Explanation:

All the statements given above are correct. In the 1830s, William Adam, a Scottish missionary, toured the districts of Bengal and Bihar. He had been asked by the Company to report on the progress of education in vernacular schools. The report Adam produced is interesting. Adam found that there were over 1 lakh pathshalas in Bengal and Bihar. These were small institutions with no more than 20 students each. But the total number of children being taught in these pathshalas was considerable – over 20 lakh. These institutions were set up by wealthy people, or the local community. At times they were started by a teacher (guru). The system of education was flexible. Few things that you associate with schools today were present in the pathshalas at the time. There were no fixed fee, no printed books, no separate school building, no benches or chairs, no blackboards, no system of separate classes, no rollcall registers, no annual examinations, and no regular time-table. In some places classes were held under a banyan tree, in other places in the corner of a village shop or temple, or at the guru’s home. Fee depended on the income of parents: the rich had to pay more than the poor. Teaching was oral, and the guru decided what to teach, in accordance with the needs of the students. Students were not separated out into different classes: all of them sat together in one place. The guru interacted separately with groups of children with different levels of learning. Adam discovered that this flexible system was suited to local needs. For instance, classes were not held during harvest time when rural children often worked in the fields. The pathshala started once again when the crops had been cut and stored. This meant that even children of peasant families could study.