Beyond Budget Buzzwords: India's Education System Faces Critical Leaks
Tomorrow's Union Budget will arrive with its familiar vocabulary—"skilling," "capacity," "future-ready youth." While these terms sound promising, the Economic Survey 2025–26 has already delivered a sobering reminder that budgets often forget: Education isn't a sector you simply "announce" for one day each year. It functions as India's operating system—and that operating system is only as effective as its handovers between stages.
In our school education framework, the leak isn't at the entry gate. It emerges later, when childhood transitions into adolescence and schooling transforms into a logistical challenge—distance, safety, time, and the quiet household trade-offs that determine whether Class 9 remains "possible" this year. Meanwhile, higher education is being redesigned to appear more flexible on paper, but the lived reality remains brutally old-fashioned: Does the degree convert into meaningful work, or does it merely convert certainty into prolonged waiting?
Above all this looms the outward pull—students increasingly treating overseas study less as a postcard experience and more as an insurance policy, a calculated bet on predictability when they lack confidence that the domestic system will deliver outcomes on schedule. Here, we interpret the Economic Survey as a detailed map highlighting where the system leaks and pose the crucial question: Will this Budget patch those leaks, or merely repaint the pipes?
Government Schools Dominate in Number, Private Schools Lead in Enrolment
India's school system is frequently discussed in abstract terms—"enrolment," "coverage," "outcomes"—until you confront the sheer scale in one comprehensive view. The Economic Survey 2025–26 presents this plainly: 24.69 crore students, 14.71 lakh schools, and over 1.01 crore teachers (UDISE+ 2024–25).
At this monumental size, policy implementation becomes an exercise in logistics before it evolves into pedagogical arguments. Then emerges a second critical fact that's less about volume and more about behavioral patterns. Government schools constitute 69% of all schools and enrol nearly half of all students; private schools represent 26% of the total but carry 41% of total enrolment (2023–24).
You don't need to moralize this split to comprehend what it signals: Where government serves as the default infrastructure, private education becomes the purchased promise—sometimes of English-medium instruction, sometimes of disciplined environments, sometimes simply of predictable quality.
Enrolment Remains Strong in Early Grades Only
The participation curve appears steady—until it begins its gradual taper. The survey tracks this through Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), which measures how many students are enrolled at a given level compared to the population in the official age group for that level.
In 2023–24, GER stands at 90.9 at the primary level (Classes 1 to 5) and 90.3 at upper primary (6–8). This represents the thickest part of the educational pipeline: For most families, schooling continues to function as the default expectation. The decline commences at the secondary level. GER drops to 78.7 in Classes 9–10 and falls further to 58.4 in Classes 11–12. Simply put, far more children enter school than persist through the final two years.
A second analysis using NEP's stage structure reinforces this pattern. Here, "Secondary" encompasses the entire 9–11 block (not just 9 and 10), thus capturing the thinner participation in Classes 11 and 12 within a single figure. On this combined measure, GER at the secondary stage (9–11) is 68.5, compared to 95.4 at the preparatory stage (3–5) and 90.3 at the middle stage (6–8).
The measurement buckets differ, but the pattern remains consistent: Access holds firm through the middle years, then becomes increasingly conditional as schooling progresses into adolescence and the senior-secondary stretch.
Early Learning Shows Improvement, Real Squeeze Begins After Class 8
One of the few areas where the survey provides a clear "before-and-after" perspective on learning is the foundational stage. In Grade 3, proficiency levels demonstrate visible improvement from 2021 to 2024: Mathematics rises from 42% to 65%, and Language improves from 39% to 57%.
Whatever drives this progress—stronger early-grade focus, sharper measurement methodologies, or consistent follow-through—the crucial takeaway is that these numbers narrate a story over time, rather than posing for a single-year snapshot.
However, a rising trend doesn't indicate a resolved system. Other statistics make it evident that learning gains in early grades don't automatically translate into smooth educational continuity in later years. The pressure point emerges during the transition into secondary education—where the system begins to thin for predominantly logistical reasons.
The survey notes that the secondary age-specific Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) is 52.2%—meaning only approximately half of the official-age cohort is enrolled at the secondary level. It also highlights a supply-side constraint: 54% of schools offer only foundational–preparatory education, so continuing to secondary often necessitates shifting to another institution.
The rural–urban gap further sharpens this picture: In rural India, only 17.1% of schools provide secondary education, compared to 38.1% in urban areas.
When interpreted together, these findings land as an uncomfortable truth: Progress may manifest in early-grade learning metrics, but persistence in Class 9 still depends heavily on geography. When secondary education means longer commutes, higher costs, and increased risk, families perform the calculations—and the educational pipeline consequently thins.
Flexible Degrees, Fragile Bridges: HEIs Continue Struggling with Employability
Graduation is supposed to represent the clean handover: You complete your credits, collect your degree, and step directly into the workforce. In India, that handover frequently arrives with a waiting period—months during which families continue calculating: How long before the degree begins paying for itself?
A TeamLease EdTech report cited in the Economic Survey 2025–26 suggests this handover remains uneven across campuses. It estimates that 75% of higher education institutions lack industry-readiness. The placement scenario, according to the same report, isn't uniformly bleak or optimistic—it's sharply lopsided. Only 16.7% of HEIs achieve 76–100% placements within six months.
The "within six months" detail isn't merely a metric. It's where uncertainty is experienced as a continuously moving clock, while households absorb the financial and emotional costs of delay.
The more revealing constraint resides upstream, within the degree structure itself. Only 25% of HEIs reportedly utilize live industry projects, and only 26% integrate internships into education. This is where the mismatch is manufactured. Students are expected to be "job-ready" at the exit gate, after years spent in programs that too frequently treat industry exposure as optional.
The risk, effectively, shifts away from institutions and onto families—who pay tuition first, endure waiting periods next, and are subsequently told that outcomes depend primarily on personal employability factors.
Study-Abroad Boom Outpaces Domestic Educational Pull
A decade ago, studying overseas represented a significant decision made by a smaller segment of families. Today, it has transformed into a corridor with substantial scale. The Economic Survey 2025–26 captures this shift bluntly: Indian students abroad increase from 6.85 lakh in 2016 to over 18 lakh in 2025.
In 2024, the imbalance becomes stark enough to resemble a verdict without explicit declaration: for every one international student coming to India, 28 Indians depart for education abroad. Here, cost isn't a footnote—it's the story's shadow figure: Outward remittances under "studies abroad" reach USD 3.4 billion in FY24.
The issue here isn't aspiration itself. It's how that aspiration is being organized and who profits from organizing it. When outbound mobility reaches this scale, it ceases to be a simple narrative of individual choice. It evolves into a structural response to domestic unpredictability: families hedge against an uneven system by purchasing certainty elsewhere, to whatever extent their financial capacity allows.
The survey's cautionary note essentially acknowledges how markets behave under pressure. A high-demand corridor invites cost inflation and aggressive commercialization, pushing access toward those who can afford premium payments, while encouraging over-borrowing—both financial and in terms of imported institutional templates—with regulatory spillovers inevitably following.
Simply stated, once anxiety becomes routinized, it transforms into a business model. Families bear the risk—first through tuition fees and educational debt, then through the quiet uncertainty about whether the purchased pathway will deliver what the domestic system could not guarantee.
The Education Questions the Budget Must Confront
A sober reading of the Economic Survey 2025–26 doesn't request applause. It demands accountability. It points toward a system where "choice" often masks compulsion. Families pay extra premiums for predictability. Adolescents slip away when the next grade becomes geographically farther, financially costlier, and socially riskier. Higher education is modernizing pathways on paper, but too frequently, the degree-to-job bridge remains structurally shaky.
Meanwhile, the outward student tide appears less like wanderlust and more like a calculated hedge against uncertainty at home.
The Budget can address this reality in two fundamental ways. It can add more layers—additional schemes, digital portals, refreshed slogans. Or it can repair the weak joints. It can fund the secondary transition infrastructure. It can build work-linked learning directly into degree frameworks. It can strengthen public educational capacity so certainty isn't something households must purchase separately.
That represents the genuine choice confronting policymakers: Patch the systemic leaks, or merely repaint the pipes.
