Cooperative Federalism, Unbundling & Standards should be key features of Education Reforms
Every major examination scandal in India follows an increasingly familiar script. A question paper is compromised, students erupt in protest, governments promise tougher laws, committees are constituted, arrests are announced, and fresh assurances are offered that the system has been fixed. Yet within months, another examination is questioned, another recruitment process is delayed, and another generation of students is left wondering whether merit alone is enough. India has become remarkably efficient at responding to examination crises. It has been far less successful at redesigning the institutions that produce them.
The recent upheaval surrounding national entrance examinations has once again brought education to the centre of public debate. The resignation of the Union Education Minister marks an important moment of political accountability, but it should not become the end of the conversation. Political accountability addresses responsibility for a crisis; it does not, by itself, repair the institutional architecture that allowed the crisis to emerge. If the national response once again culminates in another committee, another law or another set of criminal penalties, India risks treating symptoms while leaving the underlying design unchanged.
This is particularly important because the examination crisis is only one manifestation of a much broader governance challenge. Over the past decade, India has steadily centralised educational regulation, expanded the role of national entrance examinations and concentrated operational responsibilities in a handful of institutions. The objective- creating uniform standards and ensuring nationwide meritwas entirely legitimate. But centralisation also created a single point of failure. When one national examination falters, millions of students across every state bear the consequences simultaneously. The lesson, therefore, is not that India needs weaker national standards. It is that national standards must be separated from operational control.
The question before policymakers is therefore much larger than whether the next examination should be conducted more securely. It is whether India’s education system should continue to rely upon highly centralised institutions, or whether it should evolve towards a model that combines strong national standards with greater autonomy for states, universities and schools. This distinction is critical. The future of Indian education will not be determined merely by preventing the next paper leak. It will be determined by whether we build institutions that are resilient enough to prevent the next systemic failure.
The instinctive response to every examination crisis in India has been to tighten penalties, create new oversight mechanisms and appoint expert committees. There is logic to this approach. Large-scale public examinations require credibility, and when that credibility is undermined, governments must reassure students that corrective action is underway. Yet there is an important distinction between crisis management and institutional reform. One restores confidence in the short term; the other reduces the likelihood of the next crisis.
The experience of the past few years illustrates this difference. Following the controversy surrounding NEET-UG 2024, the Union Government constituted a High-Level Committee under the chairmanship of former ISRO Chairman Dr. K. Radhakrishnan to examine the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA). The Committee submitted 101 recommendations covering governance reforms, examination security, technological safeguards, data management, transparency and institutional capacity. The breadth of those recommendations itself was revealing. It suggested that the challenge extended well beyond isolated paper leaks or individual acts of malpractice; it pointed towards weaknesses in governance, technology, accountability and institutional design.
The announcement of another high-level committee in the aftermath of the latest examination crisis therefore raises a larger policy question. The issue is not whether expert committees are useful. They are. The real question is whether India has become too dependent on committees as a substitute for structural reform. Every committee diagnoses a problem, but few fundamentally alter the architecture within which that problem repeatedly emerges. Public confidence is strengthened not merely by appointing distinguished experts but by demonstrating how institutional learning translates into durable change.
This tendency towards incremental responses is visible beyond examination reform. Parliament has enacted stronger anti-paper leak legislation. Investigative agencies have intensified enforcement. States have tightened security protocols. These are necessary measures, and no serious reform agenda can ignore the importance of deterrence. However, criminal law is designed to punish wrongdoing after it occurs. It is not, by itself, a substitute for designing institutions in which wrongdoing becomes significantly more difficult.
The larger question is whether India has inadvertently concentrated too much operational responsibility within a few national institutions. When a single examination determines the future of millions of students, and when that examination is administered through a highly centralised institutional framework, any administrative failure assumes national proportions. This is not simply a problem of examination security; it is a problem of system architecture. A resilient education system should minimise single points of failure, distribute operational responsibilities appropriately, and create multiple layers of institutional accountability.
The debate, therefore, should move beyond whether another committee should be constituted or another law enacted. The more fundamental challenge is to redesign the governance framework itself. India requires institutions that learn continuously rather than merely responding episodically, institutions that separate standard-setting from implementation, and institutions that distribute responsibility without diluting accountability. The objective should not be to build a stronger bureaucracy around examinations, but to build a stronger education system in which examination integrity becomes one consequence of better institutional design rather than the sole measure of success.
This brings us to the central policy question. If excessive operational centralisation creates systemic risk, what should replace it? The answer is neither complete centralisation nor complete decentralisation. India’s size, diversity and constitutional structure demand something more sophisticated: a model of cooperative federalism in which the Union defines national standards, finances educational equity and independently monitors outcomes, while states, universities and local institutions enjoy far greater autonomy over implementation.
This distinction between standard-setting and service delivery is not merely administrative; it is the defining characteristic of successful education systems across many federal democracies. Their experience demonstrates that governments do not have to choose between national coherence and local autonomy. The most resilient systems achieve both by clearly separating who sets standards from who delivers education.
Decentralisation is the key: More Power to States.
Canada offers perhaps the clearest example. Despite consistently ranking among the world’s highest-performing education systems in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Canada has no federal ministry of education. Education is administered entirely by the provinces, reflecting the country’s constitutional commitment to provincial autonomy. National coordination is achieved through the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), an intergovernmental body that facilitates collaboration on curriculum benchmarking, student mobility, international assessments and mutual recognition of qualifications. Crucially, CMEC exercises persuasion rather than command; provinces cooperate because coordination serves their collective interest, not because they are legally directed to do so. The result is a system that combines local responsiveness with consistently high educational outcomes.
Germany follows a remarkably similar philosophy. Education is regarded as the constitutional responsibility of the sixteen Länder, each of which designs curricula, recruits teachers, administers schools and finances much of its education system. At the national level, the Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK)—the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs—ensures comparability of qualifications, establishes common educational standards and represents Germany internationally on education matters. Once again, the emphasis is not on central administration but on coordination, benchmarking and mutual accountability. Diversity across states is treated not as a weakness but as an opportunity for experimentation, while nationally agreed standards preserve educational mobility across the federation.
Australia provides another instructive example. While education remains largely the responsibility of individual states and territories, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) develops national curriculum frameworks, administers the National Assessment Program and publishes transparent school performance data through the My School platform. States remain responsible for implementation, teacher recruitment and school administration, yet nationally comparable data allows governments and citizens alike to identify strengths, weaknesses and inequities. Transparency becomes a tool of accountability without requiring operational centralisation.
Even in the United States, where debates over education policy are often politically contentious, operational responsibility overwhelmingly rests with states and local school districts. The federal Department of Education influences policy primarily through targeted funding, civil rights enforcement, research and data collection rather than direct management of schools or admissions. National objectives coexist with substantial local discretion.
India’s constitutional, linguistic and social diversity is undoubtedly more complex than any of these examples, and no international model can simply be transplanted into Indian conditions. Yet they converge on one important principle: successful federations distinguish between governing education and guaranteeing educational standards. Governments at the centre define broad goals, ensure equity across regions, finance national priorities and measure outcomes. Sub-national governments and educational institutions determine how those goals are achieved.
India, by contrast, has increasingly blurred these functions. National institutions today often combine policymaking, implementation, regulation, examination administration and oversight within overlapping bureaucratic structures. This concentration of functions creates institutional overload and, more importantly, converts operational failures into national crises. When a centrally administered examination is compromised, millions of students across every state bear the consequences simultaneously. A system intended to create uniformity inadvertently creates systemic vulnerability.
The policy lesson is therefore not that the Union should withdraw from education. On the contrary, India’s regional disparities make a strong national role indispensable. The Union Government alone possesses the fiscal capacity to equalise educational opportunities across states, finance research universities, support aspirational districts and establish national benchmarks for learning outcomes. It should continue to perform these functions—and perform them more effectively. What requires reconsideration is not the presence of the Union, but the nature of its involvement.
A mature federal education system should therefore assign distinct responsibilities to different levels of government. The Union should establish standards, finance equity, publish transparent performance indicators and independently audit educational outcomes. States should design implementation strategies, administer schools, recruit teachers and adapt policies to local conditions. Universities should enjoy greater academic and administrative autonomy within nationally recognised quality frameworks. Schools and municipalities should receive greater flexibility over pedagogy and innovation while remaining accountable for measurable learning outcomes. Such a model would preserve national cohesion without sacrificing institutional diversity.
The objective, therefore, is not decentralisation for its own sake. It is the creation of a governance architecture in which responsibility, authority and accountability are aligned. Strong national standards need not imply centralised administration, just as greater state autonomy need not come at the cost of educational quality. The real challenge is to design institutions that combine both.
Unbundling, Standard-Setting and Reforming Examinations
The debate on education reform in India has often been framed as a choice between centralisation and decentralisation. That is a false binary. The real challenge is not deciding who controls education; it is deciding which institution should perform which function. Mature public policy is built on the principle that institutions perform best when their mandates are clear, limited and accountable. India’s education system has gradually moved in the opposite direction. Policymaking, financing, regulation, examination, implementation and accountability are frequently concentrated within overlapping bureaucratic structures, creating duplication, diffusion of responsibility and institutional overload.
The first principle of reform, therefore, should be functional unbundling.
The Union Government should remain the principal financier of educational equity and national priorities. A country as diverse as India cannot leave resource allocation entirely to states with vastly different fiscal capacities. National investments in research universities, institutions of national importance, aspirational districts, digital public infrastructure and scholarships for disadvantaged students require the fiscal strength that only the Union possesses. Yet financing should increasingly reward measurable improvements in learning outcomes, infrastructure, teacher availability and inclusion, rather than simply expanding centrally designed schemes. States should enjoy greater flexibility in achieving nationally agreed outcomes instead of implementing uniform programmes with limited room for local innovation.
The second function is standard-setting, which should be institutionally separated from administration. India requires nationally comparable learning benchmarks, curriculum frameworks, qualification recognition and quality assurance, but these responsibilities need not remain fragmented across multiple regulators and agencies. Instead, the Government should establish a National Education Standards Authority by consolidating standard-setting functions that are presently dispersed across different institutions. Its mandate should be limited and clearly defined: develop national learning benchmarks, coordinate with state boards and universities, facilitate qualification recognition, represent India in international assessments such as PISA, and periodically publish evidence-based standards for curriculum, pedagogy and learning outcomes. Like Australia’s ACARA or Canada’s CMEC, it would not administer schools or conduct examinations. Its purpose would be to ensure coherence, comparability and continuous improvement across India’s education system.
The third function is assessment and examination integrity, an area that has understandably attracted the greatest public attention in recent years. India’s response has largely focused on strengthening the National Testing Agency and enhancing punitive measures against paper leaks. These are necessary but insufficient reforms. Examination governance must become technologically robust, transparent and professionally managed. The National Testing Agency should therefore evolve from being merely an examination-conducting body into a specialised institution focused on examination design, digital security, operational excellence and integrity assurance. States and accredited institutions should progressively assume greater responsibility for conducting examinations under nationally prescribed protocols, while the NTA develops secure digital infrastructure, common standards and audit mechanisms. In this framework, the emphasis shifts from centralised execution to nationally guaranteed integrity.
The fourth pillar is institutional autonomy, accompanied by measurable accountability. One of the unintended consequences of increasing centralisation has been the gradual erosion of decision-making space available to universities and schools. Academic institutions function best when they are trusted to innovate while remaining accountable for outcomes. Universities should have greater freedom over admissions policies within broad national norms, interdisciplinary curricula, faculty recruitment, academic collaborations and research priorities. Schools should similarly enjoy greater flexibility in pedagogy and assessment within nationally benchmarked learning standards. Excessive procedural control has too often displaced educational leadership with administrative compliance.
This shift towards autonomy must be matched by a stronger culture of evidence-based evaluation. Rather than creating another regulator, the Government should strengthen the University Grants Commission’s outcome-monitoring role—or, if future reforms make it desirable, establish a lean and independent national benchmarking office dedicated to measuring institutional performance. Its responsibility should not be regulatory micromanagement, but transparent publication of comparable indicators across universities and states: learning outcomes, graduate employability, research quality, accreditation status, faculty strength, examination integrity, financial efficiency and student progression. Such benchmarking would allow governments, institutions and citizens alike to identify both excellence and underperformance through publicly available data, encouraging improvement through transparency rather than excessive administrative control.
Taken together, these reforms represent a shift from government as administrator to government as architect. The Union Government would retain—and indeed strengthen—its role in financing educational equity, establishing national standards and measuring outcomes. States would acquire greater flexibility in implementation. Universities would regain meaningful academic autonomy. Independent institutions would safeguard standards and integrity. Responsibility would become clearer, accountability more transparent, and innovation easier to encourage. The objective is not to create a larger education bureaucracy, but a smarter governance architecture in which every institution performs the function it is best equipped to discharge.
Rethinking Examinations: From High-Stakes Testing to High-Trust Learning
The debate over examination reform in India has understandably focused on security: encrypted question papers, digital surveillance, stronger penalties, biometric verification and tighter invigilation. These measures are necessary. But they address only the mechanics of conducting examinations, not the philosophy behind them. India’s examination crisis is not merely a consequence of weak security; it is also the product of an education system that places extraordinary weight on a handful of high-stakes tests. When a single examination determines admission, employment or social mobility for millions of young people, every administrative lapse becomes a national emergency.
This dependence on one-time, high-stakes examinations has steadily transformed the relationship between schooling and learning. For millions of students, the objective is no longer to acquire knowledge but to clear an entrance examination. Schools increasingly prepare students for board examinations, while coaching institutes prepare them for competitive examinations, creating parallel education systems that often operate independently of one another. Families spend enormous sums on private coaching because success is perceived to depend less on what students learn in classrooms than on how effectively they prepare for a single test. The result is an education ecosystem in which examinations shape learning rather than learning shaping examinations.
The answer is not to abolish national entrance examinations. In a country where demand for quality higher education far exceeds supply, transparent and merit-based selection mechanisms remain indispensable. However, merit should not be measured through a single three-hour examination alone. Universities should progressively adopt multiple pathways for admissions, combining board performance, standardised aptitude assessments, subject-specific tests, portfolios where appropriate and contextual indicators that recognise educational disadvantage. Such flexibility already exists in different forms across several advanced education systems and allows institutions to evaluate potential more comprehensively than a single examination score.
Technology also offers opportunities to fundamentally redesign the examination process. Secure digital question banks, algorithmic randomisation of questions, computer-based adaptive testing, encrypted transmission, AI-assisted anomaly detection and continuous cybersecurity audits can substantially reduce opportunities for malpractice while improving efficiency. Examinations should increasingly move towards multiple testing windows throughout the year rather than concentrating the aspirations of millions of students into a single date. A student whose performance is affected by illness, technical failures or unforeseen circumstances should not be compelled to wait an entire academic year for another opportunity. Flexibility enhances fairness without compromising standards.
Equally important is the need to restore the centrality of schools. An education system in which coaching becomes indispensable reflects not only the competitiveness of examinations but also a loss of confidence in school education itself. Public policy should aim to strengthen classroom teaching, improve foundational learning, invest in teacher quality and make school assessments more meaningful so that schools once again become the primary site of learning. Competitive examinations should assess competencies that schools are expected to develop, rather than rewarding specialised coaching disconnected from classroom education.
Ultimately, the objective of examination reform should not be to conduct more secure examinations alone. It should be to create an education system in which learning, curiosity, creativity and critical thinking matter at least as much as performance in a single high-pressure test. Examinations will always remain an essential part of education. They should, however, become gateways to opportunity rather than bottlenecks that define a student’s future in one sitting.
Conclusion
India’s recurring examination crises have exposed more than weaknesses in question paper security or administrative capacity. They have revealed the limitations of an education governance architecture that has gradually accumulated too many responsibilities within too few institutions. The temptation after every controversy is to seek immediate solutions – a new committee, a stricter law, a more secure examination process. Such responses are understandable and often necessary. Yet they remain incomplete if they leave the underlying architecture unchanged.
The challenge before India is therefore larger than reforming one examination agency or replacing one administrative mechanism. It is to redesign the relationship between the Union, the states, universities, regulators and examining bodies so that each performs the function it is best equipped to discharge. National standards must remain strong, but implementation should become more flexible. The Union Government should focus on financing educational equity, defining benchmarks and publishing transparent performance data. States should enjoy greater autonomy in delivery and innovation. Universities should recover meaningful academic freedom while remaining accountable for outcomes. Institutions responsible for standard-setting, quality assurance and examination integrity should possess clear mandates and operational independence. Above all, accountability should arise from transparency, evidence and public scrutiny rather than from periodic administrative intervention.
India has reached an inflection point. The latest examination crisis should not be remembered merely as another episode of institutional failure or political controversy. It should become the moment when the country recognised that educational excellence cannot be built through crisis management alone. Great education systems are not sustained by tougher penalties or more elaborate bureaucracies. They are sustained by institutions that are trusted, responsibilities that are clearly assigned and governance structures that encourage innovation while ensuring accountability.
The question before policymakers is therefore not whether India needs another committee. It is whether India has the ambition to build a new education architecture worthy of the aspirations of the world’s largest student population. If reform is confined to repairing the next examination, the cycle of crisis will inevitably return. If, however, this moment is used to redesign the institutions that govern education itself, India can move beyond managing failures and begin building an education system that is resilient, equitable and prepared for the demands of the twenty-first century.