By Zafarul Haq
The Education Division at NITI Aayog released a 200-page report on 6th May 2026 titled “School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement”. It starts with the echo of ‘Viksit Bharat by 2047’ in the ‘Foreword’ and three different ‘Messages’ capturing the saga of a decade (2014-2025) across five chapters with 33 systemic and academic policy recommendations organised into 13 sub-themes.
School Education Landscape – Drawing on data from UDISE+, PARAKH, NAS, ASER and more, the report analyses patterns and trends in India’s school education. It mentions that India now has over 14.71 lakh schools, nearly 24.69 crore students and over 1.01 crore teachers. The document emphasises that education has always been holistic in India, tracing its roots to the ancient Gurukul, which was disrupted during the colonial era. Mentioning Elphinstone’s Minutes (1823) and Macaulay’s Minute on Education (1835), it concludes that this was the period when education was redesigned to serve administrative goals. However, there is no mention of other medieval schooling systems under the Mughal Empire, such as state-patronised Madrasas and Maktabs.
Post-Independence Education Reforms: The document provides a timeline and highlights the distinguishing features of each educational policy and intervention post-Independence from the Mudaliar Commission (1952) to the National Curriculum Framework (2023). Nonetheless, it is silent on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s contribution as independent India’s first Education Minister and the initiator of the Mudaliar Commission. It notes that 50% of India’s schools provide only primary (Grades 1-5) education, whereas only 5.4% offer continuous (Grades 1-12) schooling.
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): The GER presents an interesting picture with primary at 90.9%, upper primary at 90.3%, secondary at 78.7% and higher secondary at 58.4%, indicating a decline, especially at the secondary and higher secondary levels. Almost four out of every 10 children who enter the school system are not able to continue until higher secondary education and one out of every 10 children is outside formal schooling.
Literacy and Numeracy: Only 27.1% of Grade III, 48.8% (almost half) of Grade V and 71.7% of Grade VII children can read a Grade II level text. Only 33.7% of Grade III, 30.7% of Grade V and 45.8% of Grade VIII children can solve at least a basic subtraction problem.
Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR): PTR for primary is 20, for upper primary 17, for secondary 15 and for higher secondary 23. There are 1,04,125 single-teacher schools in India, which account for over 7% of all schools and nearly 7,993 schools have zero enrolment.
School Facilities and Infrastructure: Nearly 1.19 lakh schools do not have functional electricity, 14,505 schools lack functional water sources, almost 59,829 schools do not possess hand-wash facilities, 98,592 schools lack functional girls’ toilets and 61,540 schools do not have usable toilets. On the other hand, 51.7% of government secondary schools are equipped with Science laboratories, 64.7% of schools have computers, 57.9% have them available for teaching and learning and 63.5% of schools have internet connectivity.
Teacher Quality: Only about 10-15% of candidates score above the 60% qualifying threshold in TET/CTET examinations and less than 2% score above 70%. Private schools now constitute 44.01% of all secondary institutions and enrolment in government schools has seen a drastic decline from 71% in 2005 to 49.24% in 2024-25. However, 35% of Grade V students in low-fee private (LFP) schools are unable to read a Grade II level text and 60% cannot solve a basic division problem (CSF report 2022).
The document is rich in data supported by heat maps and visual graphics and presents a decade-long analysis of learning outcomes, infrastructure, inclusion, digital access, teacher shortage and emerging areas such as AI-enabled learning. However, it reads more like a mirror than a roadmap, prompting the question: Does the system truly understand the nature of its own crisis? Are current efforts aligned with the goal of achieving holistic education and the vision of Viksit Bharat@2047?
As the Executive Summary of the report quotes Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, “Education, to be complete, must be human; it must include not only the training of the intellect but the refinement of the heart and the discipline of the spirit. No education can be regarded as complete if it neglects heart and spirit.” This raises a deeper question: how effectively are current education reforms nurturing “the heart and spirit” of learning?
[The writer is Coordinator and Researcher at Markazi Taleemi Board. zafarmtb@gmail.com]
