School As A Formal Agency Of Education B.Ed Notes

Back to: Contemporary India and Education-Unit 1

Education refers to the process of facilitating the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, moral values, beliefs, habits, learning, and personal development. Education is compulsory for individuals of a certain age in many countries. Formal education takes place in an academic institution such as a school or college. Educational methods consist of teaching, learning, training, discussion, directed research, storytelling, and more. Education is an individual’s dynamic force and plays a highly influential role in a person’s mental, emotional, social, physical, creative, spiritual, and ethical development. It helps an individual to go through various experiences and implement these experiences in creating a meaningful life. Socrates states,

“Education means the bring out of the ideas of universal validity which are latent in the mind of every man”.
Socrates

School as a Formal Agency

The features of the school as a formal agency is as follows:

Educational Institution

Formal education takes place routinely in an academic institution such as a school or college.

Graded

Formal education takes place grade-wise. After every academic session, learners are promoted to a new grade if they perform well.

Structured

Formal education follows a structured schedule that takes place every weekday. According to this, the teaching-learning process is administered.

Hierarchical

Formal education takes place according to a hierarchy where learners process from the basics of knowledge to the more complex lessons and subjects.

Rigid

Unlike informal schooling, formal education is not flexible. They follow a strict and rigid routine every day to ensure the proper flow of education.

Routine

Schools follow an effective routine for every weekday to ensure that the education is administered properly with breaks in between and holidays for major events.

Assessments

Schools hold tests and exams at regular intervals to assess the progress of the learners and to learn how much they have understood to date.

According to the Dictionary of Education (C.V. Good, 1973), education is,

“The aggregate of all the processes by which a person develops abilities, attitudes and other forms of behaviour of practical values in the society in which s/he lives; the social process by which people are subjected to the influence of selected and controlled environment (especially that of the school), so that they may obtain social competence and optimum individual development”.

School as a Formal Agency of Education B.Ed Notes