For years, Maharashtra’s education system has been showing signs of a crisis that has been difficult to ignore but remarkably easy for governments and political parties to treat as a mosaic of only isolated problems. Teacher shortages, deteriorating school infrastructure, disappearing Marathi-medium schools, inadequate facilities in tribal and residential schools, the relocation and proposed closure of low-enrolment schools, and the growing involvement of private entities in public education are not new developments. They are different symptoms of a deeper and sustained failure to ensure that every child has meaningful access to a well-staffed, adequately funded and accessible public school. The brazen shift towards privatisation is at the core of this shift.
Dalit, Adivasi, rural and economically disadvantaged communities have repeatedly raised these concerns, often from the sharpest end of the crisis. For children in remote villages and tribal settlements, the loss of a neighbourhood school can mean a long and unsafe journey to another village. For students in government and municipal schools, a vacant teacher’s post can mean months or years without instruction in crucial subjects. For children living in government hostels and Ashram schools, inadequate sanitation, food, security and medical facilities can turn access to education into a question of basic safety and dignity. Moreover, for families seeking education in Marathi, the steady weakening of Marathi-medium institutions raises questions about whether the State is preserving meaningful choice or allowing an entire public education network to wither.
The Maharashtra media and even some sections of the “national legacy media” have reported these failures repeatedly, but largely as separate episodes: a school without teachers here, a dangerous building there, a protest over toilets or hostels elsewhere, a proposed school merger or closure, a dispute over Marathi-medium education, or a new policy promising modernisation. The result has been a fragmented public conversation about what is, in reality, a connected and longstanding crisis. These issues crucial to access and participation in a democracy have never been the subject of a sustained media campaign. Successive governments have announced schemes, reviews, reforms and infrastructure programmes, while the underlying questions of staffing, access, funding and accountability have remained.
What is equally striking is how little political space this crisis has occupied as a sustained issue. Despite Maharashtra’s large network of government, Zilla Parishad and municipal schools, and despite repeated concerns raised by teachers, parents, educationists and marginalised communities, the condition of public schooling has rarely been made a central political question. Opposition parties have criticised individual decisions, school closures or government policies, but the broader deterioration of the public education system has not consistently been treated as a major political issue.
It was against this backdrop that the recent School Thik Karo campaign brought the condition of government schools into a more concentrated public spotlight. The campaign led by Cockroach Janta Party convenor Abhijeet Dipke has sought to document basic deficiencies in schools across Maharashtra and place them before the public. Its significance lies in something larger: it has attempted to connect problems that have too often been reported, protested and debated separately. The crisis, however, predates the campaign by years.
The evidence is now difficult to dismiss as a series of isolated incidents. Maharashtra’s own education data records schools without electricity, internet connectivity, functional computers, accessible toilets and adequate teaching staff. Students have protested because teachers are missing. Adivasi students have gone on hunger strike over hostel conditions. Parents and activists have opposed school closures, mergers and relocations. Marathi-medium schools have steadily declined. Teachers are being pulled away from classrooms for non-academic duties, including prolonged election-related work. At the same time, governments have explored cluster schools, school adoption and Public-Private Partnership models even as large parts of the public system continue to struggle with basic infrastructure and vacancies.
This is therefore not simply a story about a few poorly maintained schools, nor is it only about the latest government policy or the latest student protest. It is a story about what happens when the State’s responsibility to provide public education is repeatedly addressed through piecemeal interventions while the structural weaknesses of the system remain.
Maharashtra now speaks the language of a “modern”, digital and future-ready education system. However, before asking whether its schools are ready for artificial intelligence, coding, smart classrooms and digital learning, there is a more basic question to answer: are its schools adequately staffed, safely accessible, properly equipped and capable of providing every child with a meaningful education? The answer emerging from the experiences of students, teachers, parents, marginalised communities and the State’s own data is far more troubling than the language of modernisation suggests.
Justice Varale questions education spending as Marathi-medium schools face closure
Nothing exposes Maharashtra state’s education policy priorities more than what was highlighted by a Supreme Court Judge recently.
Speaking about the condition of Marathi-medium schools weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice P.B. Varale on Saturday, August 22, reportedly questioned the State’s spending priorities, saying that even a fraction of the funds earmarked for the Nashik Kumbh Mela could have helped prevent the closure of hundreds of Marathi-medium schools. The Times of India reported that Justice Varale made the remarks during an event at his former school in Nashik.
Justice Varale reportedly referred to the Maharashtra government’s proposed expenditure on Kumbh infrastructure and a corridor project, while clarifying that he did not oppose such spending. However, he questioned whether a small portion of the allocation could instead have been directed towards education. He said that 0.1% of the Kumbh allocation, amounting to around Rupees 32 Crore, could have helped save more than 100–150 Marathi-medium schools from closure, according to the report.
The Maharashtra government has informed the Union government that a comprehensive development plan of Rupees 22,425.39 Crore has been approved for the 2027 Nashik Simhastha Kumbh Mela. The plan was approved at a meeting of the Apex Committee chaired by the Chief Minister on March 13, 2026, with the Kumbh scheduled to begin in October 2026.
Justice Varale also drew attention to the condition of residential schools, particularly ashramshalas catering to students from marginalised communities. Referring to reports of three girl students at an ashramshala who died after allegedly being bitten by snakes while sleeping on the floor, he reportedly said that the overall condition of several residential schools remained “pathetic”.
His remarks also pointed to a broader concern over the State’s changing budgetary priorities. Justice Varale reportedly observed that the share of the budget allocated to education, which had earlier ranged between 8% and 12%, had declined.
Modern education system cannot be built on disappearing schools
Perhaps the most significant development in Maharashtra’s education story is that students and their families are increasingly refusing to remain passive recipients of policy. Adivasi students have gone on hunger strike, Dharashiv students have sat outside the Zilla Parishad CEO’s office, villagers have locked a school in protest over teacher shortages, parents have challenged school relocations, and activists have documented failures in school infrastructure.
The protests differ in geography and immediate demand, but they share a common message: children and their families are being asked to accept gaps in a system that the State continues to describe as modern, inclusive and future-ready. Educationist Prabhu Mohapatra, commenting on the wider rise in student protests, told PTI that students were increasingly asserting themselves as stakeholders in education policy and that the protests reflected concerns over infrastructure, teacher availability and the quality of learning.
That assertion of agency may be the most important shift in Maharashtra’s education story. Students are not demanding luxury. They are demanding teachers, safe school buildings, functioning toilets, drinking water, adequate classrooms, accessible schools and the ability to continue learning in their own language. They are asking for the basic conditions necessary for education, and for the State to treat those conditions not as discretionary benefits but as public obligations. Maharashtra now has two competing narratives about education.
The first is the official narrative: smart classrooms, artificial intelligence, coding, digital platforms, teacher training, modernisation and a “mission mode” transformation of the education system. The second is emerging from classrooms, villages, hostels and protests: missing teachers, inadequate infrastructure, unsafe or unsuitable accommodation, inaccessible schools, unreliable or disputed data, and institutions facing closure or merger. Both realities have to be confronted.
The government can legitimately point to improvements and new initiatives, and its officials have disputed some of the broader allegations concerning infrastructure. But the State’s own U-DISE data, the Centre’s Project Approval Board review, the Bombay High Court’s intervention and repeated student and parent protests point to structural weaknesses that cannot be resolved through announcements alone.
The decline of Marathi-medium schools makes the problem even more consequential. This is not simply an infrastructure crisis; it is also a question of what kind of public education Maharashtra intends to preserve. If Marathi is to be protected, Marathi-medium schools cannot merely be celebrated symbolically. They must be adequately funded, staffed, upgraded and made capable of providing quality education without forcing parents to abandon the language in which their children have been studying.
If a school has low enrolment, the first question should therefore not automatically be how soon it can be closed. The more fundamental question is why enrolment is falling in the first place.
Is the school inadequately staffed? Are its buildings and facilities deteriorating? Are teachers being diverted to non-teaching duties? Is the school too far from where families now live? Has urban redevelopment displaced the community it once served? Are parents choosing other schools because the Marathi-medium option is perceived to offer poorer infrastructure or fewer opportunities? Has the medium of instruction itself become stigmatised? In addition, crucially, could targeted investment reverse the decline?
These questions become particularly urgent when the children affected are poor, rural, tribal or dependent on Marathi-medium government schools. For such families, the closure of a neighbourhood school is not simply an administrative restructuring. It can mean longer journeys, additional transport costs, greater dependence on private education and, in some cases, the eventual withdrawal of children from school altogether. And where closure is genuinely unavoidable, the State must be able to answer a more basic question: where exactly will every child go?
The Maharashtra government has now promised a time-bound transformation of the education system. The measure of that transformation, however, should not be the number of schemes announced, platforms launched, classrooms labelled “smart” or meetings conducted. It should be visible in the ordinary conditions in which children actually study.
It should mean a functioning fan in a classroom, a usable toilet, clean drinking water, adequate teachers, a safe hostel, a working computer, a laboratory that has actually been built and equipped, and a school that remains within reasonable reach of the children it serves. It should also mean a Marathi-medium school that is not forced to fight simply to survive.
Until these become ordinary features rather than exceptional achievements, the phrase “modern education system” will remain more aspiration than reality. A State cannot credibly claim to be building the schools of the future while allowing existing schools to become inaccessible, under-resourced or disappear altogether.
August 2026: Students on hunger strike for the right to study
The latest and perhaps most revealing episode came from Maharashtra’s Adivasi student community. In August 2026, tribal students in Pune and elsewhere in Maharashtra began protesting against a range of issues concerning government hostels and Ashram schools. Six students continued a hunger strike at the Adivasi Government Boys Hostel near the Hadapsar-Manjari border.
The immediate trigger was a Government Resolution issued on August 14, 2026, imposing a maximum age of 30 years for admission to tribal hostels. But the students’ demands went far beyond the age restriction.
The protest also brought allegations about the treatment of female students into focus. On August 24, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis raising concerns about the conditions described to him by tribal students. He alleged that hostels were unsafe and lacked adequate food, sanitation and medical care, and referred to claims that female students returning after an extended absence were subjected to pregnancy and other medical tests.
The Hindu also reported on August 24, the protesting students demanded the withdrawal of the August 14 Government Resolution and a revised order based on the earlier November 11, 2011 framework, with allowances linked to inflation. They sought greater protection for students living in tribal hostels and Ashram schools, ₹1 crore insurance cover for tribal students, ₹1 crore compensation for the families of three tribal girls who died following a snake-bite incident in Gadchiroli, a safe and properly equipped hostel for female students in Pune, and immediate filling of vacant posts including peons, security guards and sanitation workers.
The scale of dependence on these hostels is itself significant. As The Indian Express reported on August 26, the Tribal Development Department runs 490 government hostels across Maharashtra, accommodating between 58,000 and 60,000 students every year. The government ultimately backed down on the immediate issue. On August 25, following discussions with tribal legislators and MPs, Tribal Development Minister Ashok Uike announced that the 30-year age limit had been scrapped and that there would be no age restriction for admission to Adivasi hostels. The Indian Express reported that the decision came a day after Rahul Gandhi had raised the matter with Fadnavis. The government therefore acted. However, it acted after 13 days of hunger strike.
That sequence matters. It raises the question of how many of the other problems raised by the students — safety, sanitation, staffing, food, medical care and financial support — will require another protest before they receive sustained attention.
July 2026: “We need teachers, not promises”
The same pattern was visible in Dharashiv. On July 31, India Today reported that Class 10 students of a Zilla Parishad secondary school in Sonari village had begun an indefinite sit-in outside the Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer’s office demanding regular secondary-school teachers. Their complaint was not new. According to the protesting students, several teaching and staff posts had remained vacant for nearly four years. Repeated representations had allegedly failed to produce concrete action. A day before the sit-in, villagers had locked the school to draw attention to the shortage.
Students particularly objected to primary-school teachers being used to teach secondary classes, arguing that students preparing for the SSC examination required qualified subject teachers. The protest carried an especially pointed message. Students invoked the government’s “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” campaign and asked, in effect: what does saving the girl child mean if she is then denied the teachers required to complete her education? They also invoked Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s call to “Educate, Organise and Agitate”.
They said they had already approached the Zilla Parishad CEO, Education Officer, District Collector and Superintendent of Police on July 28, but claimed that no effective action followed.
This is not merely a question of staffing. For a Class 10 student, a missing teacher is not an abstract administrative vacancy. It can mean an incomplete syllabus, inadequate preparation for a board examination and, for poorer families, pressure to pay for private tuition that they may not be able to afford. Moreover, the state already knows that teacher shortages are a wider problem.
The Government’s own data exposes the gap
On July 17, the findings emerging from the Ministry of Education’s U-DISE 2025-26 data provided that Maharashtra had 108,139 schools, 21.6 million students and 750,272 teachers. But 3,201 schools had no electricity connection at all. Another 10,938 had electricity connections that were not functional. A further 23,855 schools had no internet connectivity. Of the 90,419 schools that had computer facilities, computers were functional in only 84,530. That left 23,609 schools without operational computer systems.
The contradiction is hard to miss. The state is speaking increasingly about artificial intelligence, coding, smart classrooms and digital learning. Yet thousands of its schools are still struggling with the infrastructure required to switch on a computer, let alone build a digital classroom. The problem goes beyond technology. U-DISE data showed that 9,269 schools were single-teacher schools, catering to 179,104 students. More than 32,000 schools lacked separate toilets for children with disabilities, while 16,341 did not have ramps with railings.
There were 2,019 unusable girls’ toilets and 3,280 unusable boys’ toilets, with the data attributing the problem to issues including water, maintenance and pending repairs. Another 3,932 schools lacked playgrounds and 1,099 lacked a library or book bank. Only 13,550 schools had digital libraries, leaving 94,589 without one. These figures matter because they are not merely the claims of opposition parties or activists; they come from the government’s own education database.
Teachers are being asked to do more with less
Teachers have also described the consequences of this system. Vijay Kombe, president of the Maharashtra State Primary Teachers’ Committee, told ETV Bharat that schools continued to face shortages of basic items such as mats, desks and benches. He said local-government schools lacked dedicated cleaning staff and that teachers in some places were consequently forced to clean classrooms and toilets, sometimes with students’ help.
Kombe also claimed that more than 75 per cent of primary schools run by local self-government bodies lacked headmasters, leaving teachers to combine administrative duties with classroom teaching. He criticised the staffing arrangement in low-enrolment schools, under which one primary teacher may have to manage multiple classes, while one teacher may be required to teach all subjects for Classes 6 to 8.
There is, however, an important official counterpoint. Divisional Deputy Director of Education Rajesh Kankal said drinking-water facilities were available in more than 100,000 schools, while more than 107,000 had hand-washing facilities and more than 102,000 conducted annual health check-ups. He said the administration was working to rectify the remaining shortcomings. The issue, therefore, is not that Maharashtra has no facilities.
It is that the existence of facilities in the majority of schools does not erase the thousands of schools where they are absent, dysfunctional or inaccessible. For a child attending one of those schools, the state-wide average offers little comfort.
SIR extension keeps teachers away from classrooms
The extension of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Maharashtra has prolonged the deployment of teachers as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and support staff, affecting regular classroom teaching, unit tests and other academic activities. Teachers who were expected to return to schools by August 8 had been assigned election-related duties until August 17, with house visits, voter verification and form-related work continuing even as schools prepare for examinations and work to complete the syllabus.
The timing has added to existing pressures on schools. Unit tests scheduled for August and periodic assessments meant to track students’ learning are being affected, while teachers are also required to cover new textbooks introduced for Standards III, IV and VI under the National Education Policy. In some government and civic schools, more than 70% of teaching staff has reportedly been deployed for SIR-related work, leaving schools with reduced staff and, in some cases, forcing them to operate for only half the day. Teachers and school heads have said the prolonged absence is making it difficult to complete teaching and conduct examinations as scheduled.
The impact extends beyond teachers formally appointed as BLOs, with other teaching and non-teaching employees being assigned to assist with the exercise. In one school, Headmaster Tanaji Mane said three teachers initially appointed as BLOs were later joined by teaching and non-teaching staff who were relieved of their regular duties. Data cited by Progressive Teachers Association president Tanaji Kamble from Mumbai’s Ghatkopar East constituency reportedly showed that 184 of 283 BLOs were from the Education Department, including 157 teachers. Teachers have also faced pressure to report for election duties, with police notices reportedly issued to some who failed to do so. Educationists and teacher representatives have consequently questioned whether such prolonged deployment is compatible with the State’s responsibility to ensure uninterrupted schooling.
The issue ultimately raises a larger question about how election-related administrative work is being balanced against children’s right to regular education. Teachers have described the SIR process as continuous and demanding, while educationists have warned that prolonged absence from classrooms can disrupt learning, assessments and syllabus completion. With the electoral exercise continuing even as the academic year progresses, teacher organisations have suggested using trained personnel from other departments or other mechanisms for election work instead of repeatedly drawing teachers away from schools. The concern is not simply about teachers’ workload, but about what happens to students when the people responsible for teaching them are routinely pulled away from the classroom.
Detailed report may be read here.
The Centre’s review makes the picture worse
The Ministry of Education’s Project Approval Board raised similar concerns while examining Maharashtra’s Samagra Shiksha plan for 2026-27. Of 22,416 eligible upper-primary, secondary and higher-secondary schools, 21,009 did not have ICT laboratories. Another 4,286 lacked smart classrooms. Nearly 60 per cent of primary and upper-primary schools had fewer than 30 students each, while 7,186 schools had only one teacher.
The Union also noted that more than 4,300 villages did not have a secondary school within the prescribed distance and more than 6,500 villages lacked access to a higher-secondary school. More than 80 per cent of approved science laboratories had not been completed, while toilets sanctioned for children with special needs remained pending. The teacher vacancy figures were equally concerning; around 17% of secondary teaching posts and 25% of higher-secondary posts were vacant.
The Centre approved ₹2,494.17 crore under Samagra Shiksha for Maharashtra for 2026-27 and directed the state to complete pending infrastructure and digital projects in “mission mode”. The Maharashtra government, for its part, said most sanctioned ICT laboratories were under installation and would be completed by the end of the year.
But this creates an uncomfortable policy contradiction. The government is being asked to modernise schools while it has not yet completed the basics.
Then there is the question of closing schools
Perhaps the most consequential issue is not what is missing from schools, but what happens when the state decides a school is no longer viable. In April 2026, the Maharashtra government issued two Government Resolutions declaring 433 primary schools and 324 secondary schools ineligible for grant-in-aid. The schools were directed to apply under the Maharashtra Self-Financed Schools Act, 2012. If they failed to do so, their recognition could be cancelled, effectively leading to closure. The Bombay High Court intervened.
On April 29, 2026, the Kolhapur Bench held that the government’s action could not proceed against the petitioner schools without giving them an opportunity to be heard. As The Hindu reported on May 19, the court found that the resolutions violated principles of natural justice and directed that the petitioner institutions be removed from the list. Nevertheless, the court’s observations went beyond procedure.
The bench noted that the affected schools were predominantly Marathi-medium institutions, particularly in villages. It pointed out the contradiction in the state’s position: on the one hand, Maharashtra was insisting that Marathi be given greater importance; on the other, the government’s action could result in the closure of Marathi-medium schools.
The judges also asked questions that should have been at the centre of the government’s decision before the resolutions were issued: Could the students actually be accommodated in nearby schools? Would the medium of instruction continue? What would happen in villages where alternative schools were not available? What would happen to teaching and non-teaching staff? Could teachers be absorbed elsewhere? And could poor families be expected to bear the consequences of the shift to self-financed education?
The court concluded that these considerations had not been adequately addressed and directed the state to conduct hearings before taking action. That intervention is crucial because it exposes the danger of treating school closure as a mere question of numbers. A school with fewer students is not automatically a redundant school as it may be the only school within walking distance, or the only affordable school, or the only school teaching in the child’s language. And if it disappears, the state’s responsibility does not disappear with it.
2023: From school closures to “adoption”: A changing model of public education
The debate over low-enrolment schools cannot be separated from another policy shift: the growing role being given to private entities in the management and development of government schools. Maharashtra has increasingly presented private participation as a means of improving infrastructure and educational quality, even as questions remain about why the State is unable to adequately fund and maintain its own public-school system.
In September 2023, the Maharashtra government introduced an “Adopt a School” scheme under the National Education Policy’s Vidyanjali initiative. As reported by the Times of India on September 19, 2023, the scheme allowed private and public sector entities to adopt government schools for five or 10 years. The State proposed making more than 62,000 government schools available for adoption. Corporate entities could use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds for activities ranging from repairs, maintenance and painting to improving sanitation, health, enrolment and the use of technology.
Dalit groups strongly protested this move towards privatisation that would deny access to Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students especially in rural areas.
The financial commitments were substantial yet no audit of the scheme or the implementation have ever been held, nor demanded. According to the government resolution reported by The Times of India, entities adopting schools in “A” and “B” category municipal corporations, including Mumbai and Pune, were required to commit ₹2 crore for five years or ₹3 crore for 10 years. For “C” category municipal corporations, the amounts were ₹1 crore and ₹2 crore respectively, while other schools could be adopted for ₹50 lakh for five years or ₹1 crore for 10 years. The Business Standard, reporting on September 18, 2023, said the funds could be used for school-building repairs, painting, and toilets, infrastructure and sports equipment.
The government insisted that the scheme was not privatisation. In December 2023, then School Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar told the Hindustan Times that a major corporate house had expressed interest in adopting around 5,000 schools and stressed that the objective was to improve infrastructure and amenities, not to privatise schools. The government resolution also permitted an adopting entity to add its name to the existing school name for the duration of the agreement, although the original name was to be retained.
The distinction between “adoption” and privatisation, however, becomes more complicated when viewed alongside the State’s broader education policy. In July 2026, Frontline reported that Maharashtra was expanding public-private partnership models in school education, including the operation of five English-medium schools of the Pune Municipal Corporation through a PPP arrangement. The report said the same organisation that had previously operated the schools using CSR funds was subsequently awarded a contract worth ₹12 crore annually by the Pune civic administration. Frontline also reported concerns over proposals to hand over land reserved for Mumbai municipal schools to private entities under PPP arrangements.
This raises a fundamental question about the direction of public education. If private organisations are initially invited to improve government schools through CSR and are later given contracts to operate schools using public funds, the State’s role can gradually shift from being the primary provider of education to financing or facilitating private participation in its delivery. The issue is therefore not simply whether private money can improve a school building. It is who ultimately controls public educational assets, who determines priorities and whether access to education remains governed primarily by public obligations rather than the interests or capacities of private partners.
The question becomes particularly important in the context of Maharashtra’s low-enrolment and cluster-school policies. In September 2023, Mid-Day reported that the State had identified 14,783 schools with 20 or fewer students for consolidation into cluster schools. The proposed restructuring was expected to affect 1,85,467 students and 29,707 teachers. The government argued that very small schools could not provide adequate infrastructure, qualified teachers or opportunities for social interaction, and pointed to successful cluster models in Panshet and Toranmal.
Teachers and education activists, however, warned that consolidation could push students to travel longer distances and increase the risk of dropouts, particularly in rural and remote areas. Their concern was especially significant for young children, girls and students from economically weaker families for whom daily travel to a distant school may itself become a barrier to attendance.
The State subsequently sought to reassure critics. In July 2025, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde told the Maharashtra legislature, as reported by ET Education, that schools would not be closed merely because of low enrolment. He said the government would make adjustments to ensure that such schools continued functioning and that teachers would be redeployed only after appropriate adjustments were made. Yet the same report noted that around 18,000 schools had fewer than 20 students.
The policy trajectory therefore remains difficult to reconcile. On one side, the government says low-enrolment schools will not be shut and that every child must continue to have access to education. On the other, cluster models, school consolidation and private participation are being promoted as solutions to the perceived financial and infrastructural limitations of the existing public-school network.
The issue is not that private participation is inherently harmful, nor that every small school must necessarily remain open regardless of circumstances. The concern is whether the State is addressing the reasons behind low enrolment and poor infrastructure before declaring a school inefficient, relocating its students or inviting private entities to take over functions that should ordinarily be part of public educational provision.
A government school is not merely a building that can be repaired through CSR funding or managed through a contractual arrangement. It is part of the public infrastructure through which the State fulfils its constitutional obligation to provide education. When schools are under-resourced, the answer cannot automatically be to reduce the State’s responsibility by transferring greater functions to private actors. The more important question is whether Maharashtra is investing sufficiently in making its public schools viable before concluding that they need to be consolidated, adopted or operated through PPP models.
Marathi schools: Declining enrolment or a policy-created cycle?
The decline of Marathi-medium education in Maharashtra is particularly troubling because it cannot simply be reduced to a story of parents “choosing English”. The numbers in Mumbai are stark. According to BMC data cited by ThePrint on July 24, 2025, the number of Marathi-medium schools in Mumbai fell from 460 in 2019-20 to 421 in 2025-26 — a loss of 39 schools. Around 50,000 students had moved elsewhere from the 2019-20 academic session onwards.
The longer-term numbers are even more striking. Mid-Day, reporting on May 4, 2025, said Mumbai had 413 Marathi-medium schools in 2010-11, 368 in 2014-15 and only 262 by 2023-24. That is not a temporary fluctuation, but rather a sustained decline.
The government has attributed the decline largely to parental preference for English-medium education. Parents do indeed have reasons to make that choice. English is widely perceived as providing better access to higher education, employment and social mobility. But educators and activists argue that parents are also responding to the relative quality and visibility of the schools being offered to them. As ThePrint reported in July 2025, educators pointed to inadequate infrastructure in Marathi-medium schools and alleged that English-medium institutions received greater preference when it came to development.
Deepak Pawar of the School Education Action Coordination Committee argued that Marathi-medium schools should be upgraded without changing their medium to English. Teachers cited in the report similarly described a communication gap with middle-class families and said some Marathi-medium schools had modern facilities such as Atal Tinkering Labs and robotics labs, but that efforts to publicise and develop these came only after enrolment had already begun to collapse. The important point here is thus, if the state allows a school to deteriorate, then points to falling enrolment as evidence that the school is no longer viable, it risks creating a self-fulfilling cycle. One cannot ignore the vicious cycle of how poor infrastructure erodes parental confidence, leading to declining enrolment, reduced allocation of teachers and resources, and a further deterioration of schools, creating a cycle that ultimately pushes schools towards closure. The final closure can then be presented as the inevitable consequence of “parental preference”. But inevitability is not the same as neutrality.
The fate of one of Mumbai’s oldest Marathi schools
The uncertainty surrounding Dadar’s Nabar Guruji Vidyalaya brought this crisis into sharp relief. In May 2025, Mid-Day reported that the Marathi-medium school, which dates back to the 1940s, was facing an uncertain future amid falling admissions. Thirty-five students had appeared for its SSC examination that year, but only 17 students remained in Classes 9 and 10 for the new academic year. The management clarified that it had not decided to close the school.
Trustee Satish Rama Nayak said the institution remained financially capable of functioning because it offered free education and teachers’ salaries were supported through government grants. The difficulty was the collapse in enrolment and its impact on the teacher-student ratio. Nayak also described a social transformation.
Parents who had themselves studied in Marathi-medium schools were increasingly choosing English-medium or CBSE schools for their children, sometimes even taking loans to pay for them. That is the other side of the story. It would be too simplistic to blame the government for every parent who chooses English. But it is equally simplistic to blame parents for the disappearance of Marathi-medium schools without asking why government and aided Marathi schools have not been made equally attractive, well-equipped and aspirational.
As Sushil Shejule of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra told ThePrint, the decline had been visible for years and, despite the availability of data, neither governments nor political parties had taken meaningful action.
The irony of Marathi’s “classical language” status
In October 2024, Marathi received classical-language status from the Union government. Maharashtra has also repeatedly asserted the importance of Marathi in public life and education. The Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Act, 2020 made Marathi compulsory in schools across the state, including CBSE and ICSE schools. Yet the institutions that actually provide education through Marathi continue to shrink.
The Mid-Day report of May 2025 placed the decline against precisely this backdrop: Marathi had acquired classical-language status, but one of Mumbai’s oldest Marathi-medium schools was struggling with falling admissions. The contradiction was also noticed by the Bombay High Court in its April 2026 intervention.
The state cannot convincingly claim to protect Marathi while allowing the network of Marathi-medium schools, particularly those serving poorer and rural families, to become increasingly fragile. Protecting a language is not merely about official resolutions, signboards or declarations. It also means ensuring that a child who wants, or needs, to study in that language has a functioning school in which to do so.
Mumbai’s municipal schools: when “repair” means displacement
The infrastructure problem becomes even more complicated when schools are declared unsafe and children are moved elsewhere. In December 2025, Outlook reported on the closure and relocation of Mumbai municipal schools, including New Mahim Municipal School. Students were shifted from August 2025 to another municipal school operating from a few rooms on the first floor of a residential building.
According to the report, the replacement premises lacked a playground, proper drinking-water facilities and adequately supplied toilets. The concern raised by parents and activists was not that unsafe buildings should continue to operate. A genuinely dangerous school building cannot be defended in the name of access to education. The concern was about what children were being offered after their school was shut.
When a school has to close because its building is unsafe, the replacement should provide an equivalent educational environment. It should be sufficiently close to the children’s homes, have adequate classrooms, functional toilets and drinking-water facilities, and provide children with access to a playground. Parents and children should also have a say in decisions that directly affect their education. For Marathi-medium schools, relocation should not result in the loss of the medium of instruction. These are not peripheral concerns. They determine whether a “relocation” actually amounts to continued and meaningful access to education.
When official records themselves threaten to erase students
Another warning emerged in January 2026. On January 10, ETV Bharat reported discrepancies between Aadhaar-linked records and UDISE Plus data that had left thousands of students classified as “invalid”, “not provided”, “under verification” or “out of school”. The report said that of 2,14,68,288 students registered in the relevant Maharashtra UDISE Plus data, 5,78,433 were listed with invalid Aadhaar details and 4,98,759 had not provided Aadhaar details. Another 69,688 were shown as out of school. Educationists warned that such discrepancies could have consequences for school enrolment figures and, consequently, teacher deployment and funding. The concern was particularly acute for Marathi-medium schools.
Rajan Mahadeshwar, principal of Govandi’s Jagruti Vidyamandir, told ETV Bharat that his school had 430 students actually registered, while the UDISE system showed only 380 because 50 were marked invalid or pending verification. He feared that an artificially reduced enrolment could eventually affect the school’s viability. Officials disputed the extent of the danger.
Divisional Deputy Director Rajesh Kankal said only around five per cent of students in numerous schools did not have Aadhaar updated and said he did not expect grant-in-aid schools to face major problems. Yet the larger policy concern remains valid: when funding, staffing and school viability are increasingly linked to enrolment data, the accuracy of that data becomes an educational rights issue. A child should not become statistically invisible because a database has failed to correctly reflect their presence in a classroom.
The state is promising a transformation
The government has not remained silent. On August 22, 2026, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde held a detailed review meeting with School Education Minister Dada Bhuse and senior officials. As Deccan Herald reported on August 23, Shinde directed the Education Department to prepare a clear, comprehensive and time-bound action plan to modernise schools and bring about “real, visible and qualitative improvements”.
The proposed plan includes teacher training, capacity building, greater involvement of education experts and experienced teachers, health check-ups, nutrition, a review of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme and attention to students’ mental and emotional well-being. The state has also expanded digital education initiatives. Digital Learning reported on August 4 that the Vinoba Digital Education platform had been expanded to 45,000 government schools across 25 districts, reaching more than 31 lakh students and nearly 1.3 lakh teachers.
These initiatives may be useful. However, the timing of the government’s August review is telling. It came after weeks in which government-school conditions had repeatedly been placed in the public eye — including through the “School Thik Karo” campaign launched in Maharashtra by Cockroach Janta Party convenor Abhijeet Dipke.
On August 15, Telangana Today reported that Dipke had launched the campaign in Hingoli after inspecting a Zilla Parishad school where he alleged that toilets lacked water, windows were broken and students lacked adequate benches. He said the campaign would document basic facilities in government schools across Maharashtra. The campaign itself is not a substitute for institutional inspection or government monitoring. Its allegations must therefore be independently verified before being treated as established facts.
But its very existence points to a troubling question: Why are political and citizen campaigns increasingly having to inspect schools to make basic educational infrastructure visible?
When will policy on public education, access and representation actually be formulated with the stakeholders? Who are the stakeholders? They are communities that demand education for the young, the most marginalised and teachers who form the other crucial arc. All the policies hurriedly formulated are however top heavy and solely the creation of bureaucrats and politicians, often concealing blatant private interests.
This is not democracy but public policy turned on its head.
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