Education Policy for Telangana 2026

Letter of Submission

Telangana Education Commission
3rd Floor, Rajiv Vidya Mission Building, SCERT Compound, Basheerbagh, Hyderabad-500001
12th January 2026

Sub: Telangana Education Commission – Submission of final comprehensive report on Education Policy for Telangana State – Reg.

Dear Sir,

At the outset, we, the Members of the Commission, express our sincere gratitude to you for constituting the Telangana Education Commission and for entrusting us with the opportunity to work in this significant social sector to study, formulate, and recommend a comprehensive policy framework for reforming and strengthening education in Telangana.

The Commission has prepared this policy document covering all levels of education – from pre-primary to universities – based on extensive field visits to government and private educational institutions within the State, as well as in other States and countries. In addition, we conducted public hearings, brainstorming sessions with educationists, civil society organisations, and teachers’ unions, and organised a series of meetings, seminars, and focused group discussions. The Commission also examined various education policy reports and analysed relevant data.

We hereby submit this comprehensive policy report, distilled from our wide-ranging consultations and in-depth study of the education sector at all levels. We sincerely hope that its recommendations will be implemented in Telangana to transform the education landscape of the State and to secure a strong and sustainable future for the youth of Telangana.

Yours Sincerely,

Akunuri Murali, IAS (Retd.), Chairperson
Prof. PL. Vishweshwar Rao (Member)
Dr. Charakonda Venkatesh (Member)
Ms. Jyothsna Shiva Reddy (Member)

To
Shri. A. Revanth Reddy, Chief Minister of Telangana, Hyderabad

Background

Education is the most powerful instrument for social transformation, economic development, and democratic strengthening. For the State of Telangana, education is not merely a sectoral responsibility but a foundational public good that shapes the quality of citizenship, equity of opportunity, productivity of the workforce, and cohesion of society. A robust, inclusive, and future-ready education system is essential for realizing Telangana’s aspirations of sustainable growth, social justice, innovation, and human dignity.

For Telangana, a young state with a dynamic population and diverse socio-economic contexts, education is central to addressing historical inequities and regional disparities. Access to quality education – across early childhood, school education, higher education, and skill development – must be ensured irrespective of gender, caste, class, location, language, or disability. An equitable education system is essential to break intergenerational cycles of disadvantage and to ensure that every child and youth can realize their full potential.

Education also serves as a key driver of economic growth and innovation. Aligning education with contemporary societal needs – without compromising its broader humanistic purpose – is critical for preparing responsible citizenship.

The following presents the sector-wise executive summary distilled from field visits to educational institutions, extensive consultations with experts and academicians, deliberations within working groups, and discussions held through public hearings, seminars, and other stakeholder forums across the state. The summary outlines the prevailing context, identifies key challenges, and sets out the principal policy recommendations of the Commission.

VIExecutive Summary

1Pre-primary Education

Telangana faces a persistent and structural challenge in educational outcomes, reflected in its low literacy indicators and declining enrolment in government schools. The Telangana Education Commission (TEC) identifies the neglect of pre-primary education as a critical factor contributing to this crisis and argues that meaningful reform must begin at the foundational stage of schooling. Evidence from neuroscience and child development research underscores that the period from birth to six years is decisive for cognitive, social, emotional, and language development, making quality pre-primary education indispensable for long-term educational and social outcomes.

At present, pre-primary education in Telangana remains largely outside the formal schooling system. What exists is predominantly delivered through Anganwadi Centres, where education is only one component of a broader welfare mandate. These centres operate with severe infrastructural constraints, limited space, mixed-age classrooms, and inadequately trained personnel, resulting in suboptimal early learning environments. The absence of high-quality, state-run pre-primary schools has pushed families – particularly after children turn four – towards private pre-schools at significant cost. This shift has directly impacted enrolment in government schools, with admissions to Class I falling sharply, and has reinforced long-term dependence on private schooling.

The Commission emphasises that pre-school education is not a downward extension of formal schooling but a specialised, developmentally sensitive programme aimed at building foundational competencies. These include language acquisition, cognitive skills, social and emotional development, self-expression, and self-care. TEC recommends that decisions regarding the institutional location of pre-primary education – whether within Anganwadi Centres or schools – must be guided solely by the best interests of the child, rather than administrative or institutional convenience.

The Commission sets out a clear long-term vision of providing globally benchmarked pre-primary education that is equitable, accessible, and inclusive across rural, urban, and marginalised communities. It seeks to ensure uniform standards of infrastructure, trained personnel, and curricula, while embedding values such as empathy, gender equality, civic responsibility, scientific temper, and emotional resilience from the earliest years. In parallel, it calls for the regulation of all private pre-schools to safeguard child safety and parental interests.

In the short term, the Commission recommends that the pre-primary schools should be formally integrated with the primary schools under the School Education Department, supported by a dedicated cell responsible for coordination, supervision, and monitoring of the pre-school segment. The immediate integration of pre-primary sections within all state-run schools should be followed by the appointment of qualified, trained pre-school teachers and child-care assistants. The Commission proposes the establishment of enforceable standards for infrastructure, class size, safety, curriculum, and teacher qualifications across both public and private sectors.

To operationalise this vision, the Commission details comprehensive norms covering administration, age-appropriate admissions, safety protocols, infrastructure specifications, teacher qualifications, and curriculum design aligned with global best practices. It advocates play-based, experiential learning with no formal testing or homework, prioritising holistic development over premature academic outcomes. The Commission concludes that embedding high-quality pre-primary education within the formal school system is essential not only for improving learning outcomes but also for reversing enrolment decline, restoring confidence in government schools, and laying a robust foundation for Telangana’s future human development.

2School Education

The primary and secondary education in Telangana needs a set of systemic, actionable recommendations to address persistent challenges in quality, equity, governance, and public trust. While access to schooling has largely been achieved, the education system continues to face deep structural issues – manifested in small and under-resourced schools, declining enrolment in government schools, weak foundational and grade-level learning outcomes, poor English proficiency, fragmented management structures, and inadequate monitoring and accountability mechanisms.

The analysis highlights that learning gaps emerge early, widen through upper primary grades, and persist into secondary education, as evidenced by national assessment results and low Performance Grading Index (PGI) scores. Parental preference for private schools – driven by perceptions of better English-medium instruction, school ambience, safety, and accountability – has further eroded confidence in government schooling. These challenges are compounded by an overburdened and insufficiently supported teacher workforce, outdated recruitment and deployment practices, and excessive administrative demands that reduce effective teaching time.

In response, the Commission proposes a comprehensive reform agenda centred on quality improvement, system standardisation, teacher empowerment, and stronger governance, with the child placed firmly at the core of all interventions. All the recommendations are proposed keeping the child/student in the center irrespective of other considerations.

2.1 Key recommendations include

1. A.Reforming teacher recruitment and human resource management by introducing more responsive, needs-based recruitment processes, rational teacher deployment, and stronger accountability mechanisms. The chapter emphasises that recruitment must prioritise subject competence, pedagogical skills, and language proficiency – particularly in English – while also creating incentives and support systems for high performance.
2. B.Strengthening English-medium education and spoken English proficiency across primary and secondary levels. Recognising English as a key driver of parental trust and student future-readiness, it is recommended to have early and sustained exposure to spoken English, improved teacher capacity in communicative English, integration of listening and speaking into daily classroom practices, and systematic monitoring of language outcomes.
3. C.Standardising school infrastructure, academic processes, and service delivery norms across the diverse and fragmented management structures operating in the State. The TEC calls for clear minimum standards for school size, staffing, classrooms, laboratories, libraries, digital facilities, and safety, ensuring that every child—regardless of location or management—has access to comfortable and joyous learning conditions.
4. D.Shifting curriculum and pedagogy away from rote learning towards competency-based, experiential education, aligned with the National Curriculum Framework. The recommendations emphasise strong foundational literacy and numeracy in early grades, conceptual understanding in upper primary, and higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and real-world application in secondary education.
5. E.Embedding co-curricular and extra-curricular activities as integral to schooling, not as add-ons. Sports, arts, cultural activities, life skills, and socio-emotional learning are positioned as essential for holistic development, student engagement, confidence-building, and retention—especially in government schools competing with private institutions.
6. F.Rationalising assessments and strengthening monitoring systems, including simplified, standardised assessments, greater use of competency-based evaluation, and the introduction of external or third-party validation. Robust school-level and district-level monitoring frameworks are recommended to shift oversight from compliance-driven inspections to academic support and continuous improvement.
7. G.Improving governance and decentralised decision-making, with clearer roles, filled supervisory positions, better use of data, and stronger school leadership. The TEC stresses that effective monitoring, academic mentoring, and accountability at the school and cluster level are critical to translating reforms into classroom-level impact.
8. H.The Commission strongly recommends that the State of Telangana implement Section 12(1)(c) of the Right to Education Act, which mandates that unaided private schools allocate 25 per cent of their seats for students from marginalised communities.

It is reiterated that restoring learning outcomes and public confidence in government schools requires coordinated reforms across recruitment, curriculum, English instruction, infrastructure standardisation, co-curricular enrichment, and monitoring. By moving from fragmented, input-focused approaches to a coherent, child-centred, comprehensive and outcome-driven system, Telangana can significantly strengthen the quality and credibility of its primary and secondary education system.

3Intermediate Education

Intermediate education, encompassing Classes XI and XII, represents a critical transition in the educational journey of young people in Telangana. It is a stage marked by heightened academic expectations, emotional vulnerability, and far-reaching implications for higher education and career choices. Each year, nearly 10 to 11 lakh students enrol in intermediate education in the state, with close to two-thirds studying in privately managed junior colleges. The way this sector is structured and governed therefore has profound consequences for educational quality, social equity, student well-being, and the future direction of higher education in Telangana.

Analysis of enrolment and performance data reveals several patterns that challenge prevailing assumptions. Despite the widespread belief that private colleges deliver superior outcomes, government residential junior colleges and Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas consistently record the highest pass percentages in intermediate public examinations. Girls outperform boys across districts and management types, and significant inter-district disparities persist, with several districts recording pass percentages below 50 per cent. Students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Backward Classes rely significantly on government institutions for intermediate education, underscoring the indispensable role of the public sector in advancing equity and social mobility. The system is also marked by a high degree of course concentration. Nearly ninety-five per cent of students are enrolled in just three streams — MPC, BPC, and CEC – while a large number of other general courses attract negligible enrolment, raising questions about the relevance and viability of the existing course basket. Vocational education, though potentially valuable, remains limited in scale, heavily concentrated in a few courses, and yields only modest academic outcomes.

The dominance of the private sector has brought with it a range of systemic concerns. Many private and corporate junior colleges function with inadequate infrastructure, including the absence of functional science and computer laboratories, limited libraries, and virtually no space or time for sports and co-curricular activities. Hostel conditions for students migrating from rural areas are frequently substandard. Fees charged by corporate colleges, particularly for integrated coaching programmes for competitive examinations such as IIT-JEE and NEET, are extremely high and impose severe financial stress on families, often forcing parents into debt.

Pedagogically, intermediate education has become excessively oriented towards competitive entrance examinations. Teaching practices prioritise speed, pattern recognition, and rote strategies aimed at “cracking” exams rather than developing conceptual understanding or intellectual depth. The state curriculum is often marginalised and hurriedly covered just before board examinations, while standard textbooks are replaced by proprietary coaching material. Misleading advertisements exaggerating success rates, opaque claims about student outcomes, batch segregation practices, early “foundation courses” introduced at the school level, and coercive practices such as withholding original certificates further point to deep regulatory failure in this sector.

Government junior colleges, which cater primarily to students from rural and marginalised backgrounds, face a different but equally serious set of challenges. Many operate from dilapidated buildings and lack basic facilities such as adequate classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and sanitation. Lecturers are burdened with administrative and non-teaching responsibilities due to staff shortages. Psycho-social counselling and structured career guidance mechanisms are largely absent, even though academic pressure during this phase is intense and student vulnerability is high. Teacher qualification norms are weak, opportunities for continuous professional development are limited, and the integration of educational technology remains minimal. Attendance monitoring and remedial academic support are also persistent concerns.

In response to these challenges, the Telangana Education Commission proposes a comprehensive reform agenda. It calls for strong statutory regulation of private coaching centres and hostels, including control over fees, infrastructure standards, faculty qualifications, mental health safeguards, and advertising practices. Competitive examination coaching must be institutionally separated from junior colleges, and transparent disclosure of outcomes, fees, and staffing must be mandated. At the systemic level, the chapter recommends reducing the overwhelming influence of competitive examinations by discontinuing EAPCET and using strengthened Intermediate public examination marks as the basis for undergraduate admissions, while advocating nationally for similar reforms in medical admissions.

Substantial strengthening of government junior colleges is also emphasised, including upgrading infrastructure, providing mid-day meals, ensuring access to counselling and career guidance, reducing non-teaching burdens on lecturers, and instituting robust systems of continuous professional development. Vocational courses offered under intermediate education are proposed to be shifted to ITIs and polytechnics better equipped for skill training.

Finally, the Commission strongly proposes a fundamental structural reform by integrating intermediate education into the schooling system. Merging the SSC Board and the Board of Intermediate Education, discontinuing public examinations for intermediate first year, creating a dedicated teacher cadre for Classes IX to XII, and aligning teacher qualification norms with national standards are seen as essential steps. Such integration would enable a smoother academic transition from secondary to senior secondary education, reduce administrative duplication, and provide students with a more holistic and supportive learning environment.

The analysis of available information illustrates that public institutions show stronger potential to deliver equitable and high-quality outcomes, while unchecked commercialisation and weak regulation in the private sector have distorted educational priorities and harmed student well-being. The Commission therefore calls for decisive state action to reclaim intermediate education as a public good, centred on learning, equity, and the long-term interests of students and society.

4Telangana Public Schools

The TEC presents the Telangana Public Schools (TPS) model as a flagship structural reform to transform the quality, equity, and credibility of government school education in the State.

The TPS initiative is proposed as a response to long-standing systemic challenges – fragmented school networks, under-enrolled and under-resourced small schools, uneven infrastructure, teacher shortages, weak English-medium delivery, limited co-curricular exposure, and declining parental trust in public education.

Rather than relying on school closures or forced mergers – which have often reduced access and generated community resistance – the TPS model adopts a constructive, aspirational, and child-centred approach. Selected existing government schools are upgraded into high-quality, fully integrated campuses offering education from pre-primary to secondary or higher secondary levels, supported by modern infrastructure, adequate staffing, digital facilities, and safe transportation. The objective is to create public schools that are free of cost yet superior in quality to most private schools, thereby restoring confidence in the government education system.

The Concept of TPS outlines a cluster-based planning framework, under which each mandal is divided into two to five clusters based on population norms, with at least one TPS established per cluster. This ensures rational school distribution, optimal utilisation of resources, and universal access without compromising safety or dignity. TPS campuses are designed to cater to approximately 1,500 students, enabling economies of scale, subject-specialised teachers, and a vibrant academic and co-curricular environment.

4.1 Key features of the Telangana Public Schools include

1. A.Standardised, high-quality infrastructure and learning environments, with well-equipped classrooms, science and computer laboratories, libraries, playgrounds, inclusive spaces for Children with Special Needs, and digital learning facilities.
2. B.Strengthened human resource deployment, through reallocation of existing government teachers complemented by targeted contractual recruitment of pre-primary educators, remedial instructors, subject tutors, librarians, and essential non-teaching staff from local communities. This addresses long-standing gaps in teacher availability, specialisation, and academic support.
3. C.Strong emphasis on English-medium instruction, foundational literacy and numeracy, and remedial education, ensuring early-grade learning recovery, smoother academic progression, and improved student confidence.
4. D.Integration of co-curricular, cultural, sports, and life-skills education as a core component of schooling, supporting holistic child development, improved student engagement, and reduced dropout rates.
5. E.Reliable and safe transportation systems, supported through a public-community partnership model, to ensure equitable access across clusters. Affordable transportation costs are designed to make the system sustainable.
6. F.Enhanced school-level governance and accountability, with School Management Committees playing a central role in establishment and oversight, promoting transparency, local ownership, and sustained quality.

The TEC also proposes a phased implementation and financial plan, with statewide coverage proposed over two phases beginning in 2026. When fully scaled across all mandals, the TPS network — along with Telangana Foundational Schools — is projected to benefit approximately 35 lakh students, significantly reduce household expenditure on private schooling, and generate substantial long-term social and economic returns.

Overall, the Telangana Public Schools initiative represents a paradigm shift from fragmented, low-capacity schooling to integrated, standardised, and aspirational public education systems. By combining academic excellence with equity, access, strong governance, and holistic development, TPS lays the foundation for a Common School System that can rebuild trust in government schools and deliver high-quality education to every child in Telangana, regardless of socio-economic or geographic background.

5Teacher Education

Teacher education is a foundational determinant of the quality, equity, and effectiveness of school education. Recognising this, the Telangana Education Commission (TEC) identifies reform of teacher education as a central priority for improving learning outcomes across the State. Teacher education in Telangana is being seen across three interlinked domains here: Pre-Service Teacher Education (PSTE), In-Service Teacher Education (INSTE), and governance and regulatory frameworks, and a set of comprehensive reform-oriented recommendations are proposed.

5.1 Pre-Service Teacher Education (PSTE)

Telangana has a large and predominantly private teacher education sector, with an overwhelming majority of admissions occurring in private Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs). Empirical evidence, including Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) performance, indicates that public-funded institutions such as DIETs, Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs), IASEs, and university departments consistently outperform private TEIs on quality, equity, and efficiency parameters. Despite this, public institutions remain under-capacitated and marginal in scale.

PSTE in the State suffers from outdated curricula, weak practicum components, poor regulatory oversight, and widespread academic and administrative malpractices, particularly in private TEIs. Serious gaps exist in preparation for pre-primary teaching, even as the State expands pre-primary schooling. The proposed NCTE Regulations 2025 and the Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) raise additional concerns around excessive specialisation, reduced flexibility for student-teachers, and erosion of university autonomy. The TEC concurs with the Parliamentary Standing Committee in recommending that ITEP should not be mandated.

Key PSTE recommendations include discontinuing diploma-level entry (D.El.Ed.), restructuring B.Ed. programmes into stage-specific degrees (Primary and Secondary), strengthening and repurposing DIETs to offer B.Ed. programmes, revitalising practicum through extended, supervised school-based training, enhancing entry qualifications for teachers in line with global best practices, developing a robust pre-primary teacher education ecosystem, prohibiting distance/online B.Ed. programmes, and halting the establishment of new private TEIs. Adequate, ring-fenced public funding for PSTE is emphasised as critical.

5.2 In-Service Teacher Education (INSTE)

INSTE in Telangana is characterised by fragmented, sporadic, and largely compliance-driven training, with limited linkage to classroom practice. Vacancies in SCERT and DIETs, absence of a structured training calendar, weak induction programmes, ineffective online training, and lack of mentoring and academic scaffolding undermine professional development. Pre-primary teachers face acute challenges due to the absence of structured continuing professional development (CPD) and career pathways.

To address this, TEC recommends the development of a comprehensive Teacher Competency Framework (TCF) to define professional standards, guide training, and support developmental performance evaluation. Systematic training needs assessment, multi-year Teacher Professional Development (TPD) frameworks, extended induction programmes, blended and need-based ongoing training, periodic teacher certification, professional learning communities, reflective platforms, and an integrated Learning Management System are proposed to institutionalise continuous professional learning while safeguarding teacher autonomy.

5.3 Governance and Regulation of Teacher Education

Teacher education governance in Telangana is severely constrained by acute faculty shortages (over 90% vacancies in DIETs and 70% in SCERT), unresolved cadre and recruitment issues post-bifurcation of the state, weak incentives for teacher educators, and systemic regulatory failure of private TEIs. There is no unified authority responsible for ensuring compliance with NCTE norms while simultaneously monitoring academic quality. Data gaps on private school teachers’ qualifications and training further weaken system oversight.

Telangana Education Commission recommends strengthening governance through the Telangana Education Standards Authority (TESA) to regulate and audit TEIs, oversee quality, and rank institutions; clarifying roles of SCERT, TAFRC, and TGPSC; expediting recruitment and reform of teacher educator cadres; restructuring SCERT leadership and upgrading DIETs as Centres of Excellence; rationalising fee regulation; and providing dedicated administrative support to schools and TEIs to reduce non-academic burdens on teachers.

Overall, the Commission argues for a decisive shift towards strengthening public teacher education institutions, raising professional standards, restoring academic rigour and autonomy, and establishing coherent governance and regulatory mechanisms. These reforms are essential to building a competent, motivated, and professionally supported teacher workforce capable of delivering high-quality and equitable education across Telangana.

6Telangana Education Standards Authority (TESA)

The quality of education in Telangana, across both school and higher education, is constrained by the absence of a coherent, independent, and credible system for assessing student learning outcomes and institutional standards. While global and national best practices demonstrate the centrality of rigorous standards frameworks, transparent assessments, and autonomous evaluation bodies, Telangana currently relies on fragmented data systems, largely internal assessments, and weak monitoring mechanisms. As a result, neither the state nor the public has an accurate, granular, or trustworthy picture of school quality, teaching effectiveness, student learning, or the academic health of higher education institutions.

In school education, although multiple national frameworks such as Shaala Siddhi, PGI, and CBSE’s quality assurance mechanisms exist, their implementation in Telangana has been inconsistent and largely superficial. Infrastructure and resource data collected through UDISE provide only aggregate and often misleading information, masking qualitative deficiencies such as non-functional libraries, dysfunctional computer labs, and unsafe or poorly maintained buildings. There is also a significant gap in understanding the quality of teaching, as learning outcomes are often conflated with teaching effectiveness without accounting for contextual factors such as socio-economic disadvantage, teacher availability, and multi-grade classrooms. Teacher professional development remains episodic and compliance-driven, with little linkage to classroom practice or sustained professional learning communities.

Assessment practices in government schools suffer from deeper structural flaws. Internal assessments have increasingly become perfunctory and performative, driven by administrative pressure to demonstrate short-term numerical gains rather than genuine learning. The complete control of assessments by the same stakeholders whose performance is judged on student results creates a systemic conflict of interest, incentivising the inflation of scores and, in some cases, malpractice. Existing third-party assessments such as NAS and ASER, while valuable, are infrequent, sample-based, and limited in scope, and therefore insufficient to guide continuous academic improvement.

In higher education, despite the presence of multiple statutory regulators and accreditation frameworks, the sector is characterised by declining academic standards, poor infrastructure, chronic faculty shortages in public institutions, and serious quality concerns in much of the private unaided sector, which accounts for the majority of enrolment. Regulatory oversight is largely confined to the point of initial approval or affiliation renewal, making continuous monitoring impractical and ineffective. Voluntary accreditation and ranking mechanisms further weaken accountability, resulting in a system that often fails to deliver meaningful educational value to students.

To address these systemic weaknesses, the Commission recommends the establishment of a statutory, autonomous body — the Telangana Education Standards Authority (TESA). TESA is envisaged as the apex, independent authority responsible for setting, assessing, and publicly reporting on standards across school and higher education. Its core mandate would include conducting credible third-party student assessments, evaluating schools and higher education institutions against clearly defined institutional, infrastructural, and academic standards, undertaking diagnostic and action research, and generating robust evidence to inform policy and practice.

In school education, TESA would conduct independent summative assessments for Classes 2 to 12 (excluding Classes 10 and 12), with a strong focus on foundational literacy and numeracy in the early grades and on conceptual understanding and application in higher grades. These assessments would be designed and administered with stringent safeguards to ensure integrity, anonymity, and transparency, and would generate detailed, disaggregated analytics to support targeted academic interventions. Importantly, assessments and reviews would be low-stakes and longitudinal, recognising the learning trajectories of first-generation learners and students from marginalised communities.

In higher education, TESA would undertake baseline assessments of incoming students to identify foundational gaps, as well as endline assessments of graduating students to evaluate learning outcomes and institutional value addition. It would also develop and implement a comprehensive framework for ranking and grading schools and higher education institutions, drawing on national and international best practices and covering dimensions such as resources, teaching quality, faculty availability, pedagogy, inclusivity, leadership, and student outcomes. By placing such information in the public domain, TESA would enhance transparency and enable students and families to make informed choices.

Beyond assessments and rankings, TESA would function as a knowledge and research hub, conducting action research on priority educational challenges, evaluating policy interventions, facilitating knowledge exchange, and collaborating with national and international institutions. Its governance structure would be designed to ensure independence, credibility, and professional integrity, with a distinguished governing board, fixed tenures, transparent appointment processes, and statutory protection from undue interference.

Overall, the creation of TESA represents a foundational reform aimed at shifting Telangana’s education system away from compliance-driven processes and performative metrics towards evidence-based accountability, continuous improvement, and a sustained focus on meaningful learning and institutional quality.

7Residential Educational Institutions

Telangana has built one of the largest state-led residential education systems in India, originating in 1971 with the explicit mandate of providing quality, fully residential education to children from socially and economically marginalised communities. Over five decades, this welfare-oriented model – rooted in the vision of integrating education with nutrition, accommodation, and care – has evolved into a vast network of 1,855 residential institutions enrolling over 7.45 lakh students and employing more than 36,000 teachers across multiple welfare societies. These institutions have consistently demonstrated strong academic outcomes and have emerged as important vehicles of social mobility.

However, the system has reached a critical inflection point. Rapid post-2014 expansion, undertaken without commensurate investment in permanent infrastructure and modern governance systems, has resulted in deep structural and administrative weaknesses. Nearly 40 percent of residential institutions continue to function from rented or makeshift premises, many lacking basic safety features, adequate classrooms, laboratories, sanitation facilities, and secure residential spaces. This infrastructure deficit has directly affected student dignity, health, and learning outcomes, particularly for adolescent girls and students in residential colleges.

Governance fragmentation across multiple welfare societies – organised along caste and community lines – has led to duplication of administrative functions, inefficient resource utilisation, and the reinforcement of social segregation rather than integration. Manual procurement, payment, and record-keeping systems have further undermined transparency, accountability, and operational efficiency, contributing to recurring crises such as food safety failures and delayed vendor payments. Weak oversight mechanisms have exposed students to serious risks, including incidents of food poisoning, inadequate campus security, and insufficient emergency preparedness.

Student welfare concerns are particularly acute. Substandard living conditions, poor nutrition monitoring, lack of mental health professionals, and weak parent–school communication systems have created a fragile residential environment. Reports of student distress and suicides highlight the absence of structured psychosocial support and the over-reliance on untrained teaching staff to manage complex emotional and residential responsibilities. At the academic level, delays in textbook supply, inadequate laboratory facilities, and limited career guidance constrain the full potential of otherwise high-performing student cohorts.

Human resource deployment within the system is also misaligned. Teachers and lecturers are routinely burdened with hostel management and administrative duties, diverting specialised academic talent away from teaching and mentoring. In residential degree colleges, particularly under the BC Welfare Society, severe under-enrolment has resulted in inefficient utilisation of physical infrastructure and faculty, raising fundamental questions about the viability of the residential model at the undergraduate level.

In response to these systemic challenges, the Commission recommends a comprehensive restructuring of Telangana’s residential education ecosystem. Central to this reform is the integration of all residential institutions under a unified Telangana State Residential Education Society, while safeguarding existing reservation proportions and continuing exclusive residential schools for tribal students in agency areas. This unified governance framework is intended to eliminate fragmentation, standardise quality, improve fiscal discipline, and promote social integration.

Key recommendations of the Commission also include a transition to digital, end-to-end governance systems for procurement, payments, and admissions; stringent food safety and nutrition oversight; clearly codified standard operating procedures; and mandatory minimum infrastructure and safety standards aligned with national and global best practices. The Commission calls for the decentralisation of admissions to prioritise local access, the phased elimination of high-stakes entrance examinations in favour of equitable admission mechanisms, and full transparency in vacancy management. The commission recommended limiting the strength to 1000 students in a residential school.

Equally important are reforms focused on student well-being and academic excellence: improved living-learning environments, comprehensive WASH standards, dedicated mental health professionals, structured competitive exam coaching, reliable parent-child communication, and the clear separation of academic and residential management roles. Finally, the Commission recommends discontinuing the residential model for undergraduate degree colleges and reorienting students towards quality local institutions better integrated with employment ecosystems.

Taken together, these measures aim to restore the original egalitarian vision of Telangana’s residential education system – transforming it from a fragmented, infrastructure-deficient welfare apparatus into a unified, dignified, and future-ready public education model that delivers equity, excellence, and holistic development at scale. The Commission strongly recommends a gradual transition towards well-equipped neighbourhood schools, rather than further expansion of the residential school system, so that children can grow up within their natural cultural contexts and under the care of their parents and communities. Residential schools may continue to be provided for children without parents or guardians, and for those living in conditions of extreme poverty.

8Collegiate Education

Telangana’s collegiate education system has achieved strong gains in access and participation, outperforming national averages in Gross Enrolment Ratio, transition rates, gender parity, and college density. With a GER of 40% and a Gender Parity Index of 1.8, the state demonstrates inclusive outreach, particularly for women. However, these quantitative achievements mask deep structural weaknesses that threaten academic quality, employability, and long-term global competitiveness.

The undergraduate landscape is dominated by private unaided colleges, which account for nearly three-fourths of institutions and 65% of enrolments. This heavy privatization, combined with weak regulatory oversight, has resulted in uneven quality, fee-related stress, and declining public confidence. Government Degree Colleges (GDCs), despite renewed student preference in recent years, face a severe crisis of infrastructure and human resources. Over 60% of sanctioned faculty positions are vacant, with no regular recruitment since 2013, forcing excessive reliance on guest faculty and causing instructional delays and diluted academic standards.

Infrastructure deficits are acute. Many GDCs operate from temporary and dilapidated buildings, lack laboratories, libraries, digital connectivity, and even basic classroom capacity. Student absenteeism, driven by poverty, delayed scholarships, inadequate hostels, and urban migration, has reached alarming levels, undermining learning outcomes. Accreditation performance remains weak, with low NAAC coverage among colleges and zero representation in the top 100 NIRF rankings.

The system also suffers from misaligned academic calendars, delayed admissions, zero-enrolment colleges, rural underutilization alongside urban overcrowding, and a widening disconnect between curriculum and industry needs. Career guidance, apprenticeships, and placement mechanisms are largely non-functional, limiting employability despite rising enrolments.

The report recommends a decisive shift from quantitative expansion to qualitative consolidation. Key reforms include: enforcing statutory infrastructure standards; urgent filling of faculty vacancies; decentralization and strengthening of rural and semi urban colleges; curriculum restructuring aligned with market demand; expansion of Apprenticeship Embedded Degree Programmes; restoration of the aided college sector’s public character; improved governance and monitoring through a state standards authority; timely scholarships and financial support; and establishment of a unified academic calendar and transparent assessment systems.

Clear, time-bound quality improvement targets are proposed across infrastructure, faculty recruitment, accreditation, digital learning, employability, and governance. The overarching goal is to build a transparent, accountable, skill-integrated collegiate ecosystem that ensures quality education, student dignity, and sustainable human capital development, positioning Telangana as a national and global talent hub.

9Technical Education

9.1 Engineering Colleges

Telangana has developed one of the largest engineering education systems relative to its population. As of 2024–25, Telangana has 175 engineering colleges, of which over 90% are private unaided institutions, predominantly affiliated with the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTUH). While the overall number of colleges has reduced from earlier peaks, the system continues to operate with a high sanctioned intake of over 1.2 lakh seats annually.

The technical education system has supported higher participation and access to engineering education. However, the system has now reached a point where structural weaknesses, such as the poor quality of curriculum, institutional capacity, and labour-market alignment, are placing Telangana’s broader economic and technological ambitions at risk. One such feature is that 60% of engineering colleges, and an even larger share of intake, are concentrated in the 3 districts of the urban zone of Hyderabad–Rangareddy–Medchal, while several districts in northern Telangana have no engineering colleges. The bottom 90% of districts together account for only about one-fifth of total engineering intake. Seat utilisation remains persistently low, particularly in private engineering colleges, suggesting an oversupply. In 2025–26 alone, more than 22,000 engineering seats remained vacant. Also, districts such as Mahbubnagar, Mancherial, Peddapalli, and Sangareddy have seat utilisation rates below 30%. This spatial imbalance has implications for equitable access, student mobility and regional skill development.

Second, there is a prevalence of small colleges, with an average enrolment of 611 students per college, and a small number of large colleges, indicating demand concentrated in a few engineering colleges. Additionally, small colleges face inherent constraints in maintaining laboratories, investing in digital infrastructure, and sustaining adequate faculty strength. These constraints translate directly into lower NAAC outcomes, weaker NBA participation, and limited academic depth, particularly in private-affiliated colleges.

Third, discipline-wise trends over the last 5 years highlight a sharp structural shift decisively toward Computer Science and Allied branches, which now account for over 60% of total enrolment. Core engineering disciplines such as Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering have experienced steep declines in intake and enrolment. However, expansion in CSE has not been matched by proportionate investments in faculty availability, laboratory readiness, software infrastructure, or bandwidth capacity.

Last but crucial, faculty capacity remains a binding constraint, especially in public universities and constituent colleges. Large proportions of sanctioned teaching posts remain vacant, resulting in heavy reliance on contract faculty and weakening continuity in curriculum delivery, mentoring, and research supervision.

These systemic gaps in engineering colleges have limited national and negligible global visibility, with very low participation in NIRF and no representation in major international ranking frameworks. The gaps are further reinforced by current governance arrangements, in which the affiliating capacity of state universities, particularly JNTUH, is overstretched, with limited staff, analytical capacity and absence of an integrated, interoperable data system.

Overall, Telangana’s engineering education system is characterised by high participation but weak differentiation, oversupply with low utilisation, uneven quality assurance, and weak institutional capacity. The Commission therefore calls for a shift away from procedural expansion toward performance-linked institutional differentiation, outcome-based curriculum and accreditation alignment, strengthened governance of affiliations, embedded experiential learning, and targeted public investment in faculty and infrastructure. Without such reforms, engineering education risks becoming a quantity-driven system with diminishing returns for students, industry, and the state.

9.2 Polytechnic Colleges

Polytechnic colleges occupy a critical but increasingly weak position within Telangana’s technical education ecosystem. Historically, polytechnics were designed to serve as the supervisory and execution layer between technicians and degree engineers. The state has 128 polytechnic colleges, with a similar composition of both government and private unaided institutions. They have significantly wider geographic coverage than engineering colleges, with a presence in 32 of 33 districts. Compared with universities, polytechnics mainly serve students from low-income backgrounds, as reflected in their deliberately low fee structures and modest hostel reimbursements. However, this inclusive mandate is increasingly undermined by structural capacity constraints and weakened institutional purpose.

The government polytechnics face severe faculty and staff shortages, with vacancy levels 25% in sanctioned teaching posts. Additionally, the seat utilisation patterns reveal persistent stress, especially in private polytechnics, where vacancy rates are nearly double those of government institutions and have remained high across multiple academic cycles. Polytechnics face a severe challenge to their foundational purpose within technical education due to the overuse of the structural lateral entry pathways into engineering. Initially designed for easy mobility into higher education, lateral entry, in its current form, has effectively repositioned polytechnics as feeder institutions rather than providers of employment-oriented qualifications. For instance, the polytechnic curricula have increasingly aligned with the first-year engineering syllabus and aligned with ECET. This has shifted its curriculum alignment away from the industrial and production needs.

Structurally, this has often led employers to perceive polytechnic graduates as lacking industry readiness, both in technical competencies and in essential life skills, including communication. It has eroded the professional identity and dignity of diploma qualifications, reinforcing the perception of polytechnics as secondary or purely transitional career pathways. Overall, the current position of polytechnics within the technical education ecosystem remains significantly weak.

Further, the technical skill ecosystem in the state has Polytechnics, ITIs, TASK, and the Skill University, which operate under different departments with limited coordination on apprenticeship, faculty exposure, and industry engagement. Globally, international systems in China, Vietnam, and Germany have tight integration of polytechnics, vocational and applied institutions into regional production systems. From a governance perspective, there is a lack of a unified affiliation, curriculum standards, certification, and quality assurance framework across polytechnics and ITIs in the state.

The Commission, therefore, calls for a reemphasis on polytechnic education to return to its original mandate of producing industry-ready diploma engineers with strong practical, workshop, and supervisory skills. This requires structural realignment through affiliation with the Telangana Skill University, stronger integration with ITIs and industry, restoration of faculty capacity, curriculum redesign focused on applied learning and region-responsive skills, and sustained public investment in laboratories, equipment renewal, and maintenance. In the absence of these reforms, polytechnics risk further marginalisation within the technical education pipeline, weakening Telangana’s capacity to build a balanced and resilient technical workforce.

10University Education

Telangana’s public universities are currently confronting an unprecedented crisis that threatens their academic integrity, governance structures, and long-term sustainability. Although the region has a distinguished legacy in higher education – beginning with the establishment of Osmania University in 1917 – state-run higher education institutions have experienced a steady decline, particularly since the early 2000s, due to reduced government investment and inadequate regulatory oversight. The formation of Telangana as a separate state in 2014 was expected to revitalize higher education; however, it instead coincided with further deterioration of established universities.

The principal challenges include prolonged delays in appointing Vice-Chancellors, the dissolution or truncation of key decision-making bodies such as Executive Councils and Academic Councils, and an extended freeze on recruitment of regular faculty and support staff. As a result, many departments are functioning with minimal or no qualified faculty, relying heavily on temporary appointments that often do not meet University Grants Commission (UGC) standards. These shortages have led to disrupted academic calendars, diluted assessment processes, weakened research output, poor attendance enforcement, and the closure of several advanced study centers funded by the UGC.

Universities in the state are governed by the Telangana Universities Act of 1991, whose provisions are vague and overly bureaucratic in composition. Excessive representation of serving IAS officers and ex-officio government members has effectively placed universities under government control, undermining institutional autonomy. Operational inefficiencies are further compounded by inadequate examination administration, lack of trained technical assistants, and poorly maintained libraries, laboratories, and hostel facilities.

Research administration has also been severely affected. The lack of eligible supervisors restricts Ph.D. admissions, complicates guideship allocation, and reduces opportunities for students who qualify for national fellowships such as JRF/JRF-NET. Additionally, the central government’s withdrawal of fellowships for SC and minority students and chronic delays in fee reimbursements have made doctoral education increasingly inaccessible.

Infrastructure deficiencies remain a major concern. Universities require modernization of libraries with digital access, additional classrooms and laboratories, improved hostel accommodations, nutrition upgrades, campus safety lighting, health centers, and inclusive facilities for students with special needs. At present, these foundational supports are insufficient or inconsistently managed. To address these issues, the Telangana Education Commission proposes a comprehensive set of reforms. Key recommendations include establishing a transparent and conflict-free process for recruiting Vice-Chancellors, immediately filling all teaching and support staff vacancies in strict conformity with UGC norms, and ensuring timely implementation of CAS promotions.

The Commission also advocates transitioning self-financed courses into regular streams, redesigning curricula to strengthen interdisciplinary learning and industry linkages, adopting a common academic almanac across universities, and reinstating democratically conducted student elections.

Further structural proposals involve creating an independent Telangana Education Standards Authority (TESA) for quality audits of higher education and establishing a dedicated Office of the Controller of Affiliation within each university. Detailed guidelines are outlined for upgrading academic, research, cultural, sports, and residential infrastructure so that Telangana universities can function as modern, democratic, and globally competitive institutions.

These coordinated measures aim to restore leadership, rebuild academic culture, safeguard autonomy, and revitalize Telangana’s public universities as credible centers of higher learning.

11Mid-Day Meal and Food Safety

Over the past decade, repeated incidents related to food quality and safety under the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) and in residential schools and hostels across Telangana have raised serious concerns regarding student health, nutrition, and institutional accountability. In response, the Telangana Education Commission conducted extensive field visits across all 33 districts, covering government day schools, residential schools, hostels, KGBVs, model schools, and Anganwadi centres. The Commission engaged with a wide range of stakeholders – including students, parents, teachers, cooks, SHG members, administrators, and district officials – to obtain a comprehensive, ground-level understanding of the operational and systemic challenges affecting food provision.

The study finds that the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, while well-intentioned, is operating under conditions that no longer align with current nutritional requirements, students and parents aspirations, or administrative complexities. Inadequate unit costs, which are significantly lower than prevailing market prices, combined with prolonged delays in bill reimbursements, have placed severe financial strain on Self-Help Group (SHG) cooks. This has directly affected adherence to prescribed menus and compromised food quality. Many schools lack basic kitchen infrastructure, forcing food preparation in unhygienic and unsafe environments, thereby increasing the risk of contamination and food-borne illnesses. The Commission identified multiple food safety risks, including poor storage facilities, rodent infestation, inconsistent rice quality, use of damaged and rusted utensils, lack of potable water for cooking, and weak hygiene practices.

Menu monotony, diluted curries, and minimal vegetable content have resulted in poor nutritional outcomes and declining student interest in meals. Alternative arrangements in many schools such as centralized kitchens have also proven ineffective due to issues related to food freshness, taste, and acceptability. Further, the absence of formal grievance redressal and feedback mechanisms has left students and parents without avenues to report concerns. Residential schools and hostels show relatively better performance due to higher mess charges and improved infrastructure; however, emerging risks related to delayed supplier payments, decentralized procurement, and lack of standardized menus threaten sustainability and quality in the long term.

To address these systemic deficiencies, the Commission recommends a comprehensive reform framework. Key proposals include introducing a revised, standardized, and nutritionally balanced menu with regular inclusion of vegetables, dal, eggs, and fruits; substantially revising unit costs to reflect actual expenses; and extending the Mid-Day Meal Scheme to Intermediate students. These measures would require an additional annual financial outlay of approximately ₹200 crore, which the Commission considers a critical investment in student health and educational outcomes.

Food safety and hygiene form the core of the recommendations. Mandatory use of potable drinking water, replacement of firewood with gas, adoption of SS 304 stainless steel utensils, proper storage systems, scientifically designed kitchens, and strict personal hygiene protocols for cooks are emphasized. The Commission strongly advocates the development and state wide implementation of detailed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), supported by printed manuals, regular training, and visual aids such as animation films.

A major structural reform proposed is the complete digital transformation of the payment system. The current paper-based, multi-tiered payment process is identified as a critical bottleneck. The Commission recommends an end-to-end, transaction-based software system with weekly billing, centralized accounts, integration with facial recognition–based attendance, real-time MIS reporting, and transparent tracking of payments. Partnering with an experienced public-sector technology provider such as TCS is suggested to ensure efficiency, scalability, and accountability.

For residential schools and hostels, the Commission recommends a standardized menu across all institutions, centralized procurement through TGEWIDC or a dedicated new corporation, uniform food safety standards, and robust financial tracking systems. Additional recommendations address water and sanitation, dormitory infrastructure, student kits, menstrual hygiene, and campus safety. Finally, the Commission underscores the importance of accountability through robust grievance redressal and feedback mechanisms, including dedicated grievance channels, regular reviews, and third-party feedback collection from parents and communities.

Overall, the recommendations mandate a comprehensive and actionable roadmap to ensure safe, nutritious, and dignified food for students in government and residential educational institutions in Telangana. The recommendations balance immediate corrective actions with long-term systemic reforms aimed at restoring public confidence, safeguarding student well-being, and strengthening the educational ecosystem.

12Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and Online Education

Telangana occupies a distinctive position in the national landscape of Open and Distance Learning (ODL), having pioneered the movement with the establishment of Dr B.R. Ambedkar Open University and subsequently hosting a robust ecosystem of open schools, open universities, dual-mode universities, and national institutions. ODL and online education have historically enabled the state to “reach the unreached,” providing second-chance and alternative learning pathways to school dropouts, working adults, women, rural youth, marginalised communities, and other disadvantaged groups. Institutions such as the Telangana Open School Society (TOSS), NIOS, BRAOU, IGNOU, and several dual-mode universities have collectively expanded access to secondary and higher education at scale.

Despite this strong legacy and clear social relevance, the ODL and online education system in Telangana is currently constrained by significant structural, academic, technological, and administrative challenges. Open schooling and distance higher education largely function through ad hoc, deputation-based arrangements, with limited full-time academic staff, weak institutional autonomy, bureaucratic functioning, and inadequate infrastructure at study centres. Curriculum design remains insufficiently adapted to ODL pedagogy, learner support services are weak, assessment and feedback mechanisms are irregular, and student engagement is low, contributing to high dropout rates and modest learning outcomes. The digital divide – manifested in poor access to devices, connectivity, computer labs, and digital literacy – further undermines equity and effectiveness, particularly for rural and marginalised learners.

At the same time, national policy developments such as NEP 2020, UGC regulations on ODL and online education, and the availability of high-quality national digital platforms (SWAYAM, DIKSHA, NDLI, NPTEL, e-PG Pathshala) provide a strong enabling framework. Telangana’s strengths as an IT-enabled state position it well to leverage online and blended learning models, integrate emerging technologies such as AI, virtual labs, and learning management systems, and align education more closely with industry and employability needs.

The Telangana Education Commission argues that ODL and online education must be treated as a strategic, mainstream component of Telangana’s education system rather than as a peripheral or residual mode. This requires comprehensive institutional reform, academic renewal, and coordinated state-level policy action.

Key recommendations of the Commission include strengthening the organisational and academic structure of TOSS and other ODL institutions through regular, trained staff; undertaking curriculum reform tailored to ODL learners with integration of vocational skills; improving learner support, assessment, and grievance redressal systems; bridging the digital divide through infrastructure investment and free access to digital resources; and enhancing awareness and community partnerships to improve enrolment and retention.

The Commission further recommends closer integration of open schooling examinations with regular state boards, fee concessions for economically weaker ODL learners, targeted outreach to special groups such as prisoners, and systematic monitoring through a state-level coordination mechanism. At the higher education level, it proposes faculty and technical staff appointments in line with UGC norms, large-scale faculty development, shared e-content development through T-SAT, creation of a state-level open education portal, and establishment of a consortium of ODL and online education institutions (CODE-T) to promote collaboration, quality assurance, credit transfer, and innovation.

The Commission’s assessment concludes that ODL and online education are indispensable for achieving Telangana’s goals of access, equity, and increased gross enrolment across school and higher education. With focused reforms, adequate public investment, and effective coordination, Telangana can reclaim its leadership role and build a resilient, inclusive, and high-quality ODL and online education ecosystem aligned with its social and economic priorities.

VIIGeneral Recommendations

The Telangana Education Commission undertook a comprehensive review of the education landscape in the state, excluding the agriculture and medical education sectors. As part of this exercise, the Commission examined data relating to admissions, administrative processes, infrastructure, personnel, prevailing best practices, challenges, systemic shortcomings, and identified key bottlenecks contributing to inefficiencies.

In the context of an increasingly digitised environment, the review identified significant opportunities to rationalise systems and reorganise administrative processes to achieve improved outcomes. Through this effort, the Commission has sought to present the Government of Telangana with a holistic, 360-degree assessment of the complex challenges involved in strengthening the education sector and enhancing its long-term global competitiveness.

The reforms proposed for each segment of education in the preceding chapters, along with these cross-cutting recommendations applicable to all institutions proposed here, have been formulated on the basis of a careful examination of the systemic and structural impediments that undermine the quality of education delivery. These recommendations below suggest system-wide actions that will improve outcomes for the entire sector of education.

IGovernance

1. A.The state of Telangana must aim for a Common School System to ensure equitable access to quality education for all rural, tribal and urban, children and youth across all segments of society, enabling them to enter the education system with dignity to develop their skills and to realise their full potential.
2. B.The government must allocate available government land in rural and urban areas for future establishment and expansion of educational institutions.
3. C.The outcomes of reform initiatives, operational changes, and institutional stabilisation in the education sector take considerable time to materialise. It is therefore essential to ensure bureaucratic stability to carry these changes through to fruition. Indian Administrative Service officers posted as Secretary to the government, Heads of Department in the Education Department should be retained for a minimum tenure of five years to provide continuity and to effectively nurture the sector.
4. D.The Commission sees education as a transformatory process that democratizes by inclusion. The bureaucracy leading the education department must possess the empathy and vision necessary to facilitate this transformation. IAS officers with a demonstrated aptitude and attitude for the education sector should therefore be appointed to these positions, rather than officers whose orientation is predominantly regulatory or compliance driven.
5. E.The Education Department must deploy sophisticated software already being used in government to build a comprehensive, across segment, database for all aspects of education in the Telangana State. Most administrative operations like registration of admissions in schools, data of personnel are digitized already. The department should deploy interoperable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – End to End – software to streamline operations and cut down inefficiencies.
6. F.All authenticated data of the education sector generated from all segments of the government through citizen friendly reports must be in the public domain.
7. G.The Telangana Education Commission strongly recommends that English be adopted as the medium of instruction across all levels of education in the State, from Nursery to Postgraduate studies. Where necessary, teachers may use the mother tongue solely as a support for explanation at the primary level to facilitate student comprehension.
8. H.It is observed that the salaries of permanent teachers, faculty, and non-teaching employees are relatively very high when compared with prevailing market benchmarks. In future staff recruitments, it may be prudent to review and rationalize these structures so that adequate budgetary space is available for non-salary expenditures, which are essential for improving the quality of education and enhancing student well-being. The state’s overall fiscal capacity necessitates a balanced approach to manage expenditures on salaries, allowances, and pensions of government employees, including those in the education sector. If left unaddressed, existing cost structures could pose constraints on the future expansion and strengthening of public education.
9. I.Many national and global non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including UN agencies, are active in the education sector bringing innovative ideas and practices for educational excellence. As agencies, they have uncertain relationship with the state governments, often dependent on ad hoc responses of the bureaucrats of the time. This needs to be streamlined by setting up a nodal body within the Education Departments of the governments to facilitate their interventions in schools. Participation of NGOs should be encouraged by fostering partnerships.
10. J.Caste categories of SC and ST shall not be mentioned in attendance registers or in any other publicly displayed documents.
11. K.Biometric attendance must be introduced for all students, teachers, faculty, non-teaching, permanent and temporary staff. Salaries, and leave management must be linked to the attendance.
12. L.All permanent, contractual, outsourced employees should be paid salaries on the first of every month.
13. M.Computer skills shall be made compulsory across all stages of education, from primary schooling to post-graduate programmes.
14. N.The government educational institutions including schools in Telangana must not display in any offices or public spaces, photographs, statues, or likenesses of living or legendary figures of the past or present related to any field including religious figures or symbols.
15. O.The government educational institutions including schools in the state must sing only the national anthem and the state anthem during official events including in school assemblies.

IIBudget

The government must allocate a budget for each segment of the education sector after a rational assessment of annual needs for upgradation and maintenance of infrastructure, and not merely to meet the salary and pension expenditure of the personnel in the sector.

1. A.The government should consider the education sector as a mission rather than as a department and allocate at least 18% of the state budget to the education sector, on par with the national average.
2. B.Out of the 18% education budget, 5% should be allocated to higher education.
3. C.The government should insulate the state-run education sector from private investment such as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), International investments and Public Private Partnership (PPP) that essentially operate on for-profit mode. However, this need not prevent the government from borrowing long-term loans from bilateral and multilateral funding agencies like the UN and World bank.

IIIQuality Assurance

1. A.All educational institutions, from pre-schools to universities, should have the same standards of infrastructure, personnel, and systems across the entire state, spanning rural, urban and tribal areas.
2. B.All educational institutions including schools, colleges and universities will be graded/ranked by Telangana Educational Standards Authority.
3. C.The accreditation shall be done for departments also based on scientific grading/ranking instead of an entire university.
4. D.Fee reimbursements shall be suspended for private educational institutions that continuously underperform for two consecutive academic years.
5. E.Some budget private schools and colleges violate the existing norms for attendance of students, qualifications for teachers, and infrastructure requirements with impunity. Affiliation/recognition of such institutions shall be re-examined and appropriate action initiated.

IVExpansion to New Rural and Urban Extensions and Habitations

Urban and rural areas of some districts in the state, including the densely populated urban conglomerations like Medchal-Malkajgiri district, do not have state-run higher education institutions. Special focus must be given to such under-served geographies when new institutions are planned in the state sector.

VProtection of Assets

Many schools, colleges, and universities in both urban and rural areas are endowed with substantial tracts of land that were originally allocated by their founders with future expansion in mind. Land belonging to schools and other educational institutions should not be leased, transferred, or allotted to any other entities, including private sector organisations, other government departments, government agencies, or social and community organisations, even when such bodies are engaged in scientific research or educational activities. Alienation of institutional land constrains long-term growth and limits the scope for future expansion.

VILegislative Strengthening

Where required, suitable amendments to existing legislation, as well as the enactment of new legislation, will be necessary to enable effective implementation of the recommendations set out in this policy document.

1. A.The Right to Education Act should be extended to cover all children from 3 to 18 years of age, free and compulsory education encompassing education from nursery through Class XII, thereby expanding the existing mandate that applies only to children aged 6 to 14 years.
2. B.Municipal Acts and other legislations must be amended to mandate and ensure that adequate public land is made available for establishment of schools, colleges, universities as per the needs of the population.

VIIProtection From Caste And Gender Discrimination

There is no place in education for communalism, majoritarianism or any form of hegemony based on religion, class, caste, gender, region, language, race. There is no place either for negation, dilution or distortion of India’s rich diversity.

1. A.Appropriate legislation should be enacted to prevent discrimination against students from marginalised communities and minority groups in educational institutions, and its strict enforcement must be ensured through clear policy mechanisms.
2. B.From the secondary school stage onwards, gender education should be introduced. Students and faculty must be made aware of relevant laws such as the POCSO Act, the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace Act, the Child Marriage Act, the Anti-Dowry Act, and the legal consequences of violations of these laws.

VIIIBudgeted Posts

Universities in the state were assigned budgeted posts several decades ago based on then-prevailing student enrolment and faculty structures. Nearly three decades later, in 2025, student enrolment has expanded manifold and the academic landscape has diversified with new faculties, disciplines, and areas of study, yet the number of sanctioned posts has remained unchanged. These posts must therefore be comprehensively reassessed and increased to meet current academic and institutional requirements.

IXNational Education Policy 2020

The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) was examined through internal deliberations, and the Telangana Education Commission constituted a Working Group of experts to study the document and present its views. Following detailed discussions, the Commission concluded that certain proposals – such as the strengthening of pre-school education – may be adopted to reinforce the education system in Telangana. The Commission is of the view that any recommended policy initiative should be adopted only if it is consistent with the democratic, secular ethos and Constitutional values of the country.

XAlumni

All educational institutions should develop robust systems for alumni tracking and sustained engagement to support and strengthen their overall institutional development.

XIResource Mobilisation through a Public Portal

1. A.A common portal for the Education Department shall be established and registered as a society, with all requisite legal compliances – including FCRA registration and applicable tax exemption – to enable the receipt of donor funds from domestic and international contributors for any government-run educational institution in the state.
2. B.The portal will host a comprehensive dashboard capturing the needs of educational institutions across the state. Donors may select the specific requirements they wish to support, determine the extent of their contribution, and choose the location, institution, or geographic area for which the funding is to be directed.
3. C.Each donor shall receive a formally signed acknowledgement of the donation from the Chief Minister’s Office, along with the applicable tax exemption certification. Details of fund utilisation, along with photographs from project locations, shall be placed in the public domain to enable donors and other stakeholders to track progress and outcomes.

XIIOverview of Recommended Structural and Functional Changes

Telangana’s education system is currently governed through different bodies, mandates and overlapping authorities, which weaken accountability and effect decision-making on crucial aspects of quality, curriculum relevance, affiliation oversight, and industry alignment. To address this, the TEC has recommended governance related suggestions to enable a single, more efficient system that can deliver quality outcomes and align education with Telangana’s economic growth priorities.

Contents of the Full Report

Front matter

1. 07Foreword
2. 08Genesis and Role of Telangana Education Commission
3. 10Acknowledgements
4. 14I. List of Tables
5. 16II. List of Figures and Maps
6. 17III. List of Abbreviations
7. 24IV. A Philosophical Approach to Educational Reform
8. 26V. Background of the Report
9. 30VI. Executive Summary
10. 43VII. General Recommendations

Chapter 1 — Pre-Primary Education (50)

1. 501.1 Background
2. 501.2 Challenges
3. 511.3 Objectives
4. 521.4 Need to Bring Pre-School education into Regular Schools
5. 521.5 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 2 — School Education (57)

1. 572.1 Background
2. 582.2 Profile
3. 622.3 Challenges
4. 682.4 Objectives and Goals
5. 682.5 RECOMMENDATIONS
6. 952.6 RECOMMENDATIONS for the Standardization of the Schools

Chapter 3 — Intermediate Education (99)

1. 993.1 Background
2. 993.2 Profile
3. 1023.3 Issues in the Private Intermediate Colleges
4. 1053.4 Issues in the Government Intermediate Colleges
5. 1063.5 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 4 — Telangana Public Schools: Building Stronger Schools (115)

1. 1154.1 Concept of Telangana Public Schools
2. 1154.2 Approach and Model Design
3. 1164.3 Major Features of Telangana Public Schools
4. 1194.4 Envisaged Outcomes and Long-Term Impact
5. 1204.5 Implementation and Financial Plan

Chapter 5 — Teacher Education (122)

1. 1225.1 Background
2. 1225.2 Pre-Service Teacher Education (PSTE)
3. 1235.2.1 Public TEIs fare better
4. 1235.2.2 Issues in PSTE
5. 1255.2.3 RECOMMENDATIONS to strengthen PSTE
6. 1285.3 In-service teacher education (INSTE)
7. 1285.3.1 Issues with INSTE
8. 1295.3.2 RECOMMENDATIONS on INSTE
9. 1315.4 Teacher Education Governance
10. 1315.4.1 Governance Issues
11. 1335.4.2 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 6 — Telangana Education Standards Authority (136)

1. 1366.1 School Standards: Global Practices
2. 1376.2 School Standards in India
3. 1386.3 School Standards in Telangana
4. 1396.4 Assessments
5. 1406.5 Higher Education Standards
6. 1416.6 Telangana Education Standards Authority

Chapter 7 — Government Residential Institutions (147)

1. 1477.1 Background
2. 1487.2 Profile
3. 1497.3 Challenges
4. 1537.4 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 8 — Collegiate Education (163)

1. 1638.1 Background
2. 1638.2 Profile
3. 1668.3 Existing Challenges
4. 1708.4 RECOMMENDATIONS
5. 1798.5 Quality Improvement Goals of Collegiate Education

Chapter 9 — Technical Education (181)

1. 1819.1 Background
2. 181Part I: Engineering Colleges
3. 1839.2 Profile of the Engineering Education
4. 1869.3 Challenges in the Engineering Education
5. 1909.4 RECOMMENDATIONS
6. 196Part II: Polytechnic Colleges
7. 1969.5 Background
8. 1979.6 Profile of the Polytechnic Colleges
9. 2029.7 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 10 — University Education (205)

1. 20510.1 Background
2. 20710.2 Challenges
3. 21610.3 RECOMMENDATIONS

Chapter 11 — Food Quality and Safety in Mid-Day Meal Scheme and Residential Institutions (229)

1. 22911.1 Background
2. 22911.2 Challenges
3. 23111.3 RECOMMENDATIONS
4. 23811.4 RECOMMENDATIONS for Residential Schools and Hostels of all Managements

Chapter 12 — Open and Distance Learning (ODL) (243)

1. 24312.1 Background
2. 24312.2 Profile
3. 24612.3 Challenges before Telangana Open School Systems (TOSS)
4. 24812.4 Concept of ODL
5. 25012.5 Challenges of ODL in Higher Education
6. 25112.6 RECOMMENDATIONS

References and Annexures

1. 257References
2. 263Annexure I: Telangana Private Schools And Junior Colleges Fee Regulatory And Monitoring Commission Draft Bill, 2026
3. 281Annexure II: The Telangana Public Schools (Establishment, Management and Monitoring) Draft Bill, 2026
4. 301Annexure III: Telangana Education Standards Authority Draft Bill, 2026
5. 319Annexure IV: Operational Manual of Telangana Public Schools — A Comprehensive Guide to Implementation, Maintenance, Administration and Governance

Research and Drafting Team

1. 1)Mr. Akunuri Murali IAS (Retd.)
2. 2)Prof. P.L. Vishweshwar Rao
3. 3)Dr. Charakonda Venkatesh
4. 4)Ms. Jyotsna Shiva Reddy
5. 5)Prof. Padmaja Shaw
6. 6)Mr. Karthik Subramanian
7. 7)Ms. N. Veera Vasavi, CEGIS
8. 8)Dr. Zeenathfar Azmi Syed
9. 9)Dr. N. Venkatesh
10. 10)Mr. Shaik Javed Afroze
11. 11)Dr. J. Swapna

Telangana Education Commission · www.tec.telangana.gov.in · Year of Publication 2026