A youth movement named after a top judge’s "cockroach" jibe at the jobless filled Delhi’s streets this week, police baton-charged its banned march on Parliament, and reformer Sonam Wangchuk was carried off a 20-day hunger strike, all demanding the education minister resign over exam leaks. Meanwhile the re-run NEET results finally landed with 11.2 lakh qualifying, Washington capped foreign-student visas at four years as F-1 approvals for Indians fell 62%, PhysicsWallah took control of another coaching brand, and Punjab capped private-school fee hikes at 5%.

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Spotlight

The exam-integrity revolt reaches Parliament

The Cockroach Janta Party, a Gen-Z parody movement that gained more than 21 million Instagram followers within days of forming in May, after a Supreme Court judge likened jobless youth to "cockroaches," brought its "Chalo Sansad" march to Parliament on July 20, the opening day of the monsoon session. Riot police baton-charged the crowd and cut internet in parts of central Delhi, as protesters demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET paper leak and a run of exam failures. Engineer and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk, 59, had been forcibly hospitalised two days earlier on High Court orders, 20 days into his fast; the party’s founder Abhijeet Dipke began his own hunger strike and ended it only after Wangchuk appealed. The results the whole crisis turned on arrived mid-week, as the NTA declared the NEET-UG re-exam results with 11.21 lakh candidates qualifying, over 58% of them women, from nearly 20 lakh who re-sat on June 21 after the May test was scrapped over leaks. Rahul Gandhi told a Dehradun rally the system must be "rebuilt from scratch", Congress called the government "the most authoritarian", and Pradhan met Home Minister Amit Shah as the government opened quiet talks with the protesters. Every fix so far reruns the exam. None answers whether one high-stakes test should decide who becomes a doctor, or whether a minister will pay for the ones that broke.

Funding & Acquisitions

• PhysicsWallah put in about ₹72 crore to lift its stake in UPSC-coaching platform Sarrthi IAS to 51%, turning it into a subsidiary. The tranche is part of a staggered plan to reach 85% by 2031, and it extends the coaching giant’s buying spree as it fights for offline market share.

• Home Credit India, part of the TVS VENU Group, agreed to buy 100% of school-lending NBFC Varthana Finance in an all-cash deal, subject to RBI approval. Varthana, founded in 2013, has financed more than 13,000 affordable private schools, and the buyout marks Home Credit’s entry into education finance.

• BYJU’S edged closer to ending its Aakash ownership fight after Think & Learn’s creditors approved a settlement that would hand global lenders a roughly 30% stake in Aakash at a near $2 billion valuation, with the NCLT to hear it on August 18. In parallel, Singapore’s High Court refused to stay founder Byju Raveendran’s six-month jail term for contempt, a long fall for a company once valued above $22 billion.

• Navneet Education’s subsidiary sold part of its stake in K12 Techno Services for ₹329.68 crore to funds affiliated with Kenro Capital, in a deal signed July 17 and closing within weeks. It is the second big investor move in the private-school operator in a matter of weeks, a sign of how much capital is chasing India’s K-12 chains.

• BITS Pilani-incubated AI tutoring startup Sortmyprep raised $350,000 in pre-seed funding from angels including boAt’s Sameer Mehta and Rustomjee’s Boman Irani. Its "Sorty" assistant serves students across 15-plus countries on international curricula, and the startup says some 71% of its users came through referrals, not paid marketing.

• Elevation Capital closed its ninth India fund at $500 million, earmarking seed and Series A bets on AI-led companies in healthcare, education and financial services. With a separate holdings vehicle, its India war chest reaches about $900 million, second only to Peak XV, a signal that AI-in-education startups have fresh capital to chase.

Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives

• Google DeepMind and NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission launched ATL Saathi, a Gemini-powered assistant for teachers running the country’s Atal Tinkering Labs, which reach over 1.1 crore students. The pilot starts in 100 schools, offers training modules in eight languages, and is pitched as a round-the-clock planning aide rather than a student chatbot.

• Maharashtra’s SCERT and the Kotak Education Foundation rolled out AI Saathi, a mandatory AI-training course for nearly 7.5 lakh teachers, delivered in Marathi on the DIKSHA platform. The four-hour certified module, part of the state’s 20-hour online training rule, is framed as building teacher confidence with AI rather than replacing them.

• Zoho launched Classes 2.0, an AI-powered learning platform that can build a full course in any of 22 Indian languages in under 30 seconds and auto-grade computer-science work. It is free for central and state government institutions and ₹500 per teacher a month for private schools and colleges.

• The University of Western Australia named SRM Technologies as the IT partner for its new Mumbai and Chennai campuses, which are racing to open for the 2026-27 academic year on a five-month build. It is the latest Australian university to plant a physical campus in India.

• IIM Kozhikode opened a new Kochi campus at Kalamassery, a six-storey urban learning centre built by Kochi Metro Rail, as the institute nears its 30th year. It starts with management studies and executive programmes, deepening a Kochi presence IIM-K began in 2012.

Policy & Government

National

• The Centre softened key parts of its Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill after states pushed back on centralisation, agreeing that the new regulator will need state clearance before major decisions on colleges affiliated to state universities. The parliamentary panel also wants the Centre’s power to supersede the commission used only as a last resort, even as think tank PRS Legislative Research warned the bill may not actually improve university autonomy and could roll some of it back.

• The Supreme Court refused to stay CBSE’s three-language policy for Class 6 but asked whether English can really count as an indigenous language, posting the matter to July 22. Separately, CBSE clarified that from Class 9 the third language will be assessed only internally, not in board exams, with at least two of the three being Indian languages.

• The government told the Supreme Court it will introduce "comprehensive sex education" in schools, accepting a 26-member expert committee’s report, with NCERT to build the curriculum. The panel suggested short sessions twice a week from the primary level, tied to concerns about criminalising adolescent relationships under the POCSO Act.

• The Supreme Court said it will direct CBSE to follow an Orissa High Court ruling letting parents opt out of the APAAR student ID, the 12-digit lifelong academic number pushed under NEP 2020. Petitioners argue the Aadhaar-linked ID is being made a backdoor requirement to sit exams, against the Constitution and the data-protection law.

• More than a year after NAAC announced a new binary and graded accreditation system, the rollout has stalled and its portal is shut, leaving colleges with expired accreditation and no way to reapply. Institutions can get a six-month extension, but many have asked MPs to raise the limbo in Parliament.

Bihar

• Bihar’s government inaugurated 551 new model schools built for about ₹990 crore and announced a university named after poet Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar" in Begusarai. The schools, meant for nearly four lakh students, come with smart classrooms and NEET and JEE preparation.

• A proposed Bihar law would pull more than 500 undergraduate colleges out from under the Governor’s control and place them under a new higher education department, leaving the Governor as Chancellor only for postgraduate courses. It would also drop the mandatory PhD for assistant professors, requiring a Master’s plus NET instead.

Delhi

• Delhi approved a ₹400 crore start-up and incubation policy to push student entrepreneurship, starting across 11 state universities and dozens of government-aided colleges, ITIs and schools. It offers milestone-based funding for student ventures and an annual youth start-up festival.

• Delhi University warned applicants against submitting fake or AI-generated documents in this year’s undergraduate admissions, threatening cancelled seats and legal action. Verification will cover Class 10 and 12 mark sheets and category certificates uploaded through the central seat-allocation system.

Goa

• Goa’s education department now bars schools and colleges from hosting outside speakers without prior written approval, after a police report flagged a student Islamic organisation. Institutions must submit speaker profiles and scripts in advance and file a report certifying nothing objectionable was said.

Jammu and Kashmir

• Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir ordered every school, college and coaching centre to screen all books and theses for "objectionable" content and report them, after BJP protests over two library books alleged to glorify separatists. Three people were arrested and eight education officials suspended; the order follows last year’s ban on 25 titles, including works by Arundhati Roy.

Jharkhand

• Jharkhand drafted a gender-inclusive standard operating procedure for government schools, prepared by its education research council, covering classroom participation, school safety and the reporting of discrimination. It is meant to become a reference document once finalised.

Karnataka

• The Karnataka High Court questioned the state’s 12-year delay in giving transgender persons education reservation, noting it had acted on jobs but not classrooms since the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA ruling. The case began when a transgender student was denied a seat at NLSIU Bengaluru.

Kerala

• Kerala launched two school-tech programmes, "Digital Square" and "ARISE", run by its education-technology agency KITE, to set up advanced robotics labs in every high school and train students in AI, IoT and drones. The state will also tighten a cyber-safety protocol across schools, with corporate donors funding the robotics kits.

Maharashtra

• A Maharashtra inquiry is asking how more than 350 unauthorised schools obtained official UDISE+ codes, the unique IDs that let them operate for years despite failing basic norms. It is fresh fallout from the state’s ₹400 crore Shalarth payroll scam, in which more than 4,000 bogus teachers are estimated to have drawn government salaries for about six years.

• Fresh UDISE data shows over 3,200 Maharashtra schools still have no electricity and nearly 24,000 no internet, stalling any digital-education push. Almost 11,000 more have power connections that do not work, and single-teacher schools number over 9,000.

Odisha

• Odisha’s CID arrested former SCERT director Manoj Padhi over more than 1,600 errors in new school textbooks, which the agency says cost the state about ₹175 crore. The NEP-aligned books, 55 in all, were rushed out in 15 months; one Class 5 text claimed circling a cave could cure infertility.

Punjab

• Punjab capped annual private-school fee hikes at 5%, with anything higher needing district approval, offering relief to over 32 lakh students. Schools that raised fees more than 15% over three years must refund the excess, and repeat violators can lose recognition.

Telangana

• The Telangana High Court quashed orders forcing minority schools to educate journalists’ children for free, holding that the Right to Education Act cannot override the constitutional protection minority institutions enjoy under Article 30. The directions had gone out to district schools without any statutory backing.

Uttarakhand

• Uttarakhand will stop funding its madrasas from 2027-28, after dissolving its Madrasa Education Board and folding minority schooling into a new authority covering six communities. The state has 452 registered madrasas with about 50,000 students, and the move follows a crackdown that sealed more than 200 of them.

West Bengal

• West Bengal’s government is sending teams to inspect private colleges and audit attendance and CCTV, and has frozen new approvals for B.Ed, law and pharmacy colleges pending audits. Higher Education Minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay warned that university vice-chancellors could face jail over past graft under the previous regime, calling many private institutes "degree shops".

Financial Reports & Market Trends

• India’s latest UDISE+ data shows the real cliff comes at secondary school, where gross enrolment drops to 71.7% from about 90% in the earlier grades, and only 51.9% of children are expected to stay through Class 12. Dropout at the secondary stage runs at 7%, and adolescent boys leave faster than girls.

• A new US rule scraps the open-ended stay for international students and caps F and J visas at four years, after which holders must reapply regardless of degree progress. About 1.5 million current students, with Indians, Chinese and South Koreans hit hardest, now face fresh paperwork, shorter grace periods and the risk of multi-year re-entry bans.

• US colleges are already feeling it: 59% report fewer international applications and F-1 visas issued to Indians have fallen 62%, even though India still sends over 360,000 students a year. The squeeze is reshaping India’s education-loan market, where NBFCs’ US-linked lending fell 57% and the US share of loan books dropped to 43% from 54%, as students pivot to the UK and Germany.

• Indian employers are the world’s most willing to pay up for AI skills, with 58% saying they would offer fresh graduates who hold GenAI micro-credentials more than 15% extra, and every employer surveyed willing to pay some premium. Nearly all said such hires performed better in their first year, per a Coursera report.

Opinions

• If India has poured record money into schools, why can only a little more than half its Class 5 children read a Class 2 text? Rukmini Banerji, one of the architects of the ASER survey, unpacks why "teaching to the top of the class" leaves so many behind, and where AI might, and might not, help. Read it for a clear-eyed take from someone who has measured the learning crisis for two decades.

• India handed education its biggest-ever Union budget, ₹1.12 lakh crore, so why do families keep spending more on private tuition every year? This analysis argues the public system and the coaching shadow economy are growing together, not one replacing the other. A provocative read on what all that money is, and isn’t, buying.

• Does a shiny new India-UK trade deal actually help Indian students when it leaves visa and post-study work rules untouched? Education leaders reading the FTA see room for joint degrees and branch campuses, but caution that jobs still hinge on Britain’s immigration policy, not the trade text. Read it for where the hype meets the fine print.

Job Openings

• Emeritus, an online higher-education and executive-upskilling platform, is hiring a Program Manager in Mumbai for a founder’s-office-style role, wanting an MBA and 2-plus years in management consulting or a CEO’s office. Apply through the link in the post.

• NIIT, the India-based learning and skilling company, is hiring a Business Operations Head for International Markets in Gurugram, for someone with 15-plus years in education or edtech business development and a track record across Africa and APAC. Email your profile to rokee.jawa@niit.com.

• Educational Initiatives, an assessment and adaptive-learning edtech, is hiring a Regional Manager. The job description is shared as a Drive document; open the link for role details and how to apply.

• Toddle, an edtech that builds a teaching-and-learning platform used by schools in 100-plus countries, is hiring a Program Manager for Onboarding, a remote role owning school onboarding from kickoff to go-live and building the systems to scale it. Apply through the careers link in the first comment.

• Mesa School of Business, a new-age business school for aspiring founders, is hiring a Program Manager in Bengaluru to design project-based curricula for fast-changing fields. Apply through the link in the post.

• The Akanksha Foundation, a nonprofit that runs schools for children from low-income communities in Mumbai and Pune, is hiring a School Leader. Express interest by commenting on or messaging the poster.

• Aditya Birla Education Trust, the group’s education philanthropy arm, is hiring a Director of Government Engagement and Partnerships. Share references or apply at ameya.kshirsagar@abet.co.in.

• KPMG India is hiring for a skilling and vocational-education advisory mandate in New Delhi, across a Vocational Training Expert, a Standards Quality Assurance Expert and a Vocational Training Consultant, wanting 5 to 8-plus years in skilling or vocational education. Email your CV to iromdevi@kpmg.com or arushees1@kpmg.com with the position in the subject line.

• Simply Sport Foundation, whose Pivot programme helps female athletes move into new careers, is hiring a Head of Education and Curriculum to build curriculum, assessments and mentorship structures; no sports background needed. Email a CV and note to ipsita.basu@simplysport.in.

• Wadhwani AI, a nonprofit applying AI to social-good problems, is hiring an Instructional Designer for capacity building in New Delhi, wanting 5-plus years in instructional design and experience with multilingual, low-literacy content. Apply through the careers link in the post.

• International Innovation Corps, a social-impact fellowship affiliated with the University of Chicago, is hiring an India Program Head in New Delhi, for someone with 8-plus years across mission-driven programmes, government partnerships and fundraising, spanning focus areas including education. Apply through the link in the post.

• Acumen, part of the Sannam S4 Group of international education-services firms, is hiring a Senior Director of Operations and Transformation in New Delhi. Follow the application instructions in the linked job post.

• SEEDS, a disaster-resilience and community-development nonprofit, is hiring a Lead Trainer in Gurugram to design and deliver training, coach in the field and run quality assurance, with travel across project sites. Email joinus@seedsindia.org with "Lead Trainer" in the subject line.

• Save the Children, the international child-rights organisation, is hiring an Education Advisor for its education programmes across the Asia region. Apply through the Save the Children careers link in the post.

• A large skills and employability programme, hiring through recruiter Aksar Talent, is looking for a Regional Head for its South region based in Bengaluru and covering five southern states, for someone with 12-plus years in business development and operations on large skilling projects, at up to ₹24 lakh a year. Email jobs@aksartalent.com with the role in the subject line.

• A VC-backed edtech, hiring through CareerKart, is looking for a Product Manager in Hyderabad at ₹25 to 30 lakh a year, wanting 2-plus years shipping a digital product, startup experimentation experience and an AI-first mindset. Comment "Product" on the post to fast-track, or apply through the link.

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