Children in pre-British times were taught

Formal, state-run schooling with fixed fees and periodic examinations is a system that colonial administration introduced across India. Before British rule, most village children learned in informal community schools (pathshalas/maktabs) that were supported voluntarily by the local community and were not tied to a fixed academic calendar of terms and exams.

Contemporary surveys of indigenous schooling, and the NCERT account of pre-colonial education, record that such schools ran through most of the year, but classes thinned out or paused once the harvest season arrived, because children were needed to help with fieldwork.

• Village pathshalas were locally supported arrangements, not administered through a state education department — state-run schooling arrived only with British administrative reforms.

• Teachers were typically sustained through voluntary community support rather than a fixed, upfront fee charged to every learner.

• Formal annual examinations, as a way of testing students, are a colonial administrative practice; indigenous schooling relied on continuous oral instruction with informal assessment by the teacher, not a yearly test.

So the schooling pattern that fits pre-British village education is one that continued through the year, pausing during the harvest season when children worked in the fields.