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

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

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 [phone]. 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.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first studio recording, episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. What if I told you that the most important school exam in the world is happening right now? And India is not even showing up. The world's most respected test of school education, which is called the program for international student assessment or PISA began in March this year.

90 countries are on the list, including China, Vietnam, and even some of the most poorest nations in the world. But India, we are sitting this one out. And not for the first time either. We haven't touched PISA in 16 years. And the last time we did, which was back in 2009, the results were, well, embarrassing. Out of the 73 countries, India ranked 72. Only Kyrgyzstan did worse than us. Ever since, the country has been quietly working behind the scenes to fix the education system. No noise, no announcements, just a slow and steady effort to modernize how millions of our students

are being tested. And this effort has a name. Parak. It is an ambitious government body which is trying to bring together all of India's 69 school boards on the same level and align with global standards. But can a country as massive and diverse as ours really move away from road learning and textbook cramming to a system that values real world problem solving and critical thinking? And more importantly, why is this exam such a big deal anyway? In today's episode, we will unpack India's complicated relationship with PISA, what went wrong, what is changing and why, despite all the efforts, India might still miss the mark. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nickda Sharma, and I Don't Chase the New Cycle.

Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rahil Filippos and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 5th of May. PISA is conducted every three years by the OECD or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. And it is not your usual school test. PISA does not ask students to recite definitions or solve 100 algebra problems. Instead, it measures how well 15-year-olds can use their knowledge in real-life situations. Think of it like this. PISA tests your ability to think, not just your ability to remember.

And over time, it has become the global gold standard, almost like a benchmark for 21st century skills. Governments, education ministers, and even employers pay attention to these rankings. So, when India bombed the test in 2009, it hurt. India had actually hand-picked 16,000 students from Tamil Nad and Himachar Pradesh to take the test. They were supposed to represent the country's best. But even they could not keep up. Meanwhile, China, also first-time participant, topped both science and maths. Other Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan were already dominating the charts.

So, how did India explain its poor performance? Officials blamed a quote-unquote cultural disconnect. They said the test was not suited to Indian students, but that excuse did not hold up. Because once a country joins PISA, it actually helps to set the questions. Countries translate and adapt them to fit their local context. So India could have shaped the test to fit its culture if it had stuck around. Instead, we bowed out. But behind the scenes, things have been moving.

India began quietly working to change how its students were being assessed. In 2017, it changed its own national achievement survey to resemble PISA. And in 2020, you'll remember, the government launched the new national education policy calling for a major shift to holistic skill-based learning. That same year, a new autonomous body called Parak was born under NCRT and its job to bring all 69 of India school boards together, not to clone them, but to benchmark them and move them away from road learning to applied learning. Indrani Bhaduri, who heads Parak, put it this way. Equivalence does not mean cloning.

We are not talking about uniformity, but about benchmarking the best practices. So, how is Parak going to go about with these ambitious plans? Stay tuned to find out. Ever since the collapse of EV ride-haling startup Blue Smart, the question on everybody's mind is, who will replace it? Hi, I'm Rahel, the co-host of Daybreak. I'm briefly interrupting this episode to tell you about our other podcast two by two. In the latest episode, my colleagues, Rohin Dharma Kumar and Praveen Gopal-Krishnan

are joined by the co-founder and CEO of another ride-haling app called Schoffer to answer just that question. And I must say it's really important to qualify that question. When we ask who will be the next Blue Smart, we're not asking who will be the next company to be stuck in a financial crisis and investigated by Sebi. In fact, if you set aside the details of the financial scandal, what's left is the big question of who or what will fill blue smart shoes and what happens next. So I don't think there's going to be one player that is necessarily going to be the next blue smart in that sense of providing comfortable, clean, green ride experience. But there should be quite a few that come up to or will take this opportunity to fill that guy. app. And one of them will be Schoffer?

To listen to the full episode, search for the 2x2 premium podcast on Apple Podcasts or the Ken app. The links will be in the show notes. And with that, let's get back to the episode. Barak is bringing in global experts. In 2023, it selected the US-based educational testing service, the same group behind Toffel and GRI to help redesign Indian assessments. And now it is going state by state. It is holding teacher workshops, distributing new question paper templates, and encouraging boards to ask questions that require students to think, not just to remember. Here is an example. A CBSC board exam in 2019 asked what are three main features of a ruby crop season. But a PISA style question would probably show you a picture of two hills. One is greener and the

student's job is to figure out why, using science, logic and evidence. So you get the difference? The goal is clear. By 2026, India warns all school boards to shift to application-based question papers. And some progress is actually being made. In February this year, CBSE board exams had half of their questions based on application. Even the CISCE board, which runs the ICSEA exams, plans to reach 50% application-based questions by 2027. But there is a catch. In India, education is a concurrent subject under the constitution, which means both the central and the state governments have control over it.

So no matter how well Parak plans, it is the states that will decide how much to implement. And they are not always on board. For example, Tamil Nad backed out of Parak's workshops in 2020. It had disagreements with the broader national education policy. Other states like Assam tried to adopt new formats, like introducing 50% multiple choice questions. But the rollout was rushed, teachers did not get proper training, and many ended up just helping students memorize the new formats.

And then there is also the issue of funding. Paruk tries to incentivize states by offering extra money for teachers' training and question bank development. Last year, Haryana received $50,000,000,000 dollars. But smaller undersourced boards are still struggling to catch up. And at the heart of it all is something that is harder to fix than policy. Attitude. Many teachers and exam setters, especially the senior ones, simply do not want to change.

They've been doing things a certain way for decades. And shifting to a new system, even if it is better, is just unconsored. comfortable for them. And that is where our country finds itself today. Despite all the workshops, policies and pilot programs, we miss the 2025 piece up. And it's not looking ready for 2028 either. The education ministry has not made a final decision yet, but insiders say that politics might also be playing a role. The last time India was gearing up to take the test, elections were just around the corner. If the results came back low, it's. would have not looked great. So India pulled out again. Officially because of COVID,

unofficially, it was because of timing. So what now? There is no doubt on how capable Indian students are. But without the right system to support real learning, they will keep being tested on facts rather than their ability to think. Parak is trying to change that. But it is up against tradition, resistance and a complex web of state policy. So whether it will succeed by 2026 or at all is still unclear. So here is a question that I want to leave you with. Is India willing to flatten its educational diversity for the sake of global validation? Or should it be building a system that works on its own terms while still preparing students for a changing world?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this one. So write to me on WhatsApp or send me a voice note at 8-917. I'll repeat that again. 89711-08379. Thank you for tuning in and catch you tomorrow. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. To subscribe, head to the... the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted by Snigda Sharma and edited by Rajiv CN.