Why India’s Schooling–Learning Gap Feels Personal (and What We Must Do About It)

When I read the latest assessments — including the UNESCO alarms that India still grapples with a wide gap between children being in school and actually learning — I felt two things at once: a tired resignation and a stubborn conviction that the diagnosis is fixable if we stop treating symptoms in isolation.

This is not abstract to me. Education has been my professional and personal obsession for decades: from tracking skilling drives, to arguing for remedial systems for those who fail board exams, to building the early concepts of assistive, AI-driven learning on platforms like My-Teacher.in. So when reports highlight persistent learning deficits, gendered digital gaps, and the deeper role of poverty, I read them as urgent prompts to re-align policy, community and modest technology in service of learning.

Poverty, social protection and learning: the missing context

UN analyses of poverty remind us that scarcity is not just an economic number — it reshapes children’s daily ability to learn. Lack of nutrition, unpredictable household income, and absent social protection translate directly into missed classes, limited attention, and high dropout risks. The UN’s Sustainable Development discussion on poverty and social protection provides the macro picture: without predictable supports, education outcomes remain fragile Goal 1: End poverty.

So when UNESCO points to India’s schooling–learning gap, we must read it alongside poverty’s logic: being in school is necessary but not sufficient; children living in precarious households often cannot convert attendance into learning unless the system compensates for that precarity.

Girls, dropouts and the cultural fault-lines

Some of the most painful statistics I’ve seen are about girls in rural and marginalized communities. Research from elsewhere in the Global South — for instance the study on girl-child dropout drivers in OR Tambo district — shows how adolescent pregnancy, entrenched cultural norms, poverty and weak policy implementation intertwine to deny girls continuity in schooling Addressing the multifaceted drivers of girl-child school dropout.

India shows similar patterns: gender gaps in digital skills and learning readiness amplify exclusion. Unless our interventions are gender-responsive and community-led, they risk leaving those most vulnerable even further behind.

Early foundations matter — and we are unevenly investing in them

The single biggest strategic mistake we still make is under-investing in the early years. Neuroscience and global ECCE reports tell us that the preschool and early-primary window is the highest-return moment to build numeracy, spatial reasoning and curiosity. NGOs and programs — like Smile Foundation’s work on early STEM exposure — demonstrate how early, hands-on experiences turn curiosity into durable learning habits How Early Should STEM Exposure Begin?.

But here’s the hard truth: NEP 2020’s ambitions for foundational learning are excellent on paper; implementation in many anganwadis and government schools remains uneven. Many classrooms still lack trained teachers, manipulatives, or even simple science corners. Where private urban schools set up tinkering labs, neighboring government schools may struggle to get clean drinking water.

What a practical, integrated response looks like

I have a few pragmatic priorities that marry policy realities with the lived problems I see in villages and municipal wards:

• Strengthen early childhood care and education (ECCE) with measurable, low-cost interventions: local play-based STEM, spatial-reasoning games, teacher coaching, and community monitoring. (See the practical program examples from Smile Foundation above.) How Early Should STEM Exposure Begin?

• Build remedial systems that keep learners in school after failure: accelerated learning tracks, modular vocational entry points, and guaranteed opportunities to re-enter mainstream schooling — the very initiatives I’ve argued for when I wrote about preventing dropouts after failed board exams Drive in works to check dropout rate among those failing board exams.

• Target girls and disadvantaged children with gender-responsive packages: scholarships, community dialogues to change harmful norms, and safe transport or hostel options for adolescents at risk of dropout. The OR Tambo study’s intersectoral recommendations feel applicable here: education reform alone cannot fix culturally-rooted dropout drivers Addressing the multifaceted drivers of girl-child school dropout.

• Expand basic social protection to protect learning: predictable cash transfers, midday meals, and health camps stabilize a child’s ability to attend and learn (the UN makes a compelling case for social protection as poverty mitigation) Goal 1: End poverty.

• Equip classrooms for low-cost STEM and diagnostics: cheap manipulatives, mobile tinkering kits, and a focus on teacher training rather than gadgetry alone. NGOs have scalable models for this; states must adopt them.

• Track learning with data, not just inputs: formative assessments, regular learning-status dashboards, and local accountability to ensure effort translates into measurable skill gains (not just attendance statistics).

• Use low-cost, task-specific AI to multiply teacher effort: this is not a panacea, but carefully designed assistive tech can generate targeted practice, mock tests and remedial content at scale. My long-standing work on AI-enabled mock tests and adaptive feedback (through My-Teacher.in) is a prototype of what low-cost, focused AI can do — amplify teacher reach and personalize practice for struggling learners.

Why I feel validated — and why urgency matters

Looking back at my earlier writing — on digital gender gaps, on the need for remedial tracks for board failures, and on the potential for AI to assist learning — I see continuity. Years ago I warned that a child’s ZIP code, gender and family resources would shape their education outcome; today’s reports confirm it.

That continuity is a strange comfort. It validates the insights I voiced earlier and, frankly, it sharpens my impatience: we have known the problems and many of the solutions for a long time. Implementation is the bottleneck.

If anything, the present moment is an opportunity. With global attention on SDGs and with practical NGO models, we can: bundle ECCE investments, remedial tracks, gender-targeted outreach and low-cost assistive technologies into coherent state-level campaigns. They do not require perfect solutions — just sustained, accountable effort.

A final, personal note

I have written before about education’s structural gaps — about digital inequities Infra, Gender inequality in digital literacy, about preventing dropouts after failed exams Drive in works to check dropout rate among those failing board exams, and about how practical, low-cost AI and assistive tech can support learning at scale Optimised Learning. These are not disparate notes — they are a single argument repeated: the gap between schooling and learning is solvable if we combine social protection, gender-responsive policy, teacher capacity, and sensible technology.

I say this not to scold but to insist: the choices we make now — the way we spend budgets, train teachers, and prioritize early years — will determine whether millions move from attending school to truly learning in school. Reports like UNESCO’s should prod us out of policy inertia. They should also make us practical and impatient.

I remain convinced that with modest re-prioritization and dogged implementation, we can turn these reports from warnings into a blueprint for measurable progress.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh