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By:

Sagari Gupta

24 March 2026 at 2:16:04 pm

CBSE’s 2026 Overhaul: Big Policy, Uneven Ground

The government’s school reform agenda promises transformation, but delivery gaps in staffing, infrastructure and funding threaten to blunt its impact. India’s school education system is undergoing its most significant structural change in a decade. From the 2026-27 academic session, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is implementing three reforms simultaneously: a mandatory third language from Class 6, computational thinking (CT) and artificial intelligence (AI) integrated into...

CBSE’s 2026 Overhaul: Big Policy, Uneven Ground

The government’s school reform agenda promises transformation, but delivery gaps in staffing, infrastructure and funding threaten to blunt its impact. India’s school education system is undergoing its most significant structural change in a decade. From the 2026-27 academic session, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is implementing three reforms simultaneously: a mandatory third language from Class 6, computational thinking (CT) and artificial intelligence (AI) integrated into the curriculum from Class 3, and a multidisciplinary, flexible subject structure for Classes 9 and above. All three are anchored in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023. The policy direction is clear. The delivery conditions are not. Operation Challenge Under the revised framework, CBSE introduces a structured three-language system with levels labelled R1, R2, and R3. At least two of the three languages must be Indian. A third language becomes compulsory from Class 6 this session. R3-level textbooks are being introduced in Class 6 in 2026-27 and will extend progressively to Class 10 by 2030-31. The first cohort to adopt this full framework will sit their Class 10 board exams in 2031. CBSE has also expanded its language offerings, adding Santhali, Maithili, Dogri, and Konkani at the secondary level, bringing its total language list to 44.  The operational challenge is different in character from the policy objective. Language teacher supply is uneven across regions, and the gap is widest in states where particular Indian languages have limited instructional presence. Many private schools have historically offered a restricted set of languages, shaped by parent demand and available faculty rather than any national language policy. The mandate now requires them to identify, notify, and operationalise a third language within the current session. There is no separately funded mechanism for teacher recruitment or material development.  Schools in states where particular Indian languages are not widely taught face a direct structural bottleneck. A school in Tamil Nadu choosing Santhali as its third language, for instance, has no established teacher pipeline to draw from. The CBSE circular mandates compliance. The resourcing pathway remains each school's own responsibility. For schools with larger budgets, this is a planning problem. For institutions operating on thin margins, it is a structural constraint with no obvious resolution within the current timeline. On April 1, 2026, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched the CT and AI curriculum for Classes 3 to 8. The curriculum focuses on logical reasoning, problem-solving, pattern recognition, and data literacy. It is not a standalone subject for this age group. CT and AI concepts are integrated across existing subjects through project-based activities and interdisciplinary learning, with all assessment being internal and activity-based. For Classes 3 to 5, delivery is through puzzles, games, and storytelling. Classes 6 to 8 move into foundational AI concepts and structured computational thinking. CT and AI will become a compulsory module in Classes 9 and 10 from 2027-28, with the first board examination in 2029.  The pedagogical rationale is defensible. What the design does not resolve is who delivers this content, at what depth, and with what sustained preparation. Speaking at a stakeholder consultation on October 29, 2025, Sanjay Kumar, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, acknowledged the scale directly: training over one crore teachers to deliver AI-related education is the central implementation hurdle. Teacher training is to be delivered through the NISHTHA programme via the DIKSHA platform, using grade-specific video-based modules.  At the school level, CBSE requires schools to organise district-level workshops individually or through Sahodaya School Complexes. For regional orientation programmes through Centres of Excellence, teachers register online by paying a fee of Rs 700 per session. A paid registration requirement and one-day offline workshops do not constitute sustained pedagogical transformation. The teachers who will deliver CT and AI to Class 3 students are, in most schools, generalists handling mathematics and environmental studies. There is no current requirement for a specialised CT or AI qualification at the primary level. Over 18,000 CBSE schools currently deliver a 15-hour Skilling for AI Readiness (SOAR) module for Classes 6 to 8 on a voluntary basis. The 2026-27 mandate makes CT and AI compulsory, starts three years younger, and embeds it across subjects rather than treating it as a standalone elective.The shift in scope is significant. The shift in teacher preparation has not kept pace. Flexible Curriculum For students entering Class 9 in 2026-27, CBSE is introducing an optional advanced-level paper in both mathematics and science. All students take the standard 80-mark paper. Those opting for the advanced track take an additional 25-mark, one-hour paper. Students scoring above 50 percent receive a separate notation on their marksheet, with no penalty for lower performance and no effect on the aggregate. Art education, physical education and wellbeing, vocational education, and interdisciplinary studies are now all compulsory. Vocational education will include a compulsory board exam from 2027-28. The first board examinations under the new Class 9 scheme will be held in 2028.    Flexibility at the curricular level requires matching capacity at the institutional level. Schools must manage timetable complexity, teacher allocation across two levels of the same subject, and assessment design for multiple new mandatory areas. Smaller private schools and semi-urban institutions face these demands without additional staffing budgets or infrastructure support. A school running two concurrent levels of mathematics in Class 9 needs either two teachers or one teacher with the preparation and time to deliver both. Neither condition is guaranteed.   The compulsory board examination for vocational education from 2027-28 adds a further layer. Vocational subjects require domain-trained faculty, workshop infrastructure, and industry linkages for practical assessment. Government schools in some states have built these linkages over time through Skill India partnerships. Private schools, particularly at the smaller end, have not. The reform assumes a baseline capacity that exists unevenly across the 27,000-plus affiliated school network.   Unresolved Question None of the official communications address financing mechanisms at the school level. The identifiable cost components are: recruitment of additional language teachers, teacher training for CT and AI delivery, digital infrastructure and learning resources, new NCERT textbooks across multiple new subjects, and internal assessment redesign. CBSE has more than 27,000 affiliated schools in India, the majority private.In the private school sector, transition costs that are not separately funded translate, over time, into fee revisions. Parents absorb what institutions cannot independently fund. This follows from how private school financing has operated across previous reform cycles.   Government schools face a different version of the same problem. State education budgets are already stretched across mid-day meal programmes, infrastructure maintenance, and teacher salaries. The CBSE reforms impose new demands on school management systems without ring-fencing funds for the transition. Teacher training through DIKSHA is free for the teacher but not cost-free for the system: time spent in training is time away from classrooms, and online module completion rates on the platform have been inconsistent across states.   The CBSE 2026 reforms move Indian school education toward multilingual competence, early technological literacy, and assessed applied skills. The direction is consistent with NEP 2020. Three structural gaps remain: teacher readiness requires investment far beyond episodic workshops; infrastructure capacity varies significantly across the 27,000-plus affiliated school network; and financing mechanisms for the transition are unaddressed, with the cost burden falling on institutions and, ultimately, on households. Whether the reform’s ambition reaches students evenly will depend less on the policy design and more on whether these three gaps receive the same attention as the curriculum itself. (The author is an independent public policy researcher who writes on political economy, climate, and the ethics of everyday systems. Views personal.)

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Mamata is seeing a ghost of Bangladesh behind the massive outrage and waves of protest over rape and murder of the trainee doctor. And the reasons are many.

It’s been over a fortnight. Yet with each passing day the voice of protest is getting louder and stronger. From the streets of Kolkata it’s pouring into roads of hinterland. The cry for justice for a rape victim has consolidated into a wail of demands to set a lot of wrongdoings right. Here in lies the fear and trepidation. Wasn’t the issue that brought the youth of Bangladesh out on the thoroughfares a simple, innocent one of quota reform?

The chief minister of Bengal, known for understanding the pulse of people better than many, was quick to read the signages floating in the political horizon.

The most obvious reason for her to be tensed is that both the regime change in Bangladesh and the mass protest in Bengal, were student-driven to begin with. The two incidents---end of 15 year old Sheikh Hasina government and turbulence in West Bengal, over the heinous crime, falling back to back, the first on August 5th and the latter from August 9th onwards, give natural scope for comparisons. More so, because in both the cases the movement strayed beyond an affected constituency to include aggrieved people at large, cutting across socio-economic demography. If the quota reform protest started by students in Bangladesh became a mass uprising against an autocratic regime, the campaign demanding justice for the rape victim and overall safety and security of women in Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal soon snowballed into a movement of no-confidence against the government. Slogans--”Mamata must resign” also got floated in social media much in line with the call for ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In fact “Resignation of Hasina” became the single point agenda into which all other fringe demands coalesced.

Incidentally, even before people started drawing parallels, that there could be a thread of commonality in the way the upheaval in Bangladesh and Bengal played out, Mamata was quick to point out that the Opposition were trying to pull off a Bangladesh by politicizing the tragic incident: “A coordinated approach has been executed by the BJP and the CPIM with support from the Centre to defame Bengal and exploit the situation....They want to make a Bangladesh here. They are taking cues from student unrest in Bangladesh and are attempting to capture similarly. I have no longing for the chair. I came here to serve people.”

Not only Mamata, her political lieutenants are consistently equating the turmoil in Bengal with the mayhem in Bangladesh. Cabinet minister for North Bengal development Udayan Guha threatened to take stern action against those, who would be trying to exploit the situation by emulating a Bangladesh like movement. “ Even after the hospital was vandalised, the police did not open fire on anyone. The police will not allow a Bangladesh type situation. We will not allow Bengal to turn into Bangladesh, Guha thundered.

Is the government’s fear unfounded?

Apart from the similarities on ground zero, as to how and where the future course of events are heading to, there are ample reasons for Bengal to mull on-- as to what led to a Bangladesh like boiling point. To begin with, it’ll be appropriate to talk of Bangladesh and the prevailing situation, that made the students’ protest become big in magnitude. The students were out on the streets because of a high reservation in public jobs. Unemployment and stagnant job market in private sector coupled with a high rate of inflation drove the educated youth to rebel against the government.

But soon the students found enormous number of sympathisers, who were equally at the receiving end. According to Bangladesh citizens, the last two terms of the Sheikh Hasina government were a mockery of democracy. Even elections would be compromised. As Hasina grew from strength to strength, she politicized institutions. The rank and file of police owed allegiance to the ruling dispensation. Extortion, harrassment and raids by police and people in power became rampant. An atmosphere of fear and repression reigned and people got restless to overthrow the government.

Politicization of institutions has been happening in Mamata government too. Allegations are quite strong that police in Bengal functions at the beck and call of political bosses. The lapses and alleged loopholes on the part of police in handling the rape and murder of the young doctor have yet again revealed a sense of confused or misplaced loyalty.

But above everything else both Hasina and Mamata governments allegedly seem to have twined in accepting corruption as a way of life. In Bangladesh jobs of primary and secondary teachers got sold at premium, Rs 10-12 lakh in the Hasina regime. Even police had to pay up for prized postings and transfers. In Bengal busting of the teacher’s recruitment scam has revealed how unsuccessful and ineligible candidates got government jobs in schools in exchange of bribes.

Similarities are multiple and inescapable. Mamata has good reasons to be apprehensive. It’s not only she, who can see and connect the dots. People, out on the streets, clamoring for justice, can see a providential pattern somewhere in the unfolding of future events in these two places-- Bangladesh and Bengal. True, they share more than 2,217 odd km of border. They share the same umbilical cord, other than language, culture, ethos, icons. Even emotions are the same. So she cannot take any risk.

(The writer is a senior jounalist based in Kolkata. Views personal)

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