India wants the spotlight at the world’s top school exam. It just won’t step on stage

05/05/2025 12 min Episodio 481
India wants the spotlight at the world’s top school exam. It just won’t step on stage

Listen "India wants the spotlight at the world’s top school exam. It just won’t step on stage"

Episode Synopsis


The world’s “most respected” test of school education—the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA—began this March. 90 countries are on the list including China, Vietnam and some of the poorest nations in the world. But India? We’re sitting this one out. In fact, India hasn’t touched PISA in 16 years!The last time it did, in 2009, India ranked 72nd out of 73 countries. Only Kyrgyzstan did worse. Ever since, the country has been quietly working behind the scenes to fix its education system through a slow and steady effort to modernise how students are tested. The government set up Parakh, an ambitious body under NCERT, to bring all of India’s 69 school boards on the same level and align with global standards.But can a country as huge and diverse as India really move away from rote learning to a system that values real-world problem solving and critical thinking?Tune in.If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.
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