School Education - the RTE Quota, Funds and Curriculum
School education in India is run mostly by the states, and paid for and shaped in large part by the Centre. In January 2026 the Supreme Court called the 25% quota that private unaided schools owe poor and disadvantaged children under Section 12(1)(c) of the Right to Education Act a national mission, found that no state had fully delivered it, and ordered enforceable rules. Around that legal spine sit the money and the syllabus: Samagra Shiksha funds elementary schooling out of an education cess that never enters the divisible pool, PM POSHAN feeds children from Bal Vatika to Class VIII, and NCERT is rewriting the curriculum on the National Education Policy 2020. The department's own UDISE+ census for 2025-26 now sizes that system: 24.72 crore students taught by 1.03 crore teachers in 14.67 lakh schools. That rewrite is now in its last stretch: the Class 1 to 9 books are out and the Class 10 to 12 set is still being drafted.
- RTE Act
- Section 12(1)(c)
- EWS quota
- Supreme Court
- Article 21A
- NCPCR
- 2026 INSC 56
- school inclusion
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