Research Project: Education in India (posted by Jane)

Intro

When we arrived in India we were bombarded with billboards for tutors and specialized schools. When I looked into why, I found lots of articles on the competitive exams for trying to get into the top Delhi colleges. The Shri Ram College of Commerce has 400 openings each year but there are 28,000 students applying. That is less than a two percent acceptance rate (Flintoff). The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is the main national curriculum that has exams in tenth and twelfth grades; however, to get into college students take the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). So many families will have specialized exam tutors. In India, 29% of students use tutors whereas only 15% of students use tutors in the United  States even though the GDP per capita is eight times greater in the United States. This may not seem like a problem but student suicide rates in India are are strikingly high, at 25.2 suicides per 100,000 deaths in 2023 verus 14.1 per 100,000 deaths in the United States (Shukla).

In 2020 Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, implemented the New Education Policy (NEP). This reform covers lots of issues in the education system from underfunded primary schools to revising the curriculum. Students in grade ten now can retake their board exams in March if they would like. This helps relieve stress from the main exam in February. Also, the government wants schools to use more formative assessments, which is a practice test in class before a summative assessment, to stop coaching culture. Finally the NEP wants each school or cluster of schools to have a counselor to help mitigate stress. I wanted to know if the National Education Policy 2020 helped relieve test anxiety in India.

Methodology & Thesis

For my project I started with online research and I read nine articles, I visited four different schools, finally I also interviewed six people. Ultimately, I found that NEP had good intentions when it came to anxiety and stress, but it benefited public schools not private schools where the students are more competitive academically.

Government Schools Perspective

The NEP has helped government schools, where over half the students in India are learning, in many ways but not how you might think. When I asked principals of public schools what they thought of the NEP reforms they immediately talked about how breakfast has been provided, more access to digital learning, and more activity based learning. At the high school Principal  Dusyntigi was very excited to show us the communal touch screen TV in the office where they would bring classes to watch lessons. At the public primary school, fifteen minutes outside of the heart of Udaipur, there was a sign that listed what the school provided. The number one thing was food, not education. For the 206 million children in poverty, food is much more important than education (Ramya). Mental health is not a concern for government schools. 

Students at government schools don't seem to be stressed out over exams but it is hard to make this generalization about India because the population is almost 1.5 billion people. Lets just say you can tell when you're walking anywhere in India that it has the most people in the world. The quality of schools and performances in exams vary greatly across the country. In one state or city the passing rate of exams in government schools may be 90% and in the countryside of another state the passing rate may be 60%. When we asked Principal Dusyntigi if the high school students were stressed for exams he said no. You could see the difference in motivation between government and private schools. Everybody, including the teacher, seemed much more tired at the government schools which were still underfunded even after the NEP allocated more of the GDP to schooling. This is because the students who go to government schools are generally lower income (Sareen). According to Ideas for India, lower income parents are less likely to believe their child is academically inclined and inadvertently demotivates the student (Duhon). In rural India 36% of adults are illiterate. It is also in rural India where 60% of students go to government schools. Illiteracy limits a parent's awareness of the importance of education (Mehta). This is why the NEP trying to help with mental health seems so futile when many schools are still trying to motivate students to be invested in their education. Students won't recognize the difference between formative and summative assessments if they're not in school at all.

A more important problem principals are facing is being understaffed and teacher retention. Dusyntigi, the principal of the secondary school explained that teachers are being used to conduct the 2030 census which may be the largest ever taken. Teachers are approximately 20% of the government workforce and one of the most organized. Archinigi, the headteacher of the primary school, said that for many classes they rely on interns since there is only one teacher for every 70 students. One important part of the NEP is that there will be counselors for schools to help students cope with stress. How is the government supposed to provide counselors if there aren't even enough teachers?        

Private Schools Perspective

There is a wide range of private schools when it comes to adapting to the new holistic curriculum. The first private school we visited was all for vocational training and moving away from a single score on tests, even showing us their comment based report card. However, the second private school, Saint Mary's, was much less enthusiastic about the change to holistic learning. When I interviewed the Headmistress she was more invested in the academic excellence of the school. The implementation of these reforms is also up to classroom teachers who according to ETEducation only 36% of feel confident with their ability to change to a competency based classroom (Kothapa) .This shows how implementing the NEP reforms is really up to the school. 

Another concern for private schools is that the government is not providing extra funding so that they can have counselors and vocational trainers. So schools have to use their own funds on paying a whole new set of faculty members. For lower-fee private schools that is not a viable option. If you were to take on three new staff members at a school it would cost you 15 Lakh to subsidise this endeavor you would need 30 new students assuming each of them is paying 50,000 rupees (salary) . For many schools that doesn't make sense financially. This was backed by the principal at Saint Mary's who did not know where to get vocational trainers.  

Parents perspective

For many upwardly mobile middle class families education and grades are everything. Getting into a good college means getting a "good" career like doctor, coder, and software development. But it is no easy task when you are competing with 1,347,820 students on the CUET to get into college. So parents hire exam coaches and tutors. It has become a whole other industry outside of just school. Our first tour guide in Delhi told us about how his son is in school until three p.m., studies and completes home work until five p.m., only to go to a tutoring session until eight p.m. If you do well though, your face will be on a poster for your school or tutoring company and your parents will be able to brag about you. All around India we saw billboards for schools and tutors listing the top scorers on the board exams with students' faces and grades. Nedeem, our guide, even showed us his four year olds report card where she was in the top 94th percentile for her class. One article on coaching culture put it quite darkly, "The few who make it become poster children; the rest disappear into the statistical abyss" (Mahasuar). School administrators are also aware of the pressure. The principal at Saint Mary's said that many of their students go off to specialized exam prep schools for eleventh and twelfth grade. This begs the question, how can the NEP change the whole culture around test taking when it is so ingrained in society?

The NEP reforms actually do acknowledge the problem of coaching culture and the stress it can cause. In clause 4.36 to 4.38 the NEP says that there should be formative and summative assessments, less material on exams to prevent memorization, and the ability to sit for exams. All of these seem like really good ideas. However, if you have small assessments and big exams it actually means more work for students since they have more work. I do think these are all good steps but parents won't just stop sending their kids to exam schools. There is no way to magically cure anxiety which is what makes this issue so hard to solve.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe that when it comes to anxiety the NEP has not made a huge difference. However, there are much bigger and pressing issues when it comes to Indian education. I think I have learned a little competitiveness is necessary to be able to have these world renowned colleges in India, but what does it matter if so few people get to have the chance for a higher education.

Citations

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Banerjee, Deepto. “National Education Policy (NEP) 2025: What’s Changed and What’s yet to Come?” The Times of India, Times of India, 30 Dec. 2024, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/national-education-policy-nep-2025-whats-changed-and-whats-yet-to-come/articleshow/116804466.cms?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 17 Dec. 2025.

Dr. Ramya .S, Dr. Ramya .S. “Poverty’s Impact on India’s Education.” Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, vol. 13, no. 3, Mar. 2025, pp. 39–44, https://doi.org/10.35629/9467-13033944. Accessed 5 May 2025.

Duhon, Madelin. “How Socioeconomic Status Shapes Parental Beliefs about Child Academic Achievement.” Ideasforindia.in, 21 Nov. 2023, www.ideasforindia.in/topics/human-development/how-socioeconomic-status-shapes-parental-beliefs-about-child-academic-achievement. Accessed 24 Dec. 2025.

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