Six education deals closed or advanced this week, Info Edge buying Coding Ninjas, KKR paying roughly ₹1,500 crore for a single Gurugram school, upGrad finally clearing its Unacademy merger, more M&A in seven days than most quarters see. At the same time India’s colleges crossed 4.5 crore students with STEM enrolment topping 1 crore for the first time, 15 foreign universities lined up to open campuses in Hyderabad and IIM Bangalore opened its first overseas campus in Indonesia, and a Maharashtra probe found out how June’s teacher exam actually leaked, out of an Agra press and inside a shoe.

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Spotlight

AISHE’s mixed report card: bigger, more female, still not very NEP

India’s higher education system just got its annual physical, care of the Ministry of Education’s All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) for 2023-24, and the topline numbers are strong. Total enrolment crossed 4.5 crore for the first time , up 31.5% since 2014-15, STEM enrolment passed the 1-crore mark for the first time, and women closed in on parity with a Gender Parity Index of 1.08 alongside sharp gains among SC and ST students. Karnataka nosed ahead of Punjab as India’s top destination for foreign students , most of them from Nepal, while Uttar Pradesh topped overall enrolment with 72.7 lakh students. But the survey’s first dedicated module tracking NEP 2020 implementation tells a patchier story: only 56% of universities have introduced four-year undergraduate programmes , just 41% run internship cells, and a mere 7% have apprenticeship cells four years into the policy. Just 15% of universities participate in international rankings and only 4% offer joint degrees with foreign institutions, numbers that sit awkwardly next to the government’s push to position India as a global education hub. The system is bigger and more inclusive than it was a decade ago.

Funding & Acquisitions

• Elevate Education, formerly known as Sunstone, raised ₹170 crore in a Series D round from WestBridge Capital to deepen its AI push and college partnerships. The Gurugram firm expects to hit ₹300 crore in revenue and turn profitable in FY27 while serving 25,000 students across 22 campuses, before scaling to 60,000 students and ₹600 crore in revenue by FY29.

• Peak XV Partners pocketed close to a 12-fold return exiting part of its stake in K12 Techno Services, the operator behind Orchids The International School, after European private equity firm Vitruvian Partners invested ₹1,159 crore in a mix of fresh and secondary shares. The deal values K12 Techno at ₹7,100-7,250 crore, up sharply from about ₹4,721 crore in its last round, in a school market IMARC pegs at $54.2 billion today and $135.6 billion by 2033.

• Info Edge, the parent of Naukri.com, will acquire the remaining stake in Coding Ninjas for about ₹40 crore, making the coding-education platform a wholly owned subsidiary. The company also committed a fresh ₹180 crore to its startup investment fund, on top of ₹250 crore committed in February.

• Study-abroad platform Leverage Edu made its first international acquisition , buying Brazil’s Mundus Agency to enter the South American market. The startup turned EBITDA profitable in FY26 on revenue that jumped 112% to ₹375 crore, and is preparing for an India IPO that the company is reportedly eyeing at a valuation of over $900 million, with bankers pitching it against comparables like Zomato and ixigo.

• KKR-backed Lighthouse Learning Group is buying Gurugram’s Pathways School for about ₹1,500 crore, among the largest transactions yet in Indian K-12 education. The single 10-acre IB campus, with 1,600 students and an estimated ₹110 crore in EBITDA, is reported to have been valued at roughly 13 times EBITDA.

• upGrad’s acquisition of Unacademy cleared the Competition Commission of India , removing a key regulatory hurdle for a deal first announced in April at roughly ₹2,055 crore, more than 90% below Unacademy’s 2021 peak valuation. The all-stock merger folds Unacademy’s K-12 and competitive-exam business into upGrad, extending an acquisition spree that already includes Internshala.

• Mumbai’s Jamnabai Narsee International School signed a 30-year, roughly ₹800 crore lease to build a second, 300,000-square-foot IB campus in Juhu, on a built-to-suit deal with the Shri Bhanbai Nenshi Mahila Vidyalaya Trust. It is among the largest real-estate transactions yet in Indian school education, though the school hasn’t said when the new campus will open.

Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives

• Telangana is fielding interest from 15 foreign universities looking to open campuses around Hyderabad , including the University of Colorado and the University of London, which have already applied to the UGC. Purdue, Northeastern and several UK universities are also in talks, with one American university reportedly considering leasing floors in a Gachibowli tower to admit its first batch by 2027.

• IIM Bangalore will open its first overseas campus at the Singhasari Special Economic Zone in Indonesia , part of a package of India-Indonesia agreements signed during PM Modi’s visit. The campus is expected to draw students from across Southeast Asia.

• PM Modi’s Australia visit produced a clutch of education outcomes: Flinders University got a letter of intent to open a campus in Bengaluru, and Victoria University a letter of approval for one in Gurugram , joining seven other Australian universities already authorised to operate in India . The two countries also signed a quality-assurance pact between India’s NCVET and Australia’s skills regulator, and set up a mining-skills centre of excellence at Bhubaneswar’s National Skill Training Institute.

Policy & Government

National

• A Joint Parliamentary Committee is set to adopt its report on the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill on July 17, clearing the way for the government to table the bill creating a single higher-education regulator to replace the UGC, AICTE and the National Council for Teacher Education in the monsoon session. Opposition MPs plan to file dissent notes over centralisation of power, a concern Tamil Nadu’s higher-education platform had already raised when the bill was first referred to the JPC.

• The skills ministry, the Department of Higher Education and the UGC will form a joint panel to let universities become NCVET-recognised Awarding Bodies , letting them design vocational qualifications and issue nationally recognised skill certificates alongside regular degrees. Until now that role has mostly gone to Sector Skill Councils and industry bodies.

• The Law Ministry and the Bar Council of India began drafting a ten-year plan to teach law in Hindi and other Indian languages , aiming to make district and subordinate courts more accessible while keeping English as a link language. The plan leans on AI translation tools and standardised legal glossaries, though these will need validation from legal and linguistic experts before use.

• NCERT released a revised Class 8 Social Science textbook with a redesigned cover that puts the Supreme Court above Parliament, months after the apex court ordered the book withdrawn over a section on “corruption in the judiciary.” The rewritten chapter drops that section, while portraits of freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Sarojini Naidu have also been removed from the cover art.

Bihar

• Bihar’s Education Department moved to dismiss 3,035 government teachers after a Vigilance Bureau probe into 2006-2015 recruitment found fake degrees and forged certificates, and filed 1,830 FIRs naming all of them. The state also plans to recover the salaries paid during their tenure, with interest.

Maharashtra

• New details are emerging on how June’s Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test paper actually leaked , weeks after the exam was postponed over the breach . A press employee in Agra hid folded copies under his shoe’s insole past guards who frisked his clothes but never checked his footwear, selling them for ₹8,000 a set that resold down the chain for ₹80,000; police have made 12 arrests and the state has formed a committee under the Chief Secretary to weigh a shift to computer-based testing.

• Maharashtra will set up 10 new BSc Nursing colleges and upgrade eight GNM colleges into BSc institutions, part of a ₹558.71 crore expansion approved by the state government. The state currently has 2.17 lakh registered nurses, which the government says isn’t enough to meet rising healthcare demand.

Meghalaya

• Meghalaya has renovated 1,391 of the 1,607 government primary schools taken up under Mission Education , an 86% completion rate on a programme backed by nearly ₹1,000 crore. The state first laid out the phased plan to build or upgrade more than 2,000 school infrastructure projects across all 12 districts.

Odisha

• Odisha will issue a fresh order barring colleges from charging fees under its new free-education scheme , after reports that some institutions collected up to ₹5,000 as “other fees” from students admitted under the scheme the cabinet approved earlier this month . Fees already collected will be refunded, though professional and self-financing courses remain outside the scheme.

Rajasthan

• The Central University of Rajasthan will hold classes online from July 15 to August 14 , a precaution against below-normal monsoon rainfall that could strain the roughly 3.5 lakh litres of water the campus needs daily. Faculty will teach virtually from campus or their home locations depending on when their leave ends.

Uttar Pradesh

• Uttar Pradesh has made it mandatory for government schools to weave health education material like “My Health World” and FSSAI’s “Eat Right India” into assemblies, classes and parent-teacher meetings. The directive follows joint guidelines from the Union education and health ministries on preventive health education for schoolchildren.

West Bengal

• West Bengal has warned private schools of penal action if they keep skipping or fudging enrolment data on the state’s UDISE+ portal, which feeds enrolment, retention and dropout numbers into national planning. Schools that keep failing to comply face show-cause notices under the RTE Act’s data-reporting requirement.

Financial Reports & Market Trends

• Government schools lost nearly 86 lakh students over the last two academic years while private unaided schools gained almost 88 lakh , per the Ministry of Education’s UDISE+ report, extending a shift already visible in states like Karnataka, which has lost roughly 17 lakh government-school students in 15 years . The same report found some good news: the number of school teachers crossed 1 crore for the first time, and dropout rates fell at both the preparatory and secondary levels.

• Gujarat lags the national average on nearly every education marker in the Centre’s latest SDG progress report, from a Grade 12 completion rate of just 50.82% against 61.14% nationally to a Class 9 maths proficiency rate that plunges to just 3%, against 11% nationally, on the PARAKH survey. It’s a sobering follow-up to the state’s own AI dropout-tracking system , which flagged 1.67 lakh at-risk students last year; getting kids back into classrooms hasn’t yet translated into them learning much once they’re there.

• An engineering degree that cost ₹5-8 lakh in 2015 now runs ₹14-20 lakh at many private colleges , even as recruiters say the underlying curriculum, programming fundamentals, data structures, operating systems, has barely changed beneath new course labels like AI and Data Science. Graduate employability stood at just 56.35% in the latest India Skills Report, and students increasingly pay twice, once for the degree and again for bootcamps to learn what recruiters actually test for.

• IIM Bangalore’s faculty is quietly getting younger and more global: nearly 30% of its roughly 150 professors are now under 35, up from single digits a few years ago, as Indian scholars trained at Cambridge, NYU and other foreign universities choose to return and teach rather than build careers abroad. Ashoka University, O.P. Jindal Global University and FLAME report similar hiring pushes, part of what a 2025 NITI Aayog report frames as the case for India actively courting globally trained faculty.

Opinions

• Is India on track to get every child reading and doing basic math by Grade 3, or just five years further into trying? A foundational-learning policy expert argues that at the current pace of improvement, it would take another 50 years for every child to be reading-ready by the end of primary school. Read it for six blunt priorities on what the mission’s next phase needs to actually change.

• Do government “paid internship” portals actually deliver internships, or just training courses wearing a mandate’s clothing? The Ken traces how Kerala’s internship portal and the Centre’s Skill India Digital Hub are dominated by a handful of providers charging students thousands of rupees for what looks a lot like coursework. Read it for the uncomfortable mechanics of what happens when a policy mandates a supply of internships that doesn’t actually exist.

• More women than ever are walking into Indian college classrooms, so why does the pay gap on the other side barely move? A Hindu editorial reading the same AISHE data points out that women remain clustered in general sciences rather than engineering, and still earn well below men in salaried jobs despite outpacing them in enrolment. A sharp companion read to this week’s numbers on where the gains actually go.

• China just scrapped over 12,000 undergraduate degree programmes it deemed obsolete , roughly a third of its courses, and replaced them with AI, robotics and semiconductor programmes. A former AICTE vice-chairman asks whether India, where only 56% of graduates are employable by its own count, can keep telling itself it is too different from China to need the same reckoning. Read it for the argument that BBA and B.Com degrees built around tasks software now does for free need a rebirth, not a burial.

Job Openings

• Unacademy, the test-prep and learning platform, is hiring a Chief of Staff based in Bengaluru, on-site, wanting 4 to 8 years in strategy, consulting, founder’s office, business operations or program management, plus a mandatory MBA from a Tier-1 B-school. Apply through the link in the post or reach out to the hiring contact directly.

• Rocket Learning, a nonprofit that delivers foundational learning to young children through government anganwadi and school systems, is hiring a Program Lead based in Guntur or Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, for a long-term hire with government-sector experience and 40 to 50 percent travel within the state. Apply by commenting on or connecting directly with the poster.

• Aditya Birla Education Trust, the group’s education and wellbeing philanthropy arm that runs schools and teacher-training programmes, is hiring a Manager or Senior Manager for Partnerships and Fundraising . Location and experience aren’t specified; interested candidates should share references at [email protected] .

• IDinsight, a global data and evidence advisory that works with governments and NGOs across health and education, is hiring a Chief of Staff to the CEO based out of Dakar, Rabat, Nairobi, Lusaka, Delhi or Manila, for someone at Manager to Associate Director level with roughly 6 to 15 years of experience. Apply through the BambooHR careers portal by July 21.

• Pratham International, the global arm of the Pratham network that adapts India-tested approaches like Teaching at the Right Level for other countries, is hiring a Senior Associate for Programs and Partnerships , a remote-India role preferring Delhi or Mumbai, for 2 to 4 years in education or development and a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a related field. Apply through the organization’s website or LinkedIn; email applications aren’t accepted.

• J-PAL South Asia, the regional arm of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab that runs randomized evaluations on education policy, is hiring a Policy Manager for Education based in India, wanting a master’s degree in economics, public policy or a related field plus four or more years of experience. Apply through the jpalsouth.asia portal with a CV, cover letter and optional academic transcripts.

• HarperCollins Publishers India, which supplies Cambridge International Education curriculum content to schools, is hiring a Lead for Product and Marketing (International) based in Gurgaon or Mumbai, for 5 to 8 years across product marketing, edtech, K-12 publishing or academic implementation, with heavy travel of 2 to 3 weeks a month. Applications close July 13; email [email protected] with the position in the subject line.

• ABL Education, a STEM, robotics and AI learning company that runs innovation programmes for schools, is hiring a Head of Innovation Programs and National Competitions based in Noida with pan-India travel, wanting 8 to 15 years of leadership experience across events, education, edtech or programme management. Apply by emailing [email protected] with the position in the subject line.

• BrightCHAMPS, an edtech company that teaches coding and other skills to school-age children, is hiring a Team Lead based in Indonesia, for someone experienced in team leadership, business development and operational execution. Apply through the link in the post or by writing to [email protected] .

• Boundless Life, which runs experiential worldschooling programmes for globally mobile families across eight locations on three continents, is hiring a Head of Education Excellence for a fully remote role overseeing curriculum, accreditation and programme design, wanting 10 or more years leading education across countries or continents. Apply through the link in the post.

• Vedantu, the online tutoring and test-prep platform, is hiring an Executive Assistant , preferring candidates with startup or edtech experience but valuing mindset over pedigree. Location and employment type aren’t specified; apply through the link in the post.

• Eicher Group Foundation, Royal Enfield’s CSR arm that runs community and cultural programmes like the Himalayan Knot, is hiring an Impact Co-Lead for its Story Lab , a full-time, on-site role in Gurgaon focused on narrative strategy, storytelling and media relations. Apply by emailing [email protected] with “Story Lab - Impact Co-Lead” in the subject line.

• School Teachers Foundation: India is hiring a Chief Executive Officer for a K-12 school group running CBSE and Cambridge curricula across multiple campuses, wanting proven experience in multi-campus leadership, financial planning and operational efficiency. Location is shared only with shortlisted candidates; apply through the link in the post.

• VOPA, which implements Maharashtra’s Mission NIPUN foundational literacy and numeracy programme across the state’s government schools, is hiring four roles including a Product Manager , a Project Lead, a Backend Developer and a Testing Engineer, needing 2 to 5-plus years of experience depending on the role. Apply through the careers portal at careers.vopa.in.

• Adobe, for its Adobe Express in Education program, is hiring an Education Content Advocacy Operations Coordinator on a fixed-term contract to coordinate content-led advocacy and promotional campaigns across K-12 and Higher Education, working closely with the program’s Digital Education Specialist and Advocacy Lead. They want 5 to 6 years in product marketing, promotions or advocacy, with a strong grasp of India’s education ecosystem. No direct apply link was shared with the posting.

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