Formal education in Mizoram started with the arrival of Christian missionaries. The Christian Missionaries introduced the Roman scripts in 1894 with a phonetic form of spelling. They started opening schools in few villages, such as Khawrihnim, Phulpui and Chhingchhip 1901. In 1903, three more schools were opened and seven more in the next year. In 1909, the first ever Middle Schools were opened in Aizawl and Serkawn respectively. In 1944, the first High School was started in Aizawl by public donations. The opening of High School marked a new epoch of event in the educational progress in the hilly area, now called Mizoram.
The School Education Department looks after formal education through schools from Class I to Class XII, that is, Elementary Education from Class I to Class VIII, Secondary Education from Class IX to Class X, Higher Secondary Education from Class XI to Class XII. It also looks after Adult Education, Hindi Education and Physical Education. Though the department has a good number of notable achievements during the last Five year plan, there is still a long way to go to achieve the desirable qualitative changes. Therefore the programmes and schemes are directed towards achieving these goals which of course definitely imply allocation of resources reasonably. Further, in order to reform the system of education in the State of Mizoram, the Government of Mizoram set up the Education Reforms Commission to recommend ways and means to raise standards of education and improve its quality.