Why India’s education system gets poor marks from millions of students

{"text":[[{"start":7.6,"text":"After an aspiring medic was refused entry to a national exam because she arrived a few minutes late, her despairing father charged the closed metal gates with his head and collapsed to the ground, his sobbing child beside him."}],[{"start":21.299999999999997,"text":"The scene in Vidisha, in Madhya Pradesh state, was a dramatic reminder of how much was at stake for more than 2mn students who had to resit the exam last month after leaks of test papers marred a first effort. "}],[{"start":34.949999999999996,"text":"As many as 20 students killed themselves before the retest, unable to cope with the pressure of a second exam, according to news reports."}],[{"start":43.949999999999996,"text":"To critics, the brutal testing process, on which millions of Indians pin their hopes of escaping poverty, typifies the ills of the world’s biggest education system: a tiny minority scrabble for a decent university education while the majority are weeded out and condemned to low-paying jobs."}],[{"start":61.25,"text":"“India’s education system is best described as the ‘best of worlds and worst of worlds’,” said Yamini Aiyar, a public policy scholar and former head of the CPR think-tank. “We’ve produced Indians educated in India leading Silicon Valley companies and Indian scientists able to reach Mars, yet 50 per cent of [10- to 11-year-olds] can barely read a Standard 2 test [for 7- to 8-year-olds].”"}],[{"start":87.1,"text":"Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a big shake-up of education policy in 2020 as a cornerstone of his plan to transform India into a developed nation by 2047. It promises more flexible learning, smart classrooms and better vocational training. But progress has been uneven."}],[{"start":104.85,"text":"Just 130,000 of the more than 2mn who retook the exam last month will win a university place to study medicine. Other entrance exams are even more competitive. Up to 1mn compete in the civil services exam, which is also the sole entry route for India’s diplomatic service. A tiny fraction — around 25-40 candidates — become diplomats each year."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":127.44999999999999,"text":"The Indian Railways entrance exam is almost as gruelling. Some 18.7mn people applied for a rail job in 2024-25 and 43,781 were hired — around two in every 1,000. Even for clerk-level positions, successful candidates must demonstrate trigonometry skills and encyclopaedic general knowledge."}],[{"start":150.7,"text":"A lucky few school leavers secure a good degree and a fast track to an international career. Indian talent is in high demand and Indian executives lead major global companies ranging from Procter & Gamble to Chanel. The chief executives of Alphabet and Microsoft, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, are both products of India’s education system, having completed secondary school and a first degree in the subcontinent before doing postgraduate studies in the US."}],[{"start":180.35,"text":"But for the vast majority, disappointment awaits. Just under a third of the 1.5bn population pursue some form of higher education but only 1 to 2 per cent of applicants find a place in the top tier of India’s more than 1,160 universities and 45,000 colleges."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":199.2,"text":"India’s exam system, says Professor Anita Rampal, former dean of education at Delhi university, “is actually a process of throwing out and sorting children and then leaving them to their own resources”."}],[{"start":212.45,"text":"The common university entrance test, she adds, “is a multiple-choice question test [that] is only testing your speed and your drill and the facility you have with doing those kinds of questions”."}],[{"start":223.95,"text":"Lower down India’s 1.47mn schools, academic standards remain uneven. According to a report by the government think-tank Niti Aayog, “a sizeable share of children continue to struggle with basic reading fluency” by the age of 13. Only 46 per cent can solve a basic division problem at the same age, a proportion that has barely improved in a decade. More than 20 per cent of children do not make it to secondary school at all."}],[{"start":252.85,"text":"Private schools have been expanding and almost a quarter of Indian children are schooled outside the state sector, many in low-fee enterprises that lack proper supervision, the report adds. More than a third of 11-year-olds in low-fee private schools were unable to read a text normally set for an eight-year-old."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":272.55,"text":"International comparisons are difficult because New Delhi pulled out of the standardised Pisa tests in 2009 after it came 72nd out of 73 nations, beating only Kyrgyzstan. "}],[{"start":284.75,"text":"Education has shot up India’s political agenda after an upstart online youth movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, tried to exploit leaks of the medical exam and alleged marking irregularities to call for the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan."}],[{"start":300.8,"text":"Pradhan has refused to go and told the FT that the government had treated the concerns that emerged “with utmost seriousness and sensitivity”."}],[{"start":310,"text":"“Ensuring a transparent, credible, and secure examination system remains our unwavering commitment to students,” he said in written answers."}],[{"start":317.1,"text":"Hoping to capitalise on the discontent, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Congress party, launched a major campaign on education last month. He invited students to contribute ideas to improve what he called a “rejection system”, not an education system, saying young people were subjected to too much pain and stress."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":337.35,"text":"Aiyar, the public policy scholar, says India erred by not investing enough in its universities as it pursued economic growth in high-skilled sectors such as IT."}],[{"start":347.1,"text":"“Over time, excessive bureaucratisation undermined innovation but we also began defunding our universities,” she said. “We never saw higher education as integral to our economic growth model. It was a colossal mistake.”"}],[{"start":361.20000000000005,"text":"Rampal said she had spoken to 13-year-old students at the cramming centres who described their experiences. “Their parents are farmers [who] sold land to get them into a residential place because they are far from their homes,” she said. “They are told in those prison traps, which is what some of them are, not to make friends because everyone is a competitor.”"}],[{"start":382.30000000000007,"text":"The opposition Congress party’s student leader Vinod Jakhar says that “a coaching mafia” operates in India’s cramming centres. “The students go there with a do-or-die attitude and do their best. But their hopes are shattered when paper leaks occur. A girl writes in her suicide letter that I have ruined my parents. This tells you what kind of pressure these kids feel.”"}],[{"start":406.50000000000006,"text":"Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh and data visualisation by Haohsiang Ko"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":411.50000000000006,"text":"The Indian professional’s must-read on business and policy in the world’s fastest-growing big economy. Sign up for the newsletter here"}],[{"start":426.1500000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783926635_5660.mp3"}