Monitorial System

The Monitorial System, also known as Madras System or Lancasterian System/Lancasterism, was an education method that took hold during the early 19th century, because of Spanish, French, and English colonial education that was imposed into the areas of expansion. This method was also known as "mutual instruction" or the "Bell–Lancaster method" after the British educators Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster who both independently developed it. The method was based on the abler pupils being used as "helpers" to the teacher (so-called pupil-teachers), passing on the information they had learned to other students.^[1]

The 'monitorial system' which made such striking progress in England in the early part of the 19th century, received its foundational inspiration from village schools in south India. Dr. Andrew Bell, whose name is associated with the 'monitorial system', was an Army chaplin in India, and from 1789 to 1796 held the position of superintendent of the Male Orphan Asylum in Madras. It was in the course of his residence here that his attention was directed to the system of pupil teachers that obtained in the Madras Pial schools (run around temples), and which in essence was also the system in the Bengal Pathsalas.^[2]