Despite significant strides in enrolment, India’s public education system continues to grapple with deep-rooted learning disparities. In this thought provoking piece, Dr. Shreemoyee Bhattacharya, Associate Director of State Programs, Language and Learning Foundation highlights the stark contrast between private and government schooling in India. While premier institutions like IITs and AIIMS attract students from diverse backgrounds, foundational learning at the primary level remains highly unequal.
Citing alarming statistics from ASER and UNESCO, the article delves into the pressing challenges—deficient infrastructure, outdated teaching methodologies, digital divides, and socioeconomic barriers—that hinder equitable learning outcomes. The piece underscores the urgent need for strategic policy interventions, better resource allocation under schemes like Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, and collaborations between government, NGOs, and private players to bridge these gaps.
Education, as the author argues, must be viewed as a social equalizer rather than a privilege. Strengthening public schools, ensuring affordability, and fostering inclusive policies can drive India toward a more knowledge-based and equitable future.
Looking Beyond Enrolment: The Learning Disparity in India’s Public Schools
Today, and perhaps for a long time, India stands at a crossroad, calculating, strategizing and balancing economic growth on one hand, and efficient primary level mass education on the other. While those two things are not mutually exclusive, but rather positively correlated, the latter has undoubtedly taken a hit one too many times. Despite this, our country produces brilliant students, and you will also see that most of them come from private schools with education in English. And that is precisely why you will agree to send your child to a private school for their primary and secondary education, but once they cross that threshold? The determination is shifted to government-funded institutions of national importance like the IITs, NITs, AIIMS, ISI, DU, JNU etc.
Foundational learning and literacy then becomes the axis on which a child’s academic future and socio-economic mobility rests. Why is it then, parents who send their children to the nearest public school they can afford, are not provided with the same infrastructural and learning resources and attention as their private school going counterparts? An umbrella answer to that would be a combination of infrastructural deficits, ineffective teaching methodologies, and socioeconomic disparities that contribute to these learning gaps. Providing quality mass education was not going to be an easy task. It requires thorough and empathetic understanding of the role of literacy and education in transforming an individual’s life. Perhaps the central concern of policymakers and the education sector should be to utilise or rearrange the terms of existing educational guidelines to advance a more equitable and redistributive educational economy, underscoring the role of education as a social capital.
According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2019, ASER Centre, on children aged 4-5 who can correctly perform tasks by schooling status, there are considerable gaps between government pre-schoolers and private LKG-UKG students in terms of cognitive, early language, and numeracy tasks like spatial awareness, pattern recognition, picture description, listening comprehension and counting objects etc. A 2020 UNESCO Report also says that around 22% of 15-year-olds in rural India had grade-2 reading skills.
The challenge is clear. Deficiencies in infrastructure where many government schools lack basic facilities like proper school buildings, inclusive learning friendly classrooms and access to educational resources. Lack of teacher training and support, where many government school educators still do not have access to modern pedagogical techniques and are not equipped to create a positive classroom culture or provide individualised support. One of the most pressing challenges today is also the accelerated linking of the digital space to the physical classroom. Lack of access to phones, computers and the internet pose significant barriers to the learning outcomes of children, and their ability to keep up with their peers in private schools, which are making progress in leaps and bounds when it comes to integrating digital resources into their teaching methods.
Managing these challenges then requires a multi-pronged, collaborative policy where governments, NGOs and private institutions magnify the impact of any kind of policy intervention to improve the learning gaps in Indian government schools. Although the Ministry of Education has seen a 6.22% increase in its budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 and the Department of School Education and Literacy has received its highest ever allocation, a more focused allocation towards infrastructure under schemes like the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and monitoring of fund utilisation would help mitigating the issue. Partnerships with private organisations to help in the maintenance of school infrastructure would accelerate the rate of improvement too. The PM eVIDYA program and Diksha platform can be expanded and made readily available to students.
Policymakers and curriculum designers need to take into account the learning irregularities that are present in the public education system. Despite policies aimed at promoting inclusive education, significant disparities persist, particularly among marginalized communities. Children from Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and economically weaker sections often face social and financial barriers that prevent them from completing their education. Gender inequality remains another pressing issue. Many girls drop out due to cultural norms, early marriages, and concerns over safety. The lack of proper sanitation facilities in schools further discourages female students from continuing their education. Additionally, Muslim and tribal communities have some of the lowest literacy rates, highlighting the urgent need for targeted interventions.
To bridge these gaps, India must strengthen scholarship programs, introduce community-driven initiatives, and enforce stricter policies against discrimination in schools. Education must become a fundamental right that is accessible to every child, regardless of background. The government must introduce vocational training programs, career counseling, and financial incentives to encourage students to stay in school and complete their education. The rapid rise of private institutions has led to the increasing commercialization of education. While private schools and colleges offer superior infrastructure and better teaching quality, they remain unaffordable for a significant section of India’s population. As a result, education has become a privilege rather than a right, widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
Many parents prefer private schools due to the deteriorating standards of government institutions, further straining public education resources. To prevent education from becoming an exclusive commodity, the government must regulate private institutions, ensure affordability, and strengthen public schools to compete with private alternatives.
India has witnessed an explosion in the number of universities and colleges, but the quality of higher education remains a serious concern. Many institutions lack research facilities, industry collaborations, and innovation-driven programs. As a result, thousands of graduates enter the job market every year without the necessary skills to secure employment. A holistic approach to reforming the system would result in India’s goal to achieve a knowledge based economy.
This would require resources to be put into innovative classrooms with confident and equipped educators who understand their influence within those four walls to bring about a knowledge led revolution.
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