How to save education in India?

How to save education in India ?

Seven months ago, in Case Study #20, we asked why education in India is failing.

I ended that post with a promise. That we would come back to the harder question.

This is that post.

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The Indian education system is not broken because we have too many bad teachers or too few schools.

It is failing because we keep "fixing" the wrong things at the surface level: new syllabi, new boards, new apps, new entrance exams.

We ignore the five things that have actually been proven to work, even inside India.

Here they are.

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1. Teach kids at the level they are actually at, not the level the syllabus says they should be.

This is called TaRL (Teaching at the Right Level). Built by Pratham, tested in 6 randomised trials with J-PAL, it has produced some of the largest learning gains ever recorded in education research, anywhere in the world.

Bihar, Maharashtra, MP, Punjab and West Bengal have already adopted it. It has reached over 76 million Indian students.

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2. Make sure every kid can read and do basic math by Grade 3.

This is called Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN). The Government of India launched the NIPUN Bharat mission in 2021 with this exact target.

The early results are real. ASER 2024 reported a 7 percentage point jump in Grade 3 reading and subtraction, the biggest improvement in two decades.

In Uttar Pradesh alone, reading rose 12 points and subtraction 14 points between 2022 and 2024.

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3. Teach in the language the child actually thinks in.

NEP 2020 mandates mother tongue or local language as the medium till Grade 5, preferably till Grade 8. NCERT has already produced textbooks in 22 Indian languages.

Every serious piece of education research, globally, says the same thing. Kids who learn in their own language catch up faster. Kids who do not, drop out.

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4. Cut the syllabus by 25 to 30 percent.

NEP 2020 calls it "rationalisation." CBSE has begun the cut. State boards are still resisting.
Less to cover, more time to actually understand it.

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5. Run the state the way Haryana ran Saksham.

In 2014, Haryana had grade-level competence of 40 percent in its government schools. By 2019, that number had crossed 80 percent.

The recipe was boring: bi-monthly assessments, an online dashboard tracking every school, and weekly teacher accountability. No fancy app, no AI, just patient, repeatable discipline.

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So why has none of this scaled nationally?

Because India still spends only 2.7 percent of GDP on education. The Kothari Commission asked for 6 percent back in 1966. Sixty years later, we are still not halfway there.

The solutions exist. They have been tested. They have worked.

The next move is not academic. It is political.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

Spotted a wrong number or something out of date? Tell me and I'll fix it.