India shut 58 engineering colleges in a single year, discontinuing more than 950 technical courses. At the same time, foreign universities are hiring permanent local faculty, IB schools have grown to 280, and states from Punjab to Telangana are adding AI to government classrooms. Separately, a parliamentary panel flagged that the education schemes it reviewed have had no performance audit since 2017.

I’d love to hear what you think. Push back, agree, or share what I missed. Drop me a note at me@sandeepmallareddy.com. And if this is worth a spot in your inbox every week, go ahead and subscribe

Spotlight

After the NEET re-test, the reform question

The re-test is done, but the reckoning is not. The National Testing Agency (NTA) is racing to declare NEET-UG results by July 20 after more than 10,000 challenges landed against its provisional answer keys, following a June 21 re-exam that drew over 20 lakh candidates across 5,440 centres. A parliamentary panel under Congress MP Mukul Wasnik reviewed the NTA’s reforms on July 1, with former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan presenting a roadmap and the panel calling the retest "secure and well-managed." The same panel floated separate entrance exams for MBBS, AYUSH and Nursing to thin out a single mega-test, an idea the NTA told them "would not be practical." Separately, the Centre is reportedly reviewing the zero-percentile NEET-PG cutoff, a policy that still left 1,140 postgraduate seats unfilled last year even as the government spends about ₹1.25 crore per seat. All of this comes after the NTA pulled off the re-exam in 38 days instead of the usual six months. The machinery is being patched fast, but every fix so far touches how the exam is run, not whether one high-stakes test should decide a doctor’s career at all.

Funding & Acquisitions

• Voice-first AI tutoring startup YoLearn.ai raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding at a $5 million valuation, co-led by DataAlpha.ai and White Swan Global. The platform supports voice interaction in 22 Indian languages, skews to Grades 9 to 12 for JEE and NEET prep, and says it has crossed 200,000 users. It enters a crowded field of consumer AI tutors chasing the same exam-prep rupee.

Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives

• Amazon is bringing AI literacy to Telangana’s government schools through its Future Engineer programme, targeting about 1 million students a year with 25 hours of instruction for Classes 6 to 9. The curriculum was built by the state’s SCERT with the Pi Jam Foundation, and Amazon will supply over 2,000 refurbished laptops to girls’ and urban schools.

• Adani Skills & Education signed MoUs to modernise all 11 government ITIs in Kutch, Gujarat, retooling them for renewable energy, logistics and infrastructure jobs. It certified 30 instructors and is branding its 10-point framework a "Gujarat model." The move rides the same corporate-ITI wave as Tata’s near ₹3,000 crore plan for two ITIs per district in Maharashtra.

• The University of Melbourne signed an MoU with Tamil Nadu’s TIDCO to build a Centre for Emerging Technologies at Tamil Nadu Knowledge City near Tiruvallur. The 20,000-square-foot centre will focus on quantum computing and agri-tech, with dual-certification courses and industry research.

• Foreign universities are putting down permanent roots in India, not just campuses. The University of Bristol has appointed 11 full-time faculty for its Mumbai campus, while Wollongong and Victoria University build India-based teaching teams. A second wave including York and Liverpool is preparing to follow, months after the Centre cleared three more foreign campuses.

• Healthcare edtech Virohan partnered with three universities, UPES, RISU and VGU, for allied-health degrees and short courses, taking its network past 20 institutional tie-ups. CEO Kunaal Dudeja notes allied workers make up nearly 60% of the health workforce, with India short more than 64 lakh such professionals. It also opened a ₹2 crore scholarship pool for women, with no NEET score required.

• Andhra Pradesh Education Minister Nara Lokesh launched SriCity International University on a work-study model, where students spend a third of their time in class and the rest as paid interns. Students graduate with over two years of work experience and a minimum ₹10,000 monthly stipend from year one, drawing on Sri City’s 200-plus companies.

• The Ramakrishna Mission will set up two higher-education institutes in Arunachal Pradesh, at Aalo and Narottam Nagar, CM Pema Khandu said after meeting a Mission delegation. The aim is to widen access to quality higher education and value-based learning in the state.

Policy & Government

National

• A nine-member Education Ministry panel is likely to recommend giving board marks up to 50% weight in college admissions and aligning entrance tests more closely with school syllabi, to curb coaching dependence and dummy schools. The proposals, expected in the coming weeks, also float multiple attempts and a shift to adaptive computer-based tests.

• The Public Accounts Committee overruled Education Secretary Vineet Joshi, himself a former CBSE Chairman and former NTA chief, when he objected to it questioning CBSE Chairman Prashant Lokhande and argued the self-funded board falls outside the committee’s remit. Chairman K C Venugopal said CBSE cannot dodge questions on student suicides, and the panel asked the CAG, the constitutional auditor, why the education schemes it was reviewing had not had a performance audit since 2017. Unlike the yearly checks on the books, that audit asks whether the money actually improved schools, not just whether it was spent by the rules.

• Lokhande Prashant Sitaram, a 2001-batch IAS officer, was given additional charge as CBSE Chairperson alongside a posting as Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry, revising the full-time role he was handed in June after the on-screen-marking fiasco.

• IAS officer Vineet Joshi, already Higher Education Secretary, took additional charge of the school education department after Sanjay Kumar’s retirement, so one official now oversees both school and higher education at the Centre.

• The UGC issued guidelines to make higher education more inclusive for students with disabilities, focusing on classroom pedagogy: flexible curricula, lighter course loads, materials in Braille and audio, and exam accommodations like scribes and extra time. Universities are asked to track enrolment and retention of disabled students as a real measure of inclusion.

• Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk began an indefinite hunger strike at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, backing education reform and greater autonomy for Ladakh. He joined a running student protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over exam irregularities.

Assam

• Assam’s cabinet eased norms to draw private investment into higher education, cutting the minimum land requirement and lowering the mandatory endowment fund for new private universities. CM Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the reforms, though the cabinet did not spell out the new thresholds.

Bihar

• Bihar’s cabinet allotted land for five new Kendriya Vidyalayas across Madhubani, Rajgir, Sheikhpura and Madhepura, and Education Minister Mithilesh Tiwari separately sought ₹1,120 crore from the Centre for ICT labs, vocational labs and smart classrooms across thousands of schools.

• The same minister said the government will screen out defunct madrasas and rebuild Sanskrit schools, citing ghost schools and absentee teachers found during physical verification. Bihar has over 1,900 government madrasas against about 600 Sanskrit schools, and the opposition accuses the BJP minister of saffronising education.

Delhi

• Delhi told private schools they can no longer cite inflation alone to raise fees, and must justify hikes against 18 parameters with audited accounts under the 2025 fee-transparency law. Every school must form a parent-teacher fee committee, chosen by video-recorded draw of lots, by July 15, with penalties running to loss of recognition. It hardens oversight weeks after the Delhi High Court had let schools raise fees without prior government approval.

• Delhi also launched Mission Kayakalp to upgrade government-school infrastructure, from labs and toilets to RO plants and rainwater harvesting, funded partly through CSR and local associations. CM Rekha Gupta said work is already underway across five districts.

Haryana

• Haryana added 25 new Buniyaad centres and 100 computers to its Super-100 programme, which gives free IIT-JEE and NEET coaching to government-school students. Officials say 534 students have qualified through Super-100 so far.

Himachal Pradesh

• Himachal approved a state innovation policy for technical education with a ₹2 crore fund for 2026 to 2028, covering prototype micro-grants, startup seed money and incubation support. Innovations stay the property of their creators, with institutions keeping non-exclusive academic rights.

Madhya Pradesh

• Madhya Pradesh made e-attendance mandatory for all teachers from July 1, and any teacher below 90% now faces suspension, along with principals who cleared their salary bills. The state has about 425,000 teachers, and unions have long opposed the rule.

Maharashtra

• Maharashtra confirmed Marathi is now legally compulsory from Classes 1 to 10 in schools of every medium, with fines up to ₹1 lakh and, for the first time, the threat of losing recognition. Some legislators want the penalty raised to ₹10 lakh.

• A week after Maharashtra’s Teacher Eligibility Test was postponed over a leaked paper, a BJP leader alleged the education minister did not even know the papers were printed in Agra, by a firm the council has used for years. The state now says the exam, which hit six lakh candidates, will move online, and four people are under arrest.

Meghalaya

• Meghalaya CM Conrad Sangma launched a Teacher Training Academy after national surveys placed the state in the lowest learning category, with just 17% of teachers having had any professional development last year. The academy, flagged in the state’s PGI-improvement plan, uses a hub-and-spoke model tied to district institutes.

Odisha

• Odisha’s cabinet approved free education from KG to postgraduate level in government and aided institutions from 2026-27, expected to benefit over 32 lakh students a year at a five-year cost of ₹5,467 crore. It formalises the free-schooling plan CM Mohan Majhi floated last month.

Punjab

• Punjab will roll out an AI curriculum across all government schools from next month, Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains announced, after a year of preparation. The state is already part of Google’s teacher-training rollout with several state boards.

Tamil Nadu

• Tamil Nadu tapped former ISRO scientist Mylswamy Annadurai, the "Moon Man," to redesign its school syllabus around STEM and AI, aiming to cut rote learning. The revision will roll out in phases after stakeholder consultations.

• Over 8,200 government schools will get their own "ambassadors" from July 10, with 26,221 alumni already signed up to boost enrolment, cut dropouts and channel CSR into their old schools. Ambassadors serve two-year terms.

Uttar Pradesh

• Uttar Pradesh expanded its PM SHRI network to 1,713 model schools, the country’s largest, adding smart classrooms, labs and solar power under NEP 2020. Schools qualified through a three-stage challenge needing UDISE+ codes and minimum scores.

• The state also expanded Project Praveen, its vocational programme for Classes 9 to 12 in government schools, targeting 36,103 students this year with training from July 15. Over 61,000 students have passed through since the 2022-23 pilot.

Uttarakhand

• Uttarakhand became the first state to abolish its Madrasa Board, folding all minority-education oversight into a single new authority covering Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists. The state has 452 registered madrasas, and the move follows the sealing of more than 200 of them since 2024.

Financial Reports & Market Trends

• India shut 58 engineering and technical colleges in 2025-26 and discontinued over 950 courses, with Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra losing 12 each to low enrolment and faculty shortages. Existing students finish their degrees, but no fresh admissions are allowed. The shakeout is the flip side of an old glut: India runs roughly 16 lakh engineering seats against 1.3 lakh MBBS seats.

• In Ahmedabad, more than 56,000 students have moved from private schools to municipal ones over a decade, including 3,500 this session alone, after the civic body converted all 220 campuses into "smart schools." Some campuses in posh areas now run admission waiting lists, as English-medium classes with Chromebooks pull fee-weary parents back.

• States are scrambling to win families back to government schools. Karnataka, which lost roughly 17 lakh government-school students in 15 years, is running bilingual Kannada-English classes across all 896 primary schools in Dakshina Kannada. Nationally, government-school enrolment fell about 5.9 lakh in 2024-25 even as private schools gained, and zero-enrolment government schools have climbed 24% in two years.

• IB schools in India climbed to 280 from 195 in five years, and about 44% of the pipeline now sits outside the metros, in cities like Coimbatore, Surat and Visakhapatnam. India is closing on Canada as the network’s second-largest market, though the IB flags a teacher shortage as the bottleneck.

• PhysicsWallah is offering new faculty up to ₹15 lakh to bring top students over from rival coaching centres, with payouts tied to a recruit’s eventual JEE or NEET rank. The reward, which PW calls routine, shows how cut-throat offline coaching has become as the firm, whose FY26 revenue rose 35% to ₹3,900 crore, fights harder for classroom market share.

• English-learning app SpeakX says it has crossed 10 million users and $7.5 million in annual recurring revenue on a ₹199-a-month plan pitched as ₹6 a day, backed by over $26 million in funding. It is now pushing into Latin America, Indonesia and the UAE, and has opened an enterprise arm.

Opinions

• Is the Bhagavad Gita a religious text, or a work of ethics that belongs in a secular classroom? A Madras High Court ruling that teaching the Gita is not religious propagation opens a thornier question the writer chases: whether any such text can be taught in a way that invites questioning rather than reverence. Read it for a sharp take on where scripture ends and education begins.

• Why did most Indian edtech companies burn out even as the market ballooned toward $29 billion by 2030? Ankur Warikoo argues they were built for parents, the buyers, not students, so they hired sales teams instead of product teams. Coming from a founder who recently folded his own standalone courses into a single membership, it is worth the read.

• India just handed education its largest-ever budget, ₹1.39 lakh crore, so why do the returns to schooling still split so sharply by caste? The piece digs into wage data showing a general-category worker gains far more from 12 years of schooling than a Dalit worker with the same education. A sobering read on why credentials alone do not close the gap.

• Has the NTA borrowed the language of neutral "digital infrastructure" to dodge accountability for exams like NEET? This essay argues the real power lies not in conducting the test but in defining merit and allocating seats, and proposes prising the two apart. A provocative read for anyone who thinks fixing exam security fixes the system.

Job Openings

• Wadhwani AI Global, a nonprofit building AI tools for the Global South, is hiring in New Delhi across three roles including a Head of Product for its R&D team and a Pedagogy Expert for foundational learning, the latter a consultant role needing 10-plus years in early-grade literacy and oral reading fluency. Apply through the respective posts.

• Teach For India, which places fellows in under-resourced classrooms, is hiring three Chennai-based roles, including a Senior Manager for Regional Partnerships to build government and alumni networks, and a Consultant for its Firki educator-training programme. Apply at bit.ly/tficareers or write to hansaprabha.potdar@teachforindia.org.

• Deshpande Foundation, a skilling and entrepreneurship nonprofit, is hiring a Chief Operating Officer for its skilling vertical. Applications go through the link in the post or a direct message to the hiring team.

• ConveGenius, an edtech working across more than 22 Indian states, is hiring an AVP of Strategic Partnerships for someone with 8 to 10 years in program leadership, partnerships or fundraising across government, CSR and NGO channels. Apply via the careers link in the post.

• Learning Links Foundation, an education and digital-literacy nonprofit, is hiring a General Manager of Operations based in Gorakhpur and Chennai, for a leader with 12 to 18 years across program strategy, large teams and donor relationships. Apply to hiringllf@learninglinksindia.org.

• Educational Initiatives, an assessment and adaptive-learning edtech, is hiring a Head of Growth for Corporate Relations in Bengaluru, for someone with 15-plus years in fundraising or partnerships who has raised ₹10 crore or more a year through CSR channels. Apply via the link in the post.

• Resonance, a Kota-based JEE, NEET and Foundation coaching brand, is hiring a Head of E-Learning Business to own revenue, sales, marketing and P&L for its digital learning arm, for an entrepreneurial leader who has built and scaled an edtech business end to end. Share your profile in a comment or direct message on the post.

• Peepul, a nonprofit working to strengthen government-school systems, is hiring four Delhi-based roles including a Programme Manager and a Project Manager across its monitoring and LiftEd verticals. Applications close July 10; apply through the role links in the post.

• Alohomora Education Foundation, which runs student and educator development programmes, is hiring a Program Design and Training Lead in Delhi, for someone with 7 to 10 years designing training frameworks and working with government education systems at the district level. Apply via the form in the post, which includes situational questions.

• The One School, opening a new IB continuum school in Hyderabad, is hiring a Founding School Principal to build the school from the ground up, for an experienced leader with an IB or international-school background. Expressions of interest go through a direct message to the post.

Note: Article URLs are occasionally modified by news agencies and may result in 404 errors. Searching the summary text should help locate the related story.