The new Education Minister, Pralhad Joshi, who took the post after his colleague Dharmendra Pradhan left the cabinet, must now tackle the complex task of restoring trust in India's education system. He is tasked with simultaneously addressing structural issues in school and higher education, including the low employability of college graduates.
Joshi, who has long worked with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is a Member of Parliament from Dharwad in Karnataka, began his political career with activism related to the RSS. He has represented Dharwad in the Lok Sabha for five consecutive years since 2004.
Previously, he served as the President of the BJP Karnataka from 2013 to 2016 and oversaw several federal portfolios, such as Parliamentary Affairs and Coal and Mineral Industries, between 2019 and 2024. In 2024, he was assigned portfolios for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, as well as New and Renewable Energy.
Within his renewable energy portfolio, Joshi's work is crucial for achieving two national goals: reaching 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 and the net-zero emissions target by 2070, which is critical for sustainable economic development and energy security.
Joshi's work in renewable energy has received widespread recognition due to the exponential growth in installed capacity, where more than half of the country's electricity came from non-fossil sources in June 2025, surpassing the 2030 target set by the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, in recent months, the sector has expressed concerns about insufficient transmission capacity growth, which often leads to power system curtailment.
Joshi's appointment to the Ministry of Education comes at a difficult time. His predecessor, Dharmendra Pradhan, stepped down from the portfolio following weeks of student protests sparked by alleged leaks of examination materials across the country. These protests brought the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA), exam security, and accountability in the testing system under intense scrutiny.
Restoring confidence in competitive exams, strengthening oversight mechanisms, and resolving issues related to testing agencies are likely to be among Joshi's top priorities. Education experts note that Joshi's problem extends beyond the immediate exam crisis, as the sector faces systemic difficulties in both school and higher education.
Seyed Sultan Ahmed, Chairman of the Teachers' Association of International Schools of India (TAISI), noted that school and higher education are often grouped together, although they have different problems and require separate approaches. He emphasized that the issue is structural, as some states perform better than others, making further coordinated work with states vital for maintaining the federal nature of education.
Ahmed warned that excessive centralization would lead to more problems due to significant disparities between states. He stated that central standards cannot be imposed on states with wide variations in performance, otherwise many states would be deemed incompetent when compared to national averages.
He also pointed out that implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) remains a key challenge, as public spending on education is still below the target of 6 percent of GDP. Currently, at a level of about 3.5-4 percent of GDP, about 80 percent of funds go towards teacher salaries, leaving limited resources for infrastructure modernization and development.
Ahmed called for a review of the examination system in India, arguing that a student's future should not be determined by a single three-hour test. He added that most countries are moving from score-based assessment to portfolio-based assessment, and that the 12th-grade board exams have lost their relevance.
Furthermore, he highlighted the influence of coaching centers on competitive exams like NEET and JEE and called for legislation against such institutions. He stated, 'We need to stop coaching classes and introduce a law against them. If we do this, the coaching industry will collapse like a house of cards.'
In higher education, Ahmed noted that high costs and high thresholds in quality public institutions force many students into expensive private universities.
Bornali Bhandari, a professor at the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), stated that the focus of reforms should shift from enrollment numbers to actual learning outcomes. She pointed to the high dropout rate in Indian secondary education and urged ensuring completion of at least 10th grade, focusing more on educational attainment rather than just enrollment figures.
Bhandari deems reforms necessary in five areas: books, teachers, examinations, curriculum, and pedagogy, with a special emphasis on improving teaching methods. She also advocated for introducing pre-vocational experience in 9th and 10th grades, followed by vocational training in 11th and 12th grades, parallel to regular education.
She observed that integrating artificial intelligence and technology into education is merely a means, not an end. In her view, ultimately, it is necessary to control what happens in the classroom and allow teachers to innovate in their teaching methods to meet the needs of Generation Z and subsequent generations. Bhandari also pointed to the growing gap between educational requirements and labor market demands, noting that employers report a skills deficit among recent graduates. She concluded that there is a fundamental disconnect between what firms want and what the education system provides, and that students need a combination of socio-emotional, cognitive, and technical skills to improve employability.
Some job-seeking teachers held a sit-down strike at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education's head office in Pietermaritzburg. One teacher from KwaMashu reported that unemployed educators were offered R30,000 to secure teaching positions.
A negative feature of post-colonial societies like South Africa is that many atrocities and corrupt practices from the apartheid era easily transitioned into the new democracy. However, it was precisely the discriminatory and biased methods of apartheid that became the target of South Africans' struggle, many of whom sacrificed their lives for this noble cause. Recent revelations of senior officials selling teaching posts have caused concern, although the unpleasant truth is that this is not a new phenomenon.
The practice of nepotism, connections, and outright criminality in appointing new teachers and promoting staff is a long-standing problem that continues to threaten and weaken the already fragile education system. This issue requires far more sustained public attention than the periodic cycle of scandals it currently receives.
Ten years ago, in 2016, a Ministerial investigation into the sale and promotion of teaching posts led by Professor John Volmink unequivocally stated the widespread existence of 'improper influence'—a euphemism for corruption—and the need for decisive political will to rid the system of this disease. The growing number of lawsuits following annual promotion processes is a clear sign of the system's toxicity and, importantly, shows that the Volmink report has largely been ignored!
The Ministerial committee noted several weaknesses in the system that facilitate deliberate misconduct. The first is that crucial tasks related to appointments and promotions are delegated to School Governing Bodies (SGBs) and districts. In many parts of the country, SGB dysfunction is the norm, making them vulnerable to corrupt practices. In poor urban, suburban, and deeply rural areas, parents with low levels of formal education and literacy may struggle to understand official procedures and are easily influenced and exploited by opportunists.
It is also important to understand that SGB corrupt practices are not limited to schools in poor communities. Some schools from the upper quintiles (4 and 5), formerly elite state schools like Model C, have manipulated selection and appointment processes for years to serve their own interests. Although these allegations are extremely difficult to prove, it is widely known that some former white, Indian, and Coloured schools deliberately and shamelessly sought to maintain a white or Indian staff profile.
Our country has a fractured and distorted history, especially regarding socialization over centuries concerning which population groups are intellectually superior to others and who can be reliable, cognitively healthy, and administratively astute for quality teaching and school management. It would be unfair to assume that these prejudiced and discriminatory ideas disappeared after 1994.
During the apartheid era, separate departments managed education for whites, Coloureds, Indians, and Africans, with African education further divided between the Department of Education and Training and various administrations of 'homelands.' These Bantustan bureaucracies used patronage instead of meritocracy. Teacher appointments were distributed based on political loyalty to the homeland leadership with minimal external auditing processes.
It is critical to recognize that this discretionary power of appointment was concentrated in a small group of poorly controlled officials. In other words, we inherited a culture of impunity. Thus, while the decentralization of promotion mechanisms after apartheid was intended to make the process more transparent and democratic, the process itself is now undermined and often operates under the guise of fixing the situation, actively hindering it.
Perhaps the most serious finding of the Ministry is the role of powerful unions in promotion committees. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) has been recognized as influencing SGB decisions and district approvals in at least three provinces. In some cases, unqualified or barely qualified candidates received positions, including leadership roles, to the detriment of better-qualified candidates who simply could not or would not pay.
The Ministerial committee clearly indicated that the controversial ANC staffing 'politics,' placing union members in executive positions on school promotion committees, and appointing union workers to senior administrative roles in districts and provinces further diminish the integrity of school education appointment and promotion processes.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the South African Council for Educators (Sace) is unhealthily close to the ruling party and dominated by one union (Sadtu). The Zondo Commission recently warned that staffing is allowing all aspects of the public sector, including the teaching profession, to be captured by the state!
Readers are reminded that in some supposedly well-functioning schools and provinces, corrupt practices occur in subtler, less detectable, and more favorable conditions. Once this becomes the norm, ethical resistance becomes increasingly complex.
Thus, when some wealthy former Model C schools favor teachers paid by SGBs when state positions become available, or when internal candidates are preferred for promotion over external ones, the ethical code of fairness is violated, and the best candidate does not get the job. Essentially, a high level of functioning and prosperity in a school does not necessarily mean the absence of corruption.
The sale of teaching positions and promotion through nepotism and connections replaces meritocracy with purchasing power or political influence, whereas appointments should be based on qualification and competence. Corrupt appointments discriminate against honest candidates. The consequence of this is the erosion of public trust. A more serious outcome is that schools and the children who study there are deprived of the expertise they deserve.
The Ministerial working group presented a set of 16 justified recommendations. What is needed is the political will to combat corruption and restore the integrity of the system. The true cost is measured not in money exchanged behind closed doors, but in the opportunities quietly stolen from generations of South African children.
