Towards Universal Secondary Education: Goals and Challenges

India has made remarkable strides in elementary education over the past two decades. Millions of children who would have otherwise remained outside the school system now complete their primary years. But this very success has created a new, urgent pressure – what happens next? As more children finish elementary school, the demand for quality secondary education has grown faster than the system has been able to respond. Expanding secondary education is no longer just a policy aspiration; it is a social and economic necessity for a country aiming to harness its demographic dividend.

Why secondary education can no longer wait 🔗

For many years, India’s educational priorities were rightly focused on getting children into school at the primary level. Initiatives like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan made elementary education nearly universal. But as data from UDISEPlus shows, the national Gross Enrolment Ratio at the secondary level (Classes IX-X) stands at around 79%, compared to figures that exceed 100% at the primary level. The gap is stark. A large portion of students who complete Class VIII simply do not transition into secondary school – not because they don’t want to, but because the infrastructure, access, and support structures often don’t exist where they live.

The consequences extend well beyond classrooms. Research drawing on NSSO and UGC data indicates that rural students are 24% less likely to complete secondary education than their urban peers, and rural youth face a 30% higher dropout rate. Without a secondary certificate, young people – especially girls – find themselves locked out of skilled employment, higher education, and basic civic participation. Expanding secondary education is, in effect, a prerequisite for equity.

The four guiding principles behind expansion 🔗

Any serious effort to expand secondary education must be built on a coherent framework. India’s Ministry of Education has articulated four core principles that guide this process:

Access means ensuring a secondary school is available within a reasonable distance of every habitation, with no discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, caste, or socioeconomic background. Equity goes a step further – it means actively removing the gender, disability, and socioeconomic barriers that prevent marginalised children from enrolling and staying enrolled. Relevance addresses the quality and usefulness of what is taught; a curriculum that doesn’t connect to students’ lives or the job market will always struggle to retain learners. And finally, curriculum and structural reform requires rethinking how secondary education is organised – moving away from rote learning toward competency-based, flexible, and vocationally integrated learning pathways.

These principles are not abstract ideals. They have shaped the design of India’s flagship secondary education programmes and continue to inform current policy under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which sets a target of 100% Gross Enrolment Ratio across all school levels by 2030.

RMSA: India’s landmark intervention in secondary schooling 🔗

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), launched in March 2009, was the Government of India’s first large-scale, centrally sponsored programme dedicated exclusively to secondary education. Before RMSA, almost every major government initiative in school education – including Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – focused on the elementary level. Secondary schooling was largely left to individual states, with uneven results.

What RMSA set out to achieve 🔗

RMSA had a clear and ambitious mandate. It aimed to raise the Gross Enrolment Ratio for Classes IX and X from 52% in 2005-06 to 75% within five years, while simultaneously improving the quality of education in every government secondary school. The programme specifically targeted children aged 14 to 18, ensuring that a secondary school would be accessible within a 5 km radius of any habitation. Universal access to secondary education was set as the target by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan in 2017.

Equity was at the heart of RMSA’s design. The programme identified specific focus groups – Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe children, girls from minority communities, children from economically weaker sections, and students with disabilities – and built dedicated strategies to bring them into the secondary school system. It used indicators like the Gender Parity Index, Net Enrolment Ratio, and dropout rates to track progress and guide planning at the district level.

What RMSA actually delivered 🔗

On the infrastructure side, RMSA produced measurable results. According to a government press release, since its inception the programme sanctioned the establishment of 9,636 new secondary schools and the strengthening of 34,300 existing government secondary schools. Girls’ hostels were set up in educationally backward blocks to improve retention of girl students in remote areas. The Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) scheme was also brought under RMSA’s umbrella, ensuring that students with disabilities completing elementary education could access four years of secondary schooling in an inclusive environment.

Teacher training received significant attention under RMSA. In-service programmes were developed to improve subject-specific pedagogy, with a particular focus on mathematics and science. ICT integration – though its implementation remained uneven – was identified as a key component to enrich the secondary curriculum and reach students in remote areas. The programme also introduced vocational education as an option, aiming to divert a portion of students toward skills-based courses that would improve their employability.

RMSA’s evolution into Samagra Shiksha 🔗

In 2018, RMSA was merged with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education to form the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan – a unified, integrated scheme covering pre-school through Class XII. This merger was designed to treat school education as a single, unbroken continuum rather than a set of disconnected stages. Samagra Shiksha is now aligned with both the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 and NEP 2020, reinforcing India’s commitment to inclusive and equitable quality education at the secondary level and beyond. The scheme has been extended through 2025-26.

Challenges standing in the way of universal secondary education 🔗

Despite the progress made under RMSA and its successor programmes, significant obstacles remain. These challenges are structural, financial, and social – and they interact with each other in ways that make simple solutions inadequate.

Funding and resource allocation 🔗

Public investment in secondary education remains insufficient relative to the scale of the task. An analysis by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) of the Union Budget 2026-27 notes that Samagra Shiksha has seen only incremental budget increases, and both Samagra Shiksha and the midday meal scheme are now being fully financed through education cesses rather than core budgetary allocations. This reliance on earmarked funds limits flexibility in responding to ground-level needs. Meanwhile, model schools like Kendriya Vidyalayas and PM SHRI schools receive disproportionately higher allocations, even as general government schools – which enrol around 60% of all students – continue to be under-resourced.

Teacher shortages and training gaps 🔗

Teacher availability is one of the most critical bottlenecks in secondary education expansion. Government secondary schools in rural and remote areas consistently struggle to attract and retain qualified teachers. Subject-specific shortages – particularly in science and mathematics – are acute. Poor teacher training, large pupil-to-teacher ratios, and outdated instructional methods contribute to disengaged students and weak learning outcomes, ultimately driving dropout. Even where teachers are present, their capacity to use modern pedagogical approaches and ICT tools remains limited without sustained professional development support.

The urban-rural divide 🔗

Perhaps the most stubborn challenge is the geographic inequality in educational opportunity. Data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023 shows that the education Gini index, a measure of inequality, remains at 46.6% nationally, with states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh recording educational inequality above 50%. Rural schools frequently lack basic infrastructure – functioning toilets, libraries, electricity, and reliable internet connectivity. ASER 2023 documented stark regional learning disparities, with rural and government school students consistently performing below their urban and private school counterparts. These gaps are not just academic – they translate into lifelong disadvantages in employment and social mobility.

Gender and social barriers 🔗

Girls in rural areas continue to face a distinct set of challenges: early marriage, domestic responsibilities, distance to school, inadequate sanitation facilities, and safety concerns all contribute to lower retention at the secondary level. At the secondary level, the dropout rate stands at 15% – sharply higher than at the primary level – and gender and socioeconomic factors drive a significant portion of these exits. Programmes like Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) residential schools have shown promise in retaining girls from marginalised communities, but their reach remains limited relative to need.

The road ahead: what needs to change 🔗

Achieving universal secondary education in India requires more than building schools. The Ministry of Education’s own framework acknowledges that fundamental reforms are needed across curriculum design, pedagogical practices, teacher development, infrastructure, and governance. The current Gross Enrolment Ratio at the secondary stage stands at only 66.5%, a significant gap from the 100% target set for 2030 under NEP 2020. Closing this gap requires targeted investment in the states and districts that are furthest behind, a serious push on teacher recruitment and continuous professional development, and a curriculum that offers students – especially those in rural areas – pathways that are genuinely relevant to their futures.

The integration of vocational education into secondary schooling, stronger community involvement, better use of digital learning platforms, and financial incentives like scholarships and free transport for economically vulnerable students are among the strategies that have shown results where properly implemented. What is clear is that the expansion of secondary education cannot be treated as a residual concern after elementary education is addressed – it must be a national priority in its own right.

What do you think? With secondary dropout rates remaining high despite years of policy attention, what do you see as the single most critical factor – teacher availability, infrastructure, curriculum relevance, or economic support for families – that needs to be addressed first? And how can India ensure that the expansion of secondary school access translates into genuine learning outcomes, not just enrollment numbers?

References

1. https://educationforallinindia.com/status-of-school-education-in-india-progress-challenges-and-the-road-to-universal-education-by-2030/
2. https://tijer.org/tijer/papers/TIJERD001045.pdf
3. https://www.education.gov.in/en/rmsa_access
4. https://www.education.gov.in/en/nep/re-envisioning-secondary-education
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Madhyamik_Shiksha_Abhiyan
6. https://salem.nic.in/departments/school-education-department/rmsa-rashtriya-madhyamik-shiksha-abhiyan/
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=95472&reg=3&lang=2
8. https://dsel.education.gov.in/en/scheme/samagra-shiksha
9. https://csep.org/blog/classrooms-to-careers-what-the-union-budget-2026-27-gets-right-and-misses/
10. https://scroll.in/article/1080637/what-underpins-indias-deep-education-inequality
11. https://www.orfonline.org/research/tracking-regional-disparities-in-learning-outcomes