1. Context: Scale, School Design, and the Quality Challenge
A recent comparative observation of school systems in China and India highlights how scale and holistic design can shape education quality. Chinese schools typically serve much larger student populations, enabling integrated infrastructure, subject-specialist teachers, and diverse learning facilities.
In contrast, India’s school system prioritised access and enrolment expansion over decades, successfully universalising elementary education. However, this expansion produced a highly fragmented network of small schools with limited capacity to deliver holistic and specialised learning.
This contrast is important for governance because education outcomes increasingly depend not just on enrolment, but on institutional capacity to deliver quality, especially at middle and secondary levels.
If India does not address fragmentation, learning outcomes and employability may stagnate despite near-universal access.
“The test of a good education system is not how many students it enrols, but how well it equips them for life.”
— OECD, Education at a Glance
The core logic is that scale enables quality: without viable school size, investments in teachers, labs, and co-curriculars remain structurally constrained.
2. Issue: Fragmentation of India’s School Network
India’s school network remains highly dispersed, with a large number of very small schools. According to UDISE 2024–25, about 5.6 lakh schools enrol fewer than 50 students, and over 1 lakh single-teacher schools cater to 33 lakh students, necessitating multi-grade teaching.
At higher levels, the challenge intensifies. Around 40% of government secondary schools have fewer than 100 students across Classes 9–12, making subject specialisation and laboratory infrastructure difficult to sustain.
This fragmentation limits the delivery of science education, vocational training, digital literacy, and counselling—key elements envisioned under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Key indicators (UDISE 2024–25):
- Schools with functional ICT labs: 19%
- Schools with integrated science labs: 51%
- Schools offering higher secondary classes: 10%
- Schools providing vocational education: 6%
The governance challenge is structural: without minimum enrolment thresholds, quality reforms cannot scale equitably.
3. Comparative Insight: China’s Use of Scale for Quality
China demonstrates how scale can be leveraged to strengthen quality. A typical Class 1–9 school serves ~1,200 students, while K–12 schools average ~2,800 students. Despite being three times India’s size, China operates with nearly one-third the number of schools.
This consolidation enables specialised subject teachers, counselling services, sports infrastructure, ICT labs, and vocational facilities within a single campus—features aligned with holistic education goals.
The comparison is relevant not for replication, but for extracting design principles that reconcile access with quality.
The comparative logic is that consolidation, when paired with planning and transport, converts demographic scale into educational advantage.
4. State-Level Experiments in School Consolidation
Several Indian States have begun experimenting with larger, better-resourced school models. Rajasthan’s Adarsh Schools upgrade one government school per Gram Panchayat with phased improvements in infrastructure and staffing.
Uttar Pradesh has approved Model Composite Schools (Classes 1–12) in every district with smart classrooms and connectivity. Madhya Pradesh, under NITI Aayog’s SATH-E, consolidated 36,000 under-enrolled schools, and launched CM RISE (Maharishi Sandipani) Schools—one for every 25–30 villages.
Other States such as Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Gujarat are also pursuing consolidation and composite models.
These experiments indicate that consolidation can be a quality reform, not merely an efficiency exercise, if designed with equity safeguards.
5. Composite and Consolidated Schools: Equity and Learning Outcomes
Composite schools are intended to provide one teacher per class, subject specialists, and viable learning infrastructure. Their objective is to create real learning environments rather than administratively convenient units.
Equity concerns are addressed through decentralised planning and transport support, ensuring that consolidation does not reduce access for rural or marginalised students. Community engagement and teacher participation are critical for smooth transitions.
Ignoring these dimensions risks resistance, disruption, and short-term learning loss, as seen in poorly managed school mergers.
“Equity in education is not about equal schools, but about equal learning opportunities.”
— UNESCO, Global Education Monitoring Report
The policy logic is that consolidation succeeds only when access, trust, and learning quality are simultaneously protected.
6. Directional Goals for School Education by 2035
Two long-term goals emerge for universal, high-quality school education. First, transitioning towards one K–8 integrated school per Gram Panchayat, serving around 300 students, could educate nearly 8.1 crore children while ensuring minimum viable size for quality inputs.
Second, India must address transition losses beyond middle school. Currently, only 87% of students move from middle to secondary, and around 75% from secondary to higher secondary. Fragmented, under-resourced secondary schools contribute to this drop-off.
By 2035, India is projected to have nearly 8 crore students in Classes 9–12, enabling large, composite secondary schools with academic, vocational, and career pathways.
The developmental logic is that scale at secondary level is essential to move beyond exam-centric schooling to skill and career readiness.
7. Enablers for Achieving the Transition
Achieving these goals requires State-specific road maps aligned to geography, population density, and existing infrastructure. Teacher deployment ensuring one teacher per class and subject specialists is a critical lever.
Decentralised planning allows local adaptation, while transport solutions—using mixed models—ensure physical access. Financing can be supported through Samagra Shiksha, complemented by State resources and convergence with other schemes.
Failure to align planning, funding, and implementation could entrench inequalities rather than resolve them.
“Education systems improve when governance, financing, and delivery move together.”
— World Bank, World Development Report
The implementation logic is coherence: fragmented reforms cannot overcome fragmented school systems.
Conclusion
India’s next phase of education reform must move from access-centric expansion to quality-centric consolidation. Learning from global comparisons and domestic experiments, larger and better-resourced schools—designed with equity safeguards—can deliver the holistic education envisioned under NEP 2020. By aligning scale, governance, and community trust, India can ensure that universal schooling also becomes universally meaningful by 2035.
