– Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)

With the tamil nadu assembly elections scheduled for April 23, on February 26, the ruling DMK party unveiled an infrastructure push in public schools — 1,232 new classrooms in 217 government schools and high-tech laboratories in 600 aided schools at an expenditure of Rs.330 crore. While this announcement has been widely publicised, opposition parties especially the AIADMK which was last in power in Tamil Nadu in 2021 have dismissed it as a showpiece developmental initiative, a cover-up for its failure to address deep-seated issues plaguing the state’s public education system. They may have a point because this belated infrastructure development initiative will upgrade a mere 817 of the state’s 46,000 government and aided primary-secondary schools with an aggregate enrolment of 5 million children.

“Installing hi-tech labs in 817 out of 46,000 government schools can’t have statewide effect. During its five-year term in office, the DMK government should have continuously rolled out an infrastructure upgrade drive across all 46,000 government and aided schools in the state. Moreover, it should have also invested in teacher training, libraries and playgrounds for government school children. But neither this nor its predecessor AIADMK government allocated sufficient resources for school and higher education. Successive governments that have ruled the state for the past two decades have instead spent taxpayers money on freebies — free electricity, free bus travel for women, cash transfers, laptops, livestocks — estimated at Rs.40,000-50,000 crore per year. This money should have been invested in education and human resource development. As a result, Tamil Nadu has lost its premier position as India’s most well educated state,” says Dr. S. Somasundaram, a Chennai-based educationist.

In NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index (SEQI) 2016-17, Tamil Nadu was ranked #2 in the country, behind Kerala. Almost a decade later, in the latest available SEQI-based rankings (2025-26), Tamil Nadu has slipped to #8 position among large states, with a score of 56.37, behind Kerala, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.

Likewise, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 published by the highly respected independent Pratham Education Foundation provides a sobering picture of learning outcomes in Tamil Nadu’s rural government schools. According to ASER 2024, a mere 37 percent of class V children can read class II textbooks and only 20 percent can solve some simple division sums.

This is the consequence of multi-grade teaching, severe lack of laboratories and libraries in government schools. Although over the past seven years, the state’s budgetary allocation for school education has risen from Rs.28,758 crore to Rs.48,534 crore, adjusted for inflation, teachers’ salaries, infrastructure, investment in K-12 education has been nominal.

“Chronic shortage of funds for new infrastructure aside, existing infrastructure has to be maintained, teachers trained regularly and curriculums have to be updated. All this requires substantial budgetary provision. With the assembly election due on April 23, it is natural for governments to highlight visible achievements like classrooms and labs. But the real challenge lies in what happens after elections — whether infra provided is effectively used and maintained. On all these fronts successive governments have failed to make adequate provision,” says S. Karthikeyan, senior school principal, Tiruchirappalli district.

Former US President Abraham Lincoln famously remarked that politicians can’t fool the people all the time. By neglecting education and perpetuating illiteracy while disseminating freebies, Tamil Nadu’s politicians are proving Lincoln wrong.