Scramble to bring education under single regulator, AI push mark 2025
New Delhi: Sweeping policy pushes, AI-backed transformation of education, and debate over student well-being against a backdrop of suicides among them marked the education sector over the year.
Five years after the adoption of the National Education Policy (NEP), the Centre moved to translate longstanding proposals into law, betted on AI to boost learning, and confronted enduring challenges around examinations and student mental health.
The latest development was the progress on the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill, envisioned to overhaul governance of tertiary education by replacing multiple regulators with a unified authority.
After years of consultation and debate, the Union Cabinet cleared the bill — rechristened the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan (VBSA) Bill, 2025 — setting the stage for its introduction in Parliament during the winter session.
The legislation seeks to subsume the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) into a single regulator to streamline standards, accreditation, and regulation across higher education, in line with the NEP 2020.
While the government argued that a single regulator would eliminate overlapping mandates and reduce compliance burdens for universities and colleges, critics alleged that the proposed centralised model might weaken state autonomy and underplay local needs.
The year also witnessed a renewed focus on examination reforms, both in school boards and higher studies.
Continuous evaluation, project-based assessment and modular testing — aligned with competency-based education principles — gained traction, with several universities piloting alternatives to traditional end-of-year exams.
While the CBSE made a debut of its twice-a-year board exams beginning with class 10, the entrance exams conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) saw a major overhaul following recommendations made by the Radhakrishnan Committee after a series of alleged paper leaks last year.
Despite the efforts, exam stress remained a flashpoint.
A parliamentary panel announced plans to review the exploded coaching centre ecosystem and the pressure cooker culture around competitive exams.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) intensified its crackdown on "dummy schools" by conducting surprise checks.
In response to repeated tragedies — a spate of suicides in Kota, and several elsewhere on engineering and medical campuses — the Supreme Court mandated the registration of FIRs in suspected student suicides and set up a National Task Force to address mental health concerns.
The team launched a dedicated portal and nationwide surveys to identify systemic stressors and is pushing for uniform mental health policies and trained counsellors on campuses.
Among the most transformative trends of the year was the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence in learning and administration.
From elite institutions to state-run colleges, AI was embedded into daily academic chores, right from personalised feedback and tutoring to automated grading and curriculum design.
The Ministry of Education announced a Centre of Excellence in AI for Education with a dedicated allocation under the 2025-26 Union Budget. The national hub is designed to strengthen teacher training, build AI labs across higher education institutions, and foster industry partnerships on AI research and skill development.
Industry reports also highlighted that a majority of higher education institutions had already adopted strategic AI policies, with gen-AI tools increasingly used for tutoring, adaptive learning, and administrative automation.
On the school front, the Department of School Education & Literacy and NCERT moved to integrate AI literacy and computational thinking into curricula from early grades, with dedicated textbooks and frameworks under development for secondary classes.
All the same, experts cautioned that ethical implications — including data privacy, equitable access, and curriculum integrity — must be addressed to ensure AI enhances rather than dilutes learning outcomes.
