NEP 2020 focuses on skills, but are students really learning? Experts explain

As NEP 2020 places strong emphasis on skill-based education, education leaders at the India Today Education Conclave 2026 evaluate whether classroom learning is improving and producing measurable outcomes.

Even as India has largely addressed the challenge of school access, the crisis of learning remains unresolved. This was the central takeaway from a wide-ranging discussion at the India Today Education Conclave 2026, where education leaders cautioned that high enrolment figures often mask deep and persistent learning deficits, particularly beyond the primary years.

Speaking during the session “From Enrollment to Outcomes: How to Fix India’s Learning Gap”, Wilima Wadhwa, Director of the ASER Centre, and Alka Singh, Head of Partnerships at Educate Girls, offered a ground-level perspective on why many children continue to fall behind despite being in school, and outlined what systemic changes are needed to reverse the trend and improve learning outcomes.

Opening the conversation, Wilima Wadhwa traced the roots of India's learning crisis back to a long-standing assumption: that schooling automatically leads to learning.

"We began ASER in 2005 when nobody was really talking about learning outcomes," Wadhwa said, recalling how global and national policy debates were then focused almost entirely on enrolment. "Schooling was equated with learning."

ASER's findings disrupted that belief. Even before the Right to Education Act, more than 90% of children were enrolled in school, yet learning levels were alarmingly low.

"For years, about 50 percent of children in Grade 5 could not read a simple Grade 2-level text. That number just wouldn't move," she said.