The Department of State Educational Research and Training, popularly known as DSERT is the academic wing of the Department of Public Instruction. It aims at providing academic leadership in school education as well as improving the quality of education provided in primary and secondary schools in the state. The DSERT was formed as a small academic unit of the Department of Public Instruction. It was then known as the State Institute of Education (SIE), and it originally started functioning from the northern district town of Dharwad in 1964. This unit was later shifted to Bangalore and the other academic units of the department of public instruction – State Institute of Science (SIS), State Educational Evaluation Unit (SEEU) and Educational Vocational Guidance Bureau (EVG), were merged in 1975 to form a single monolithic Department of State Educational Research and Training.
