Opinion | Secondary education in Uttar Pradesh: How infrastructure and examination reforms changed school life
Examinations, once treated by large sections of students and middlemen as negotiable, are now more likely to be treated as genuine tests
Published: Nov 15, 2026, 19:15 IST
| Updated: Nov 15, 2026, 19:19 IST
Examinations, once treated by large sections of students and middlemen as negotiable, are now more likely to be treated as genuine tests
By- Dr. Priyanka Shrivastava
Official government records and independent reporting show that the Yogi Adityanath government, in office since 2017, introduced structural reforms in secondary education that were largely absent or only weakly enforced during the previous Akhilesh Yadav government (2012–2017). For the first time in years, secondary schools received a dedicated, measurable infrastructure push rather than piecemeal interventions. The difference is visible not just in budget lines but in the daily experience of students who now enter buildings with functional toilets, electricity, boundary walls, libraries and laboratories that earlier generations often lacked.
The centrepiece of this shift is the first major dedicated secondary-school infrastructure drive, which targeted roughly 2,300–2,400 government secondary schools against 27–35 parameters. Under Project Alankar and related programmes, schools received libraries, science and computer laboratories, toilets, electricity connections, boundary walls, smart classrooms (1,236) and ICT labs (778). No comparable systematic, secondary-focused makeover existed at this scale under the previous government. Students who once studied in classrooms with broken furniture and unreliable power now sit in spaces equipped for both traditional teaching and digital tools. The change is concrete: a child in a district secondary school is more likely today to have access to a working science lab or a smart classroom than a decade ago.
Equally significant has been the strict enforcement of the anti-unfair means framework after 2017. Pre-2017 UP Board examinations were notorious for organised mass cheating, with entire centres operating as open markets for answers. The new measures—CCTV surveillance, Special Task Force involvement, stricter centre selection and the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) framework—initially caused pass percentages to dip as large numbers of students stayed away or failed without external help. Over time, however, the same measures produced more credible results. Class 10 pass percentages have climbed steadily in recent years and crossed 90 per cent (reaching 90.11 per cent in 2025, the highest in the board’s history under conventional examination methods). The numbers matter less as a political score than as evidence that students are now largely writing their own papers. Everyday school life has changed accordingly: teachers report less pressure to “manage” results, and parents place greater value on actual preparation.
Alongside infrastructure and examination integrity, several initiatives that were not present at scale earlier have entered the routine of secondary schools. Vocational education under Project Praveen (Praveen Yojana) now operates in 990-plus schools and, in later expansions, has covered well over a thousand institutions, offering short-term, industry-relevant training in IT, healthcare, electronics, apparel, agriculture and green jobs to students from Class 9 onwards. Plans for an AI curriculum, career portals, free sanitary-napkin vending machines and incinerators in thousands of schools, and self-defence training for girls have further expanded the definition of what a secondary school is expected to provide. These are not cosmetic additions. For many girls, the presence of functional sanitary facilities and self-defence sessions has reduced the practical barriers that previously limited attendance and confidence. For boys and girls alike, early exposure to vocational skills has begun to link classroom learning to concrete livelihood options rather than treating school solely as a route to the next board examination.
The cumulative effect is visible in the texture of the school day. A student arriving at a government secondary school is more likely to find electricity for fans and lights, a boundary wall that creates a defined campus, toilets that function, and at least some digital tools. Examinations, once treated by large sections of students and middlemen as negotiable, are now more likely to be treated as genuine tests. Vocational sessions and career guidance appear on the timetable in a growing number of schools. None of this erases remaining gaps—teacher shortages, uneven quality of digital equipment, and learning outcomes that still lag in many districts—but the baseline of physical and institutional conditions has shifted in a way that earlier governments did not achieve at comparable scale.
Critics can rightly note that infrastructure numbers do not automatically translate into better learning, and that pass percentages must be read alongside independent assessments of conceptual understanding. Yet the contrast with the pre-2017 period remains sharp. Secondary schools that previously operated with chronic shortages of basic facilities and under a culture of mass copying have, over nearly a decade, seen a measurable expansion of physical infrastructure and a sustained attempt to restore the integrity of examinations. For children in government secondary schools, that has meant classrooms that are safer and better equipped, and board examinations that more closely reflect what they have actually studied. The reforms have not completed the task of transforming secondary education in Uttar Pradesh, but they have changed the everyday conditions under which that education is delivered.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at Allahabad Degree College, University of Allahabad. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Zee News)
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