswami (secretary) as its members.
Task Force on Teacher Education and Teacher Status The group inspected the proficiency of the teachers and their remuneration packages. One of the tasks before the group was to standardize the public and private sector compensation packages and also to design a machinery for continuous on-job training of the teachers. The members of the group were S. Panandikar, S. P. Aggarwal, Reginald Bell, A. C. Deve Gowda, G. N. Kaul, J. P. Naik, S. Natarajan, K. G. Saiyidain, Salamatullah and M. D. Paul (secretary).
Working Group on Educational Buildings This group had its focus on the educational infrastructure and had several construction and infrastructure experts among its fifteen members. The members were A. R. Dawood, R. K. Chhabra, Dinesh Mohan, B. V. Doshi, J. F. McDougall, M. M. Mistri, J. P. Naik, M. H. Pandya, C. B. Patel, S. Rahaman, J. L. Sehgal, T. S. Vedagiri, H. C. Visvesaraya, H. Williams and S. Venkatesh (secretary).
Working Group on Education of the Backward Classes The group had fifteen members and was mandated to focus on the education of the scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and other backward communities in India. L. M. Shrikant, Sashimeren Aier, N. V. Bapat, S. R. Bhise, P. D. Kulkarani, J. Lakra, D. J. Naik, J. P. Naik, V. Rajlakshmi, T. Sanganna, S. C. Sen Gupta, Manikya Lal Verma, Vimal Chandra, N. M. Wadiwa and the secretary of the group, Gurbax Singh were the members.
Working Group on Educational Statistics The group provided the statistical tools for the commission and had J. P. Naik, S. P. Aggarwal, R. K. Chhabra, G. P. Khare, D. Natarajan, H. Webster and Gurbax Singh (secretary) as members.
Working Group on Pre-Primary Education This group was intended to work on the primary education and its standardization as the primary education till that time was unorganized with several different schools such as basic primary and Montessori systems in practice. The group had ten women, S. Panandikar, Bilquis Ghufran, L. Jesudian, Shalini Moghe, A. Pakrashi, Grace Tucker, P. K. Varalakshmi, Amrita Varma and R. Muralidharan and two men, M. C. Nanavatty and Shesh Namle as members.
Working Group on School Community Relations