lndia boasts a storied legacy of educational excellence, harking back to the ancient insttutions of Nalanda and Taxila. Even today, it has one of the largest education ecosystems in the world, encompassing nearly 1.5 million schools, more than 40,000 colleges and over 1,000 universities, which together serve nearly 300 million students.

However, this quantitative advantage has not translated into qualitative success. For instance, while India boasts a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 108 per cent for primary education (check the accompanying graphic for why it exceeds 100 per cent), it plummets to around 79 per cent for secondary education. In contrast, China maintains a 100 per cent GER for primary education and 89 per cent for secondary education, reflecting better student retention. India’s GER for higher education is even more dismal, languishing at a dismal 27.1 per cent, a figure that is half of China’s and pales in comparison to the US’s impressive 88 per cent. Exemplary education systems like those in Finland and South Korea achieve nearly 100 per cent GER across all school levels.

If these statistics highlight a substantial gap in educational access, the quality of learning outcomes is even more alarming. The National Achievement Survey (NAS) by the ministry of education revealed that only 45 per cent of fifth-grade students could read at a second-grade level. Similarly, the 2023 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that one-fourth of rural students aged 14-18 could not fluently read a second-grade level text in their regional language.

In higher education, despite the expanding ecosystem, few institutions achieve respectable positions in global rankings. While universities in the US and UK dominate, Chinese institutions are rapidly climbing the ranks. This disparity is unsurprising, given India’s lag in research output, exacerbated by the country’s meagre investment of less than 1 per cent of GDP in research and development (R&D) within higher education. In contrast, the US allocates nearly 3 per cent of its GDP to R&D, and China invests over 2 per cent, significantly boosting its global research output and innovation. Although there has been an uptick in research publications from India, their impact and citation indices remain low.