– Amit Kumar Sharma, Founder – Crazinos

The scale of India’s schooling system is not in question. The Economic Survey 2025–26, tabled in Parliament on January 29, 2026, put the number of students in the system at 246.9 million—making it one of the largest in the world. What that scale hides, however, is how often memorisation is presented as learning. The figures on actual comprehension tell a very different story from those on enrolment.

ASER 2024, Pratham’s household survey of rural India, illustrates the extent of the problem. Only 33.7 per cent of Class 3 students could solve a basic subtraction problem, an improvement from 25.9 per cent in 2022 but still far below where the figure should be. Subtraction is not an advanced STEM skill; it is the foundation. When roughly two-thirds of eight-year-olds have not mastered it, subjects such as algebra, physics, and coding are being taught to students whose basic skills were never properly developed.

Where the Method Breaks Down

This is not a talent gap. Indian students win international Olympiads and enter engineering colleges in large numbers. The problem begins much earlier and is far more fundamental: a child is told how a circuit works before ever being handed a wire and a battery. Description is used as a substitute for experience, yet description alone has never taught anyone to think like a scientist.

The National Education Policy 2020 called for experiential learning from the foundational years. The government’s Atal Innovation Mission has since established more than 10,000 Atal Tinkering Labs across 35 states and union territories. These labs have reached more than 11 million students with the support of 6,200 mentors. Children in these labs gain access to basic robotics kits and prototyping tools instead of merely looking at diagrams in textbooks. The government has introduced this model in schools ranging from municipal schools in Bengaluru to government schools for girls in Amritsar.

However, ten thousand labs across a country with approximately 1.5 million schools still represent only a small fraction of the total. Most children will complete their schooling without ever entering one.

Curiosity Does Not Begin in the Classroom

Long before formal education policies take effect, children have already engaged in real science without calling it science. They may drop an antacid tablet into water and watch it fizz or hold a magnet near a pile of pins to see what happens. This instinct to experiment is where scientific thinking begins—and it often begins at home rather than in Class 6.

Years of being given answers to copy instead of problems to solve can gradually suppress that instinct. Addressing the problem does not require every school to have a fully equipped laboratory from the outset. It can begin by allowing children to build a bridge from ice-cream sticks and watch it collapse. That failure may teach them more about loads and structures than a formula can teach on its own. It can also involve puzzles that encourage children to reason through a series of steps without making the activity feel like homework.

Trained teachers and a structured curriculum will continue to do much of the heavy lifting, and the NCERT framework will remain central to formal education. However, there is considerable room on either side of the school day—during weekends, evenings, and the time between tuition and dinner—when a child’s curiosity can either be nurtured or allowed to fade.

The early signs are encouraging. Preschool enrolment is increasing, and foundational reading scores are recovering—two trends that ASER has tracked closely. STEM education does not have to wait until Class 6 to build on that momentum. Children simply need opportunities to build, test, and take things apart much earlier than the current syllabus usually allows.

Consider a simple example. Instead of asking a child to memorise Ohm’s Law or textbook definitions of electrical conductivity, give them a battery, a small bulb, and several everyday objects. Let them build a simple circuit and test materials such as a coin, a plastic pen, and a piece of aluminium foil to discover which ones allow electricity to flow.

The moment the bulb lights up—or fails to light up—the child begins to understand the difference between conductors and insulators through direct experience rather than memorisation alone.

This philosophy lies at the heart of Crazinos. Through practical, hands-on learning kits, children use real circuits and DIY components to build, experiment, test ideas, and make mistakes in a safe environment at home. The objective is not merely to help children remember concepts for examinations but to encourage them to ask questions, explore possibilities, and understand how things work through direct experimentation.

When a child asks, “What if I try this?” and discovers the answer through an experiment, learning becomes more meaningful. This natural curiosity, combined with the freedom to explore and learn through trial and error, lays the foundation for scientific thinking and problem-solving skills.

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