It’s standard practice for India’s educational establishment to ensure that the truth about the education system remains concealed so the public can continue to believe that India is one of the world’s most educated countries as evidenced by the success of Indian professionals in the US and other Western countries. Yet the plain truth is that 21st century India’s education system is threadbare and broken. The evidence is routinely covered up, and those who disagree are persecuted and vilified.

The true picture is that in high school and higher secondary board exams, the pass rate in many of India’s 29 states would be pitiably low if routine mass cheating and copying is strictly curtailed. For instance, when the government of Uttar Pradesh stationed police personnel in all high school exam centres in 1992 to prevent mass cheating that is normative, the pass percentage which had averaged 45 percent since 1989 plunged to 14.7 percent. This is proof that without cheating, only about 15 percent of teenagers in the state can achieve the low average (33 percent) required to pass the school-leaving class X exam of the UP state board. Against this, the proportion of students who pass the high school (class X) exam countrywide is over 80 percent. For example in UP of 2015, the pass proportion is a heart-warming 88 percent.

Another standard practice to maintain pass rates in board exams at deceptively high levels and keep everyone happy in the make-believe world of Indian education, is ‘moderation of marks’ by exam boards. According to a member of the UP secondary education board, moderation of marks can be up to 100 percent over marks awarded on exam answer scripts. Such generous moderation explains how the pass percentages in UP can yo-yo between 45 and 80 percent depending on whether a stern or liberal government is in power in Lucknow. The outcome of such irresponsible liberalism and generosity is that learning outcomes in primary/elementary levels are plumbing new depths.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), published by the Mumbai-based NGO Pratham since 2005, which tests the learning attainments of 700,000 primary school children across rural India every year, reports pitifully low literacy and numeracy skills among children in classes I-VIII. For example, ASER 2015 indicates that in rural government primaries, only 21 percent of class V children can do simple division sums (a class II competency), and only 42 percent can read and comprehend class II texts. But the painstakingly produced ASER report is routinely ignored by Central and state education officials only interested in feel-good stories.

Another example of shutting out sources of bad news is India’s decision not to participate in future international PISA tests, after results embarrassingly showed India being ranked 73rd of 74 participating countries in the PISA numeracy and literacy test of 15-year-olds (and that’s when in 2009 India put forward students from its two most educationally advanced states — Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu). This kind of decision-making — of burying ostrich-like one’s head in the sand or running away from the problem — is pervasive in India’s Central and state education ministries.

Similarly, the country’s teacher training and development system is in tatters, as evidenced by rock bottom pass percentages (averaging 4 percent) in the first round of the Teacher Eligibility Tests (TETs) of India’s 29 states. Translated, this means fewer than 4 percent of in-service teachers scored above 60 percent in a test which mainly assesses the subject-matter knowledge of teachers in language, maths and environmental science at the primary school level of difficulty. This catastrophic statistic indicates that 96 percent of the country’s 7 million elementary school teachers have insufficient knowledge of the subjects they are meant to teach in primary schools.

These abysmal levels of teacher competence are unsurprising, given that a huge percentage of inadequately literate and numerate children are routinely passed through secondary and higher secondary schools by tolerance of mass cheating and reckless moderation of mark sheets by state exam boards. When a parliamentary question was asked on April 26, 2012 about rock-bottom TET pass rates, then Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal blamed private teacher training colleges which according to him, have “mushroomed” across the country. But he neglected to mention that the government-constituted National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) accredits such colleges. He also omitted to acknowledge the problem of rock bottom literacy and numeracy skills of students awarded bachelors and even Masters degrees who qualify for admission into teacher training colleges.

Instead of hiding behind false feel-good myths, it’s time India’s education ministries at the Centre and in the states became serious about providing schooling which results in real learning. In the absence of a solid base of literacy and numeracy skills, India’s oft-proclaimed aspiration to become a super power will remain a pipedream. And the first step is for government to acknowledge the problem rather than hide it.

(Dr. Geeta Kingdon is chair of education economics and international development at the Institute of Education, University of London and president of the City Montessori School, Lucknow)