The Telangana Education Commission was officially established in September 2024 with a mandate to study, formulate, and recommend a comprehensive policy framework for reforming and strengthening education in Telangana. The four-member Commission prepared its report in a relatively short period of 16 months, in January 2026.

The longest chapter of the report is on school education, and rightly so. Some of the key recommendations include establishing state-run pre-primary schools and integrating them into the formal school system; creating Telangana Public Schools (TPS) by replacing caste- and community-based schools; universalizing English- medium instruction; gradually transitioning towards neighbourhood schools rather than expanding the residential school system; and strictly enforcing the Right to Education Act 25% reservation for disadvantaged students in private schools.
As for intermediate and undergraduate education, the report recommends merging the SSC Board and the Board of Intermediate Education and making intermediate education a part of school education, discontinuing public examinations for intermediate first year (class 11), scrapping EAPCET and using strengthened Intermediate public examination marks as the basis for undergraduate admissions, and providing mid-day meals to students of government junior colleges. It also recommends discontinuing the residential model for undergraduate degree colleges, and a decisive shift from quantitative expansion to qualitative consolidation. Since university education is largely governed by UGC norms, the report does not have much to say about it except for noting the severe shortage of faculty afflicting the very foundations of higher education institutions, and recommending administrative and governance reforms.
Given the utter neglect and even open hostility, particularly towards higher education, that the education sector witnessed over the last decade or so, the establishment of the Commission was in itself a welcome decision. Yet the 350-page   report presents a mixed picture, combining significant recommendations with several questionable conclusions.
The themes running across the various recommendations of the report are a strong, decisive role for the government in education, decentralization of resources and governance, and reclaiming education as a public good. These are indeed noble ideas provided the government’s intervention is guided by an enlightened vision of the goals of education. It is in this aspect that the Commission’s narrow and utilitarian view of education is disappointing. Education is predominantly seen as a preparation for employment, and hence, the report’s overemphasis on skill development, employability, and market demands. While gainful employment is a desirable outcome of education, it cannot be the sole objective. Educational institutions should serve a higher purpose than merely producing workers for the job market, and in a rapidly changing world, designing academic programmes to suit market trends can even be hazardous.
Another shortcoming of the policy document is the erroneous equation of proficiency in English with English-medium instruction (EMI). English-medium education is viewed as a panacea for all the social and educational ills, and the report’s preoccupation with EMI ignores established research findings in favour of mother tongue-based multilingual education, especially at an early age. Besides the observations of National Education Policy 2020, the report itself notes that a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social abilities are most acute and absorptive in their first six years. It is therefore doubtful that instruction in a language other than a child's mother tongue can nurture these abilities as effectively during this crucial developmental stage.

In sum, the Telangana Education Policy presents an opportunity to engage with a crucial and long-neglected social sector. Ignoring some of its rather overenthusiastic attempts at micromanagement (such as prescribing the colours for grouping school students) and uncalled observations (about the “very high” salaries of teachers, for instance), the report is best viewed as a starting point for informed public debate rather than as a finished blueprint for educational reform.

Dr Vijay Kumar Tadakamalla
Director, Hyderabad Literary Festival & Prof( rtd) Osmania University