Structured youth participation in India’s education reforms strengthens feedback, improves outcomes, and builds trust
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India has the world’s largest youth cohort, comprising 371 million people aged 15–29, accounting for nearly 27 percent of the totalpopulation. This year’s International Day of Education focuses on the theme “The power of youth in co-creating education”, calling for active engagement of young people in education reform. The theme emphasises the need to design education systems with young people, rather than for them. This participation matters not for its symbolism, but because it is a governance choice that improves information quality, implementation effectiveness, relevance, and institutional trust—particularly in large and complex education systems such as India’s.
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is transformative and ambitious in its scope and intent, outlining large-scale reforms and restructuring of school and higher education ecosystems. It is explicit in framing reforms consistent with ‘learner-centric’ principles. However, its orientation is primarily towards pedagogical reform, with an emphasis on holistic, inquiry-driven, experiential learning, rather than on young people shaping policy or governance themselves. It is aspirational about youth outcomes, seeking to prepare them for national and global challenges, but it does not consider youth as co-creators of ongoing reform. There is also no provision for student representative bodies in school governance structures under the Samagra Shiksha scheme. Similarly, the Right to Education Act (2009) mandates School Management Committees (SMCs) to include parent and community members, but does not include students in the decision-making process. In practice, student involvement in India’s educational institutions is largely informal and confined to areas such as managing student clubs and school assemblies or offering feedback through suggestion boxes, rather than an institutionalised mechanism.
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is transformative and ambitious in its scope and intent, outlining large-scale reforms and restructuring of school and higher education ecosystems.
In contrast, India’s Draft National Youth Policy (July 2023) explicitly seeks to institutionalise youth voice and formal participation in policy making through public forums, structured dialogues, and youth parliaments. Youth, in this draft, are framed as active drivers and not beneficiaries of development, with a high emphasis on ongoing, regular engagement. While this can help reinforce NEP 2020, the youth policy’s participatory mechanisms are framed largely as civic leadership, rather than as sector-specific co-creation in education reforms and their implementation. For example, at the university and college level, elected student unions or committees are more prevalent; however, their focus is largely limited to campus environment and student welfare (e.g. anti-ragging committees), with limited influence over decisions on curriculum, infrastructure, or services.
Therefore, youth participation in educational reforms in India tends to be ad hoc or consultative rather than co-creational in nature. g Global evidence on youth participation and the implications for enhancing youth participation in educational reform is considered
Global Insights on Structured Youth Participation in Education Global case- and research-based evidence demonstrates that structured youth participation can improve education system performance as well as youth development.
Global case- and research-based evidence demonstrates that structured youth participation can improve education system performance as well as youth development.
Studies show that when schools create authentic roles for student voice, students experience greater agency, belonging and competence, which are central to achieving youth development outcomes. It also improves engagement, ownership, and the quality of day-to-day institutional decisions, which contributes to improved learning outcomes.
UNESCO’s recent guidance on meaningful youth engagement in schools provides a practical model, withcase examples of student participation in school governance through representative councils, where students and staff collaboratively review and adjust school-wide practices. These, according to UNESCO, make school improvement efforts more responsive and legitimate, i.e. better aligned with learner experience, which inspires trust in institutions.
A real-world government example comes from Scotland, which has developed a relatively mature ecosystem of child and youth participation. The Scottish Government’s research report on “The impact of children and young people’s participation in policymaking” draws on multiple case studies and documents how participation can shape policies and services when it is resourced, structured, and connected to decisions and improves processes, providing a concrete illustration of participation embedded within a national programme context.
However, research by UNICEF Innocenti involving 80 young people aged 15-28 who participated in multilateral international platforms between 2017 and 2023 found that participation opportunities were frequently unsupported, tokenistic, and insufficiently inclusive, and several of them were even conducted in environments perceived as exploitative. Specifically in educational contexts, youth, when included, are often involved only symbolically and remain largely excluded from shaping the systems they navigate regularly.
Studies show that when schools create authentic roles for student voice, students experience greater agency, belonging and competence, which are central to achieving youth development outcomes.
The evidence shows that youth voice improves system performance when it is institutionalised, supported, inclusive, and influential, contributing to increased relevance, better implementation, and enhanced trust in reform processes. Youth participation, therefore, is an effectiveness issue, not just a rights- or values-based issue. The implication is clear: youth participation cannot be limited to consultation alone, but requires structured, safe, and recurring channels that can meaningfully inform the decision-making process. For a country as large and diverse as India, a core practical governance question is the design of practical and efficient mechanisms that capture youth perspectives and add value to educational delivery without slowing implementation or diluting accountability.
As India seeks to adopt NEP 2020 at scale, youth should be approached as ‘authentic partners’ in implementation who can help in the uptake of reforms, provide real-time user feedback, and strengthen trust. Three practical steps are feasible within India’s current governance structures.
Firstly, the first step is to incorporate the youth voice into implementation architecture, rather than as an afterthought. NEP recommends grouping schools into clusters for improved governance and resource-sharing. Within these School Complex Management Committees (SCMC), a few seats could be reserved for recent graduates or student volunteers who can voice student feedback on teaching quality or scheme delivery in that cluster. This will include predictable channels where youth insights are summarised, tracked, and translated into actionable changes to youth perspectives in planning at the local level, without displacing the formal accountability of principals and education officers. Secondly, measures should be taken to include youth in new education initiatives, such as a curriculum or assessment reform, and authorities can embed a co-design phase with youth. This might involve workshops or design challenges where students help prototype solutions, for example, enhancing the use of locally contextualised learning materials. A successful example to learn from is the Design for Change movement, which treated youth as ‘partners in innovation’ and co-designed interventions through consultations that fed into the official designs of the education department. These initiatives could include youth representatives from diverse genders, rural and urban areas, and socio-economic groups, to ensure inclusion and diversity.
The evidence shows that youth voice improves system performance when it is institutionalised, supported, inclusive, and influential, contributing to increased relevance, better implementation, and enhanced trust in reform processes.
Thirdly, a key step is to leverage India’s digital platforms to enable large-scale, real-time youth feedback without slowing operations. The government’s Youth Portal could host dedicated channels for students. Additional examples include a mobile app that allows students to rate aspects of their schooling, such asmid-day meals, teacher attendance, and teaching quality, or submit suggestions. Aggregated data and trends from these platforms would provide policymakers with valuable insights into the effectiveness of reforms and areas needing improvement, as well as serve as an early-warning mechanism rather than a grievance channel.
A legitimate concern is that adding more consultative layers or youth participation could slow decision-making or blur accountability. To address this, the design of these mechanisms should:
Finally, to avoid diluting accountability, it must be clear that youth bodies are advisory and evaluative and not executive. The responsibility for delivering education programmes on time and to the required standard remains with the officials, teachers, and institutions as per their mandate. Effective youth participation can reinforce accountability as an added incentive for duty-bearers to fulfil their duties diligently.
The responsibility for delivering education programmes on time and to the required standard remains with the officials, teachers, and institutions as per their mandate.
International Day of Education 2026 offers a timely opportunity to reframe youth not only as beneficiaries but as partners. India’s NEP 2020 is an outcomes-focused reform agenda that can benefit from effective governance feedback loops and embed youth engagement into the education system, as provided by India’s Draft National Youth Policy.
The task ahead is to integrate youth voice into governance and reform, ensure it is representative and safe, and hold institutions accountable for acting on the feedback received. In a young country reforming education at scale, moving from ‘learner-centric’ to ‘co-created’can strengthen governance and make India’s education reforms more responsive, resilient, and implementable.
Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy, Observer Research Foundation.
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Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow at ORF’s Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED). With 16 years of experience in development research and policy advocacy, Arpan ...
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