The first major political party to accord public K-12 education reform and upgradation high priority in its electoral campaigns, the Aam Aadmi Party which ruled Delhi state from 2015-25, promulgated too many reform initiatives too fast – Sandeep Sen

Showcase Delhi state government schools: showcase & others gap

After defeat in the Delhi state legislative assembly elections early this year, and indictment and internment last year of its founder-leader Arvind Kejriwal, a former Indian Revenue Service officer, on corruption charges, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fallen off the national radar. However, it is pertinent to recall that immediately after it was registered as a political party, AAP — the first political party in post-independence India to accord high place to education reform and upgradation of K-12 schools in its election manifesto — fared well in the Delhi state election of 2013, bagging 28 seats of the 70 assembly seats.

Embroilment of the Congress-led UPA-II government at the Centre in a spate of corruption scandals precipitated the landslide victory of the BJP-led NDA coalition in General Election 2014, reducing Congress to 44 seats in a 543-seats Lok Sabha. This thumping majority prompted the triumphant new BJP/NDA government in Delhi to dissolve the Delhi state legislative assembly and decree new elections in 2015. Against all expectations, AAP humbled the high-riding BJP and swept the assembly election, winning 67 of the 70 seats. During its election campaign and subsequently, a major electoral plank of AAP was reform of Delhi’s education system, especially its public schools.

Four years later when AAP contested General Election 2019, it again accorded high priority to school education. Taking credit for adding 8,213 classrooms to the state government’s 1,028 public schools “despite all the hurdles laid by Central government”; sending Delhi government school teachers to “coveted institutes in Finland, Singapore & United Kingdom” for training; launching special initiatives to improve the foundational learning skills of students; introducing happiness and entrepreneurship curriculums in government schools; re-energising parent-dominated School Management Committees, and reiterating that Delhi’s government schools performed better than the state’s private schools in class XII results consecutively for three years, education dominated the AAP General Election 2019 manifesto.

Arvind Kejriwal (right) & Manish Sisodia

Although AAP didn’t fare well in General Election 2019, bagging only one seat in the Lok Sabha, this new political party impacted the importance of radical reform of K-12 education on the national conscious. Enthused by AAP having brought the issue of education reform on the national agenda, in a cover story titled “Many Hurdles of India’s Most Public Education-Friendly Party” (June 2019), EW wrote: “During the past four years, Delhi’s AAP government has emerged as the only administration countrywide that has given primary-secondary education reform high and arguably top priority. It has consistently increased the state government’s annual outlay for education from 23.8 percent of the total budget in 2015-16, to 26 percent (Rs.15,601 crore) in 2019-20. The educationally backward states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan allocate a mere 16.1 percent of their total state budget for education. Even the educationally advanced state of Karnataka allocated a mere 10.9 percent (Rs.23,760 crore) for education. Consequently, the AAP government’s education outlay per child is Rs.51,745 (cf. the national average of Rs.13,974).”

Evidently Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party’s leadership’s focus on public education resonated with the electorate. In the Delhi state legislative election of 2020, AAP was re-elected with a massive majority winning 62 seats in the 70-strong assembly. With AAP’s public image at its zenith, Delhi’s government schools also won encomiums in the media for their transformation into high-performance institutions. In the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings, Delhi government’s Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya, Sector 10, Dwarka, was ranked India’s #1 government day school for three years (2021-23) consecutively, indicating favorable public perception of AAP’s much-publicised education reforms.

However, the stunning defeat of AAP in the assembly election of 2025 when its seats tally aggregated a mere 22, and the party’s top leaders including Arvind Kejriwal, education minister Manish Sisodia lost their seats, has prompted psephologists to conclude that the Delhi electorate had become disillusioned with the AAP government’s much proclaimed K-12 education reform and upgradation initiatives. Now a decade after the first AAP government of Delhi state was elected, there’s emerging evidence that its much-proclaimed K-12 education reforms were more form than substance.

Beneath visible changes and soaring aspirations, Delhi’s public schools continue to struggle with the fundamentals. For all the new investment and innovation claimed by AAP, the core promise — that every child would improve her reading, writing, and numeracy skills — has proved elusive. Recent surveys and internal assessments indicate that only a minority of students in Delhi’s government schools have attained basic literacy and numeracy benchmarks by the end of their primary years. Mass failures and dropouts before class IX, underqualified ‘guest’ teachers, and huge quality gaps between flagship “model” schools and ordinary schools persist.

“The 8,300 new classrooms that the AAP government constructed during three terms translates into 100 new schools, a 10 percent addition to the total number. The remainder have not improved,” says a principal of a non-showcased school.

Moreover, several studies conducted during the AAP government’s rule over Delhi indicate that despite the government’s numerous headline-grabbing initiatives such as sending government school principals to Finland and Singapore for leadership training, students’ learning outcomes didn’t improve significantly, if at all.

For instance, in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) conducted by the Union education ministry for classes III, V, VIII and X countrywide in 2017 and 2021, only children in class III showed above national average proficiency gains. Moreover, a recent 2025 NCERT countrywide survey of children in classes III, VI and IX, shows that class III children indicated above national average proficiency, class VI lagged behind and class IX exhibited modest improvement, although a State Level Achievement Survey (SLAS) 2025 shows better learning outcomes. These surveys and studies indicate a wide gap between investment, propaganda and outcomes.

Evidence is also emerging that in its enthusiasm to overhaul a broken system and prove that government schools can attain private school standards in short order, AAP unleashed a barrage of overlapping reforms — new curricula, international training, parental engagement drives, remedial programs, and attention-grabbing innovations — almost simultaneously.

For an already overstretched system, this rapid-fire sequence proved overwhelming. Principals, teachers, and administrators struggled to absorb each new initiative before the next one landed, juggling constant mandates, shifting targets, and mounting paperwork. Rather than building steady, sustainable improvement, the deluge of reforms left school managements scrambling to keep up — unable to fully implement, internalise, or benefit from an initiative before yet another arrived. In the process, the ambition to revolutionise education often collided with the realities on the ground, ratifying that true transformation demands not just bold ideas, but also patience, focus and sustained commitment to innovation inside every classroom.

Gupta: general apathy

Comments Mohini Gupta, an alumna of Oxford University (UK) and currently postdoctoral fellow at the  Danish School of Education, Aarhus University (Denmark), who researches educational anthropology: “While conducting my research in Delhi, I noticed high student absenteeism, low teacher motivation and general apathy in government schools towards new schemes introduced by the AAP government. Teachers complained that there were new schemes every day, such as the Happiness curriculum and Classroom Library initiatives. But they were not successful because they were so frequent, leading to lack of motivation among students, teachers and school administrators.”

Shah: institutionalisation failure

This viewpoint is seconded by Dr. Parth Shah, a former professor of political economy at University of Michigan (USA) and founder-president of Centre for Civil Society (CCS), Delhi, the highly reputed K-12 education-focused think-tank (estb. 1997). “The major drawback of AAP’s education reforms was failure to institutionalise practices, processes, rules and norms. These are the most difficult part of any reform. Time, persistence and patience is required to implement them sustainably. To its credit, the Delhi government under AAP consistently allocated more than 25 percent of the state budget to education during the years they were in power. No other Indian state government had so decisively made school reform its signature political project or invested so heavily in public messaging about its achievements. But from 2015 onward, AAP leaders launched program after program, too quickly in succession for them to be effective,” says Shah.

These initiatives included large-scale investments in school infrastructure, introduction of new pedagogical models such as Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), and initiatives like Chunauti and Mission Buniyaad designed to address foundational learning gaps. High-profile curricular changes, such as the Happiness Curriculum, and high-octane parental engagement drives and mega-PTMs, followed in quick succession.

While each initiative was defensible — and in some cases, inspired by robust research — the scope and velocity of these reforms overwhelmed the system. School leaders, teachers, and mid-level administrators were flooded with circulars announcing new mandates, targets, training sessions, and responsibilities, often with minimal time to adapt. Most programs were implemented at scale almost immediately, without the gradual piloting or systemic alignment necessary for success. The system was, in effect, forced to “swallow ten medicines at once” — shocking an already stretched set of front-line workers.

Inevitably under the AAP government’s K-12 education reforms, teachers were obliged to discharge a pivotal role in efforts to improve education. But they were subjected to a constant stream of urgent new orders and official notices. These instructions typically provided little opportunity for implementation and rarely engaged with the everyday realities of classroom teaching. Policies were dictated from higher authorities, outlining what must be done but the vital support that teachers needed to implement the mandated changes was seldom provided.

Raman: public relations success

“The AAP education reforms were able to touch ground, at least in some schools. But only in a small proportion,” says V.R. Raman, Executive Director of the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), a Delhi-based think-tank. “Despite AAP’s massive investment — and its ability to attract national and international headlines — data on actual student outcomes reveal a sobering picture. AAP’s messaging highlighted new programs, slogans, and highly publicised success stories. However, when reviewing actual learning data and classroom impact, it becomes clear that much of this achievement is more about public relations than genuine transformation,” says Raman.

Over the past decade, Delhi’s educational experiment under the Aam Aadmi Party unfolded amidst bold promises, unprecedented investment, and global headlines. For the first time in memory, a political party made public education the centrepiece of its electoral and governance agenda. AAP shifted education from the political and budgetary sidelines to the front pages of manifestos and mainstream public debate. That, in itself, was no small accomplishment.

Yet the fate of Delhi’s government schools after ten years serves as a sobering reminder that vision alone is not enough. Despite the increase in the number of classrooms, headline reforms like the Happiness Curriculum and Mission Buniyaad, and a media blitz devoted to teacher training and infrastructure, the core learning crisis endured. Student engagement and outcomes did not rise to match the scale of the investment, and deep structural bottlenecks continued to hold the system back. Reforms, however ambitious, often became just another burden for already overworked teachers and administrators, arriving so quickly and frequently that they undermined genuine change instead of reinforcing it.

Ultimately, AAP fell into the age-old trap of Indian education reform: believing that new programs, additional funds, or innovative slogans are sufficient to drive real transformation. The state’s political and bureaucratic machinery remained far removed from the everyday realities of classrooms and too reliant on compliance and paperwork rather than building authentic partnerships. Implementation gaps widened as those at the top pressed forward enthusiastically, while many on the ground grew weary, indifferent, and resigned.

As Delhi turns the page on a decade of disruption, its experience offers a valuable lesson for reformers nationwide. Ambition and investment matter, but they are just the beginning. Lasting change in education comes from slow, careful diligence of building trust, empowering teachers, and developing a culture that cares as much about how children learn as about what political headlines say. Until then, even the best intentions will struggle to deliver on promise.

Timeline of AAP’s education reform overload

2016: Chunauti mission targets foundational learning gaps.

2017-18: Massive summer “mission-mode” learning camps, Mission Buniyaad, new subject curricula, and burst of teacher training programmes.

2018-19: Happiness Curriculum, Pragati workbooks launched; further rounds of curriculum reform.

2020-22: Pandemic closures, high-velocity digital projects, remote and catch-up programs.

2023-24: Focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in wake of learning losses (NIPUN Bharat, nationwide FLN push).