Challenges in Implementing National Education Policy

Few documents have shaped the daily lives of Indian children as much as the National Policy on Education (NPE). First articulated in 1968, expanded in 1986, and revised through the Programme of Action in 1992, the policy promised universal access, equity, and quality for every learner. Decades later, the gap between what these policies promised on paper and what unfolds inside classrooms remains wide. Understanding why is essential for anyone studying public policy, because the NPE is a textbook case of how good intentions can stumble during implementation.

A quick look at the policy’s journey
The gap between policy formulation and implementation
Persistent educational disparities
The urban-rural divide
Gender disparities
Regional and socio-economic gaps
Inadequate data for policy-making
Shortage of trained teachers and infrastructure
The teacher vacancy question
Training and non-teaching burdens
Infrastructure deficits
The funding question underlying everything
What can be done

A quick look at the policy’s journey

The first National Policy on Education came in 1968 under the Indira Gandhi government, building on the recommendations of the Kothari Commission. It introduced the 10+2+3 structure and the three-language formula that most schools still follow. However, it struggled because there was no detailed programme of action, funds were scarce, and education was a State subject, which limited the Centre’s influence over how States actually implemented it.

The 1986 policy under Rajiv Gandhi was more ambitious, with a special emphasis on removing disparities and equalising opportunities for women, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. It was paired with a Programme of Action that assigned responsibilities and timelines, and was later revised in 1992 to strengthen decentralisation and community involvement. Schemes like Operation Blackboard, which aimed to give every primary school a minimum set of resources and at least two teachers, grew out of this framework. Yet the structural problems that dogged the 1968 policy never fully disappeared. They simply reappeared in new forms.

The gap between policy formulation and implementation

The single biggest issue with the NPE is the distance between drafting a policy and delivering it on the ground. Policy experts often describe this as implementation drift, where the final outcome differs significantly from the original intent because each administrative level interprets directives differently.

This is not a uniquely Indian problem, but it is a persistent one here. The RISE Programme has noted that the glaring gaps between high-quality policy design and low-quality implementation are widely recognised across many areas of Indian public policy, not just education. A beautifully written document does not automatically translate into trained teachers, working toilets, or children who can read at grade level.

India’s education system runs on cooperative federalism, where the Centre sets broad direction but States execute. This division creates room for inconsistency. A scheme that works in Kerala may falter in Bihar, not because the policy is flawed, but because administrative capacity, political will, and local conditions differ enormously.

Persistent educational disparities

Despite decades of policy attention, inequality remains one of the most stubborn challenges in Indian education. The NPE consistently named equity as a goal, but naming a problem is far easier than solving it.

The urban-rural divide

Where a child is born still strongly shapes the education they receive. Rural schools frequently lack the basic infrastructure that urban schools take for granted. According to UDISE+ 2023-24 data, only 43.5% of government schools have computers for teaching, compared with 70.9% in private unaided schools. Around 1.52 lakh schools lack electricity and roughly 67,000 lack functional toilets. These are not minor inconveniences. A school without electricity or sanitation directly affects whether children, especially girls, stay enrolled.

Gender disparities

Girls in rural areas face barriers that go beyond the school gate. Cultural norms that prioritise domestic responsibilities, concerns about safety, poor sanitation, and limited transport all push girls out of the classroom. The gender gap shows up clearly in literacy figures, where female literacy lags behind male literacy by a wide margin. Research published in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications found that the gender gap in household educational spending actually widens as children grow older, partly because families weigh the expected returns on educating a daughter differently from a son. Privatisation of schooling, the study notes, has deepened this bias rather than reducing it.

Regional and socio-economic gaps

The disparities are also geographic. States like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra report some of the highest dropout rates, while States such as Kerala consistently outperform the national average. The data show that States with higher per-student spending tend to record better learning outcomes and lower dropout rates, which means fiscal capacity and educational quality are tightly linked. Poorer States simply cannot invest at the same level, and the gap compounds over time.

Inadequate data for policy-making

Good policy depends on good data, and this is an area where the system has historically struggled. Without reliable information on dropout rates, learning outcomes, teacher qualifications, and infrastructure, policymakers risk addressing symptoms rather than root causes.

Two specific problems stand out. First, inconsistent reporting across States makes it hard to build an accurate national picture, since different States use varying collection methods and have incentives to either inflate enrolment to showcase success or underreport challenges. Second, the integrity of the data itself has been questioned. A study examining the so-called teacher shortage, published in the Journal of Development Studies, found that removing estimated fake student enrolments dramatically changed the calculated need for teachers, in some scenarios turning an apparent deficit into a surplus. When the underlying numbers are unreliable, even well-designed interventions can misfire.

There is some reason for optimism. Evidence suggests that technology-based independent testing has sharply reduced the extent to which learning data was being inflated, pointing to a path for more trustworthy measurement. The RISE analysis argues that investing in independent, ongoing measurement of learning outcomes in representative samples should be a foundational priority.

Shortage of trained teachers and infrastructure

Teachers are the heart of any education system, and this is where implementation challenges become most visible.

The teacher vacancy question

For years, the dominant narrative held that India faced a shortage of roughly one million teachers in public elementary schools, a figure repeated in the NEP 2020 itself. Recent government submissions confirm the problem persists. Drawing on UDISE+ and Project Approval Board records, reporting in 2025 found that around 3.57 lakh sanctioned teaching posts lay vacant across government schools that submitted data, with Uttar Pradesh alone accounting for nearly 1.94 lakh of them.

However, the picture is more nuanced than a simple national shortfall. Analysis of UDISE+ data by IndiaSpend shows that the teaching workforce actually crossed 10 million in 2024-25, while the national pupil-teacher ratio improved to about 24 students per teacher. The real issue is often deployment rather than absolute numbers. Many tiny rural schools carry surplus teachers, while specific districts and States face acute deficits. At the higher secondary level, States like Jharkhand recorded ratios as high as 47:1, far above the 30:1 limit set under policy norms.

Training and non-teaching burdens

Availability is only part of the story. Even where teachers exist, gaps in training and time persist. A meaningful share of pre-primary and primary teachers remain underqualified, and continuous professional development is uneven. On top of this, teachers are routinely pulled into non-academic duties such as managing mid-day meals, maintaining records, and handling administrative apps, despite a Supreme Court ruling against such roles. This diverts time away from actual teaching and reduces the individual attention each child receives.

Infrastructure deficits

The physical condition of schools shapes learning every day. Although over 90% of schools now have basic amenities, the remaining gaps are significant. Missing electricity, non-functional toilets, and the absence of disabled-friendly facilities continue to undermine the learning environment and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable students.

The funding question underlying everything

Many of these challenges trace back to one persistent shortfall: money. The Kothari Commission first recommended, and the 1986 policy reiterated, that India should spend at least 6% of national income on education. This target has been repeated across policy documents for over five decades, including in NEP 2020. Yet it has never been met.

Combined central and State spending on education is often estimated at around 4 to 4.6% of GDP, well short of the long-standing 6% goal. Because States account for nearly 85% of total education expenditure, the burden falls heavily on State budgets that vary widely in capacity. This fiscal gap directly constrains the ability to recruit teachers, build infrastructure, and run quality training programmes, which is why funding sits beneath nearly every other challenge discussed here.

What can be done

None of these challenges are insurmountable, but addressing them requires sustained attention rather than fresh policy documents. A few directions stand out. Investing in independent, reliable measurement of learning outcomes would give policymakers an accurate map to work from. Rigorous evaluation of which programmes actually improve learning, rather than assuming popular interventions work, would help direct scarce funds where they matter. Reforming teacher deployment so that staff are placed where they are genuinely needed could ease shortages without ballooning costs. And, critically, moving closer to the 6% spending target would give the system the resources it has long lacked.

The recurring lesson from the NPE’s journey is that policy formulation is the easy part. As one analysis put it, India consistently produces high-quality policy design alongside low-quality implementation. Closing that gap, through continuous monitoring, honest data, and political commitment, is the unfinished work of Indian education.

What do you think? If you had to choose between writing a better education policy and improving the implementation of the existing one, which would deliver more value for Indian students, and why? And given that States carry most of the financial burden, how should the Centre balance respecting federalism with ensuring every child receives a comparable quality of education?

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References

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Table of Contents

A quick look at the policy’s journey 🔗

The gap between policy formulation and implementation 🔗

Persistent educational disparities 🔗

The urban-rural divide 🔗

Gender disparities 🔗

Regional and socio-economic gaps 🔗

Inadequate data for policy-making 🔗

Shortage of trained teachers and infrastructure 🔗

The teacher vacancy question 🔗

Training and non-teaching burdens 🔗

Infrastructure deficits 🔗

The funding question underlying everything 🔗

What can be done 🔗