Education and Training careers in India: what the numbers say about jobs, growth and where to start
Education is the largest employer of graduates in India that almost nobody researches before joining. It has one crore teaching jobs, a published pay scale, an entrance exam every few months, and a private sector that grew loud enough in 2021 to make everyone forget how small it actually is. That combination produces a lot of confident advice and very little arithmetic.
This report answers three questions with numbers that can be checked: which part of the sector is actually growing, what each job optimises for, and which skills the sector is currently short of. Everything below comes from Ministry of Education releases, official surveys, company filings and budget documents, with the period stated. Start with the one-page brief.
Every chart below uses the same six colours, and each one always means the same thing.
September 2026
FY26 means the year ended 31 March 2026. 2024-25 means the academic year, throughout this report
- School enrolment fell for a third year running, to 24.69 crore from 24.80 crore.
- Teacher numbers went the other way and crossed 1 crore for the first time.
- Traditional coaching stopped growing. Aakash revenue was flat at ₹2,041 crore.
- Edtech funding fell to US$214 million in the first eight months of 2026.
- Government committed ₹60,000 crore to upgrading 1,000 ITIs.
- Enterprise and skilling revenue grew while classroom test prep did not.
- Hiring is hardest where learning is measured, not where content is delivered.
- Learn gross enrolment ratio and retention. They decide what gets funded.
Each figure is dated; sources are named in the section that discusses it
1. Why look at this sector at all
Four things make education and training worth a serious look, and one should give you pause.
It is the largest structured employer of graduates in the country. India's school system alone employed 1,01,22,420 teachers in 2024-25, the first year the count has crossed one crore, according to the UDISE+ 2024-25 report published by the Ministry of Education. Higher education added another 17.32 lakh teaching posts in 2023-24, on the All India Survey on Higher Education. No other sector in India hires teaching-grade graduates at anything close to that volume.
It hires in public, on a published timetable, at a published salary. A candidate can read the vacancy count, the syllabus and the pay scale before deciding to prepare. 26,49,129 people registered for the February 2026 cycle of the Central Teacher Eligibility Test alone. Very few sectors are this transparent about their graduate intake.
There is a genuine, quantified shortage. Close to 10 lakh sanctioned teaching posts were vacant in 2024-25, on the analysis by PRS Legislative Research of the education budget. A shortage that size is unusual, and it is concentrated where the hardest problems are.
Public money is moving, and it is moving towards skills. The Ministry of Education's allocation for 2026-27 is ₹1,39,289 crore, up 14% on the revised estimate for the previous year. Separately, the government has committed ₹60,000 crore to upgrading 1,000 industrial training institutes. Announced money is the closest thing this sector has to a hiring forecast.
And the caution: the base is shrinking. School enrolment fell to 24.69 crore in 2024-25 from 24.80 crore the year before, a third consecutive annual decline, driven largely by falling birth rates. A sector can employ a crore of people and still be contracting at the entry point. Where you join inside it matters more here than in almost any industry in this series.
Each band carries a headline number and the evidence behind it
- School teachers employed in 2024-25, up 6.7% on 2022-23, across 14,71,473 schools (UDISE+).
- Roughly 23.7 lakh teach the foundational and preparatory stages, 28.9 lakh the middle stage and 48.6 lakh the secondary stage.
- Higher education added 17.32 lakh teachers across 1,409 universities and 53,461 colleges.
- Female teachers are 54.2% of the school workforce, one of the highest shares of any large sector in India.
- Ministry of Education allocation for 2026-27, up 14% on the revised estimate for 2025-26 (PRS).
- Samagra Shiksha gets ₹42,100 crore, PM POSHAN ₹12,750 crore and PM SHRI ₹7,500 crore.
- A separate ₹60,000 crore has been committed to upgrading 1,000 government ITIs under PM-SETU.
- The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are co-financing half the central share of that scheme.
- Candidates registered for the February 2026 Central Teacher Eligibility Test; 23,24,625 appeared and 5,97,061 qualified.
- 22,79,743 registered for NEET UG 2026 and 15,38,468 unique candidates sat JEE Main 2026 across both sessions.
- 15,68,866 registered for CUET UG 2026, the common entrance route into central university undergraduate seats.
- Every one of those numbers is a paying customer for somebody in this sector.
- Retention at the secondary stage in 2024-25. Fewer than half the children who start school are still enrolled at the end of it.
- Total school enrolment has now fallen for three consecutive years.
- Close to 10 lakh sanctioned teaching posts were vacant in 2024-25.
- Combined central and state spending on education is about 4.1% of GDP against the 6% the National Education Policy asks for.
2. How big it is, and how fast it is really growing
Start with a distinction that separates people who have read about this sector from people who understand it. You will see one number quoted in almost every article on Indian education: the market will be worth US$313 billion by FY30. That figure comes from IBEF and it is a projection. It has not been measured. Quoting it as though it describes the sector today is the fastest way to lose an interviewer.
What has actually been measured is enrolment, teachers and public spending. Combined central and state government spending on education is estimated at about 4.1% of GDP in 2022-23, against the 6% the National Education Policy 2020 asks for. The Union government's own allocation for 2026-27 is ₹1,39,289 crore. Those are the numbers that decide whether a post gets sanctioned.
The second measured thing, and the more important one for a career, is the shape of the funnel. India does not have one education market. It has a very wide base that narrows sharply, and each narrowing is a different business with different jobs.
Share of the relevant age group enrolled. School stages 2024-25, higher education 2023-24
Read the definitions carefully. UDISE+ now reports on the National Education Policy stage structure, in which secondary means grades 9 to 12 and the ratio is 68.5%. The older and more common split reports grades 9 to 10 at 79% and grades 11 to 12 at 58%. Both are correct and they are not the same number. Sources: UDISE+ 2024-25 and the PRS analysis of the 2026-27 education budget.
If you are asked how big Indian education is, give what was measured and the date: “24.69 crore school students and 4.50 crore in higher education, with a Union allocation of ₹1.39 lakh crore for 2026-27”. If you are asked about the US$313 billion figure, say what it is: an IBEF projection for FY30, not a measurement. Answering the first question with the second number is the tell that you have memorised a headline rather than read a report.
The third measured thing is direction, and here the sector splits in two. School enrolment is falling: 24.69 crore in 2024-25 against 24.80 crore the year before, the third annual decline in a row, largely because fewer children are being born. Higher education is still rising: 4.50 crore enrolled in 2023-24 against 4.46 crore the year before, and 3.42 crore a decade earlier in 2014-15, a gain of 1.08 crore or 31.5%.
There is a third movement underneath both, and it is the one that changes where the jobs are. Within a shrinking school system, private unaided schools have kept taking share, and now teach roughly 39% of all school students, the highest share since 2018-19. A sector can contract in total and expand in the part that pays salaries out of fees.
Each one is measured, and each one implies a different kind of job
- Enrolment fell to 24.69 crore in 2024-25 from 24.80 crore, a third straight decline.
- Driven mainly by falling birth rates, not by children leaving.
- Teacher numbers still rose, so pupil-teacher ratios improved.
- Private unaided schools now teach roughly 39% of school students.
- The highest private share since 2018-19.
- This is where fee-funded teaching and administration jobs sit.
- 4.50 crore enrolled in 2023-24, up from 4.46 crore.
- Up 1.08 crore, or 31.5%, on 2014-15.
- Gross enrolment ratio rose from 29.5 to 30.0 in one year.
- IBEF projects the market at US$313 billion by FY30, from US$117 billion in FY23.
- Edtech is projected at US$29 to 30 billion by 2030-31.
- Useful as direction. Never quote it as a current figure.
3. Who leads, who is stuck, and what that tells you
This is the most useful table in the report if you are choosing an employer, and it starts with a fact that surprises almost everyone. The largest organised education company in India earned ₹3,900 crore in FY26. That is the whole of PhysicsWallah, the sector's biggest listed name, in a country with 24.69 crore school students. The entire listed education sector is smaller than a single mid-sized consumer goods company.
The reason is structural: the overwhelming majority of Indian education is delivered by governments and by small private institutions that never appear in a financial statement. What follows is the organised, reported part of the sector. Treat it as a map of where professional hiring happens, not as a measure of the sector's size.
Revenue from operations for the year ended 31 March 2026, Rs crore
Listed companies on a consolidated basis from their FY26 results. upGrad's figure is gross revenue as the company reports it, and Aakash's is revenue from operations from its own filing. Navneet Education is shown in red because its revenue fell. Allen Career Institute and Unacademy are excluded from this chart because their latest published year is FY25, not FY26; both appear in the table below with the period stated.
Two patterns are worth carrying into any conversation about this sector. The first is that scale and profitability have separated. Aakash earned ₹2,041 crore and made an operating margin of 0.75%. Global Education earned ₹94 crore, roughly one twenty-second as much, and was comfortably profitable. Revenue tells you very little here about the health of the business you would be joining.
The second is that the businesses selling to employers and governments are doing better than the businesses selling to households. NIIT Learning Systems sells corporate training and grew 18.1% profitably. Aakash sells classroom coaching to parents and grew 0.4% at a margin near zero. That divide runs through the rest of this report.
4. Where the growth actually sits
Here is the pattern that matters most for anyone joining. In FY26 the education businesses that grew were not the ones with the most students or the strongest brands. They were the ones whose costs did not rise with every extra learner, and the ones paid by an employer, an institution or a government rather than by a household buying classroom hours.
Year-on-year growth in revenue from operations, year ended 31 March 2026
Navneet Education is the one negative bar and is shown in red on a scale of absolute size, so its bar length shows the size of the fall, not a gain. All nine figures are for the same period, the year ended 31 March 2026, which is why they can be compared directly. Source: each company's FY26 results.
Averaging those groups makes the point sharper. The two hybrid businesses grew about 35%. The four sold to employers, institutions or governments grew about 16% between them. The three classroom-and-print businesses grew about 3%. This is not a story about good companies and bad companies. It is a story about which cost structures survived the end of cheap growth.
Underneath the companies, the largest single source of new money in the sector is not private at all. In October 2025 the government launched PM-SETU, and its pan-India rollout has since been approved: ₹60,000 crore to upgrade 1,000 government industrial training institutes into 200 hub and 800 spoke centres, with a target of skilling 20 lakh young people over five years. The central share is ₹30,000 crore, states put in ₹20,000 crore and industry ₹10,000 crore, with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank co-financing half the central share between them. Providers and candidates meet on the Skill India Digital Hub, which now carries over 1.5 crore registered candidates, more than 7,000 training providers and over 68,000 employers.
Each one is backed by either a company result or a committed public outlay
- ₹60,000 crore committed under PM-SETU to upgrade 1,000 government ITIs.
- Over 1.64 crore candidates trained cumulatively under PMKVY.
- 52.98 lakh people joined apprenticeships under NAPS between 2018 and 2025.
- NIIT Learning Systems grew 18.1% selling managed training to employers in 30 countries.
- It earned ₹248 crore of profit, the highest in the listed sector.
- Buyers are corporate learning heads, not parents, so the sales cycle and the skills differ completely.
- PhysicsWallah grew 35.1% and turned profit before tax positive.
- Paid users rose to 53.4 lakh from 44.6 lakh.
- The model is low fee, high volume, and increasingly a physical centre attached to an online course.
- An AI and computational thinking curriculum reaches classes 3 to 8 from 2026-27.
- Someone has to write it, train teachers on it and assess it.
- Content and assessment roles are the least crowded doors into this sector.
“Who actually pays for this role, and what do they measure to decide whether to keep paying?” Almost no candidate asks it. If the answer is a parent paying a term fee, you will be measured on enrolment and renewal. If it is an employer or a government, you will be measured on completion and placement. Those are two very different jobs inside what looks like the same industry.
5. How a learner reaches a classroom, and the jobs that do it
Indian education does not have one delivery channel. It has four, running at four very different scales, and almost every entry-level role sits inside one of them. Knowing which one you are applying to explains most of what the job will actually feel like.
Scale figures are the most recent measured ones, with the year stated
The physical network behind the first two of those is enormous, and it is where most teaching jobs still are. It is also, unusually for an Indian industry, fully counted every single year.
Institutions and teaching staff in India, most recent published counts
Shown as counts rather than as bars, because schools outnumber universities roughly 1,000 to one and any shared scale would render the smaller figures invisible. School counts from UDISE+ 2024-25; university and college counts as at February 2026, reported by IBEF from Ministry of Education data.
Four terms run through every conversation in this sector, and candidates routinely get them wrong. Gross enrolment ratio is enrolment in a stage as a share of the official age group for that stage, which is why it can exceed 100. Pupil-teacher ratio is students divided by teachers, and India's school average is now about 24 to one against the 30 to one the National Education Policy asks for. Retention rate is the share of a cohort still enrolled at the end of a stage, and it is 47.2% at the secondary stage. NSQF level is the position of a vocational qualification on the national skills framework, and it is how a skilling programme gets recognised and funded.
6. The digital shift, and the correction that followed it
This is the part of the sector that changed fastest, and the part where most students' mental model is four years out of date. Between April 2020 and June 2022 roughly US$7 billion flowed into Indian edtech. That period is over, and it is worth seeing exactly how over it is before you build a career plan around it.
Annual venture funding into Indian education technology companies, US$ million
Tracxn data reported in September 2026. The 2026 figure covers January to August only. Note the direction of the median round size: fewer companies are being funded, but each one is getting more.
The clearest single illustration arrived on 1 September 2026, when upGrad completed an all-stock acquisition of Unacademy in a deal valued at roughly US$200 million. Unacademy had been valued at US$3.4 billion in 2021. The Competition Commission of India cleared the transaction in July 2026, and the Unacademy, PrepLadder, Graphy and Airlearn brands continue as separate operating units. Almost no candidate walking into an interview knows this happened, and it changes the answer to “where do you see this sector going”.
The technology story did not stop when the funding did. It moved from the private sector into the syllabus. In October 2025 the Ministry of Education announced an artificial intelligence and computational thinking curriculum, and it begins reaching classes 3 to 8 in the 2026-27 academic year, with classes 9 and 10 following in 2027-28. NCERT and CBSE are building the material, and teachers are being trained through the NISHTHA programme.
Two columns worth separating before an interview
- Hybrid delivery works: PhysicsWallah reached 53.4 lakh paid users and positive profit before tax.
- AI enters the school syllabus from 2026-27, starting at class 3.
- 64.7% of schools have computers and 63.5% have internet, 2024-25.
- The pure online, high-fee K-12 model. Funding is down about 95% from 2021.
- Growth-at-any-cost hiring. Rounds fell from 368 in 2021 to 36 in eight months of 2026.
- Valuations detached from revenue. Unacademy sold for under 6% of its 2021 peak.
- Enterprise training: NIIT Learning Systems up 18.1% and profitable.
- Government-funded skilling, with ₹60,000 crore committed to ITIs.
- Digital public infrastructure: over 1.5 crore registrations on Skill India Digital Hub.
- Edtech projected at US$29 to 30 billion by 2030-31.
- Overall education market projected at US$313 billion by FY30.
- Both are IBEF projections. Neither has been measured.
The career point. Classroom teaching still carries the overwhelming majority of the jobs, and it is where most people should start. But the roles that combine teaching with something else, content design, assessment, data, or programme delivery, are the ones currently short of people. That is because they were created faster than any university started training for them.
7. How the money is made, and what you will be measured on
This section exists for one reason. Whatever role you take in education, your work will be judged by how it moves one of four blocks. People who can name the block they affect get promoted noticeably faster than people who cannot.
A structure diagram, not measured data. The margins it produces are measured, and they are in the table below
This diagram shows the structure of the profit and loss account. It contains no estimated percentages, because no company in this sector publishes a standardised cost split.
The number the sector is judged on is the operating margin, and the spread across comparable Indian education businesses in FY26 is extraordinary. The same product category, sold to the same country, produces margins that differ by a factor of twenty.
Read that table as a warning about a single word. Scale in education does not automatically create margin, because the largest cost, a teacher standing in front of a class, does not get cheaper when you add another class. It gets cheaper only when the same teacher reaches more learners, which is exactly what the hybrid model does and the pure classroom model cannot.
Two lines deserve precision because they shape day-to-day work. Batch fill is the share of seats in a running batch that are actually paid for, and it is the single biggest driver of margin in any centre-based business. Completion rate is the share of enrolled learners who finish, and in government-funded and employer-funded programmes it is often the metric the money is released against. If you join a skilling provider, expect to be measured on completion long before you are measured on enrolment.
8. What is being built, and where
Announced money is the closest thing this sector has to a hiring forecast, and unusually for Indian education, most of it is public and published. The Union Budget for 2026-27 gives the Ministry of Education ₹1,39,289 crore, up 14% on the revised estimate for 2025-26. School education takes ₹83,562 crore of that, about 60%, and higher education ₹55,727 crore.
Budget estimates for the year to 31 March 2027, ₹ crore
Percentages are the change against revised estimates for 2025-26. Source: PRS Legislative Research analysis of Demand for Grants 2026-27, Education.
The single largest commitment is not in the education budget at all. PM-SETU, run by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, commits ₹60,000 crore over five years to rebuild 1,000 government industrial training institutes as 200 hub and 800 spoke centres, with a stated target of 20 lakh young people skilled. For anyone considering vocational training as a career, that is the largest single hiring signal in the sector.
Physical capacity is also being built by institutions arriving from outside India. Under the UGC regulations notified in November 2023, three foreign universities were teaching in India as of August 2026: Deakin University and the University of Wollongong at GIFT City in Gujarat, and the University of Southampton at Gurugram, which in August 2025 became the first to open under the mainland UGC framework. On 9 June 2026 the UGC issued letters of approval to three more, the University of Bristol, the University of York and UNSW Sydney, which begins operations in Bengaluru from August 2026.
The traffic runs in both directions, and the reason is worth understanding. The number of Indian students leaving to study abroad fell to 6.26 lakh in 2025 from 9.08 lakh in 2023, a fall of about 31% on Ministry of External Affairs data, with Canada down 41% and the United Kingdom down 27%. Tighter visa rules abroad are, in effect, a demand transfer into Indian higher education and into the Indian campuses of foreign universities.
Committed or already operating, with the date each was announced or opened
- PM-SETU: 1,000 government ITIs upgraded as 200 hub and 800 spoke centres.
- Centre ₹30,000 crore, states ₹20,000 crore, industry ₹10,000 crore.
- The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank co-finance half the central share.
- Target of 20 lakh young people skilled over five years.
- Samagra Shiksha, the main school-system scheme, for 2026-27, up about 11%.
- PM SHRI gets ₹7,500 crore, a 67% increase, the largest in the budget.
- PM POSHAN, the school meal scheme, gets ₹12,750 crore, up 20%.
- These three between them fund most new school-level posts.
- Deakin and Wollongong teaching at GIFT City; Southampton teaching at Gurugram since August 2025.
- Bristol, York and UNSW Sydney received letters of approval on 9 June 2026.
- UNSW Sydney begins operations at Bengaluru from August 2026.
- The University of Liverpool broke ground in Bengaluru in December 2025.
- AI and computational thinking enters classes 3 to 8 in the 2026-27 academic year.
- Classes 9 and 10 follow in 2027-28, where it becomes a compulsory subject.
- Teacher training runs through NISHTHA.
- This creates content, training and assessment work at national scale.
9. The rules you will work inside
Education is among the most heavily regulated industries a graduate can join in India, and it is regulated by an unusually large number of separate bodies: the Ministry of Education sets policy, the UGC and AICTE govern higher and technical education, NCTE governs teacher education, and the skilling system runs through NCVET, NSDC and the Directorate General of Training. You do not need to memorise them. You do need to know which one governs the job you are applying for, because that single fact determines your qualification, your pay structure and your career ceiling.
The body, what it controls, and why it matters to your job application
| Body | Controls | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Education | School and higher education policy, the Union budget, UDISE+ and AISHE | Publishes the two datasets this entire report rests on, both free to download |
| UGC | Universities, degree standards, foreign campuses, faculty qualification | Sets the UGC NET requirement and the pay scale for an assistant professor |
| AICTE | Technical and management education | Governs engineering and management institutions and their faculty norms |
| NCTE | Teacher education, B.Ed and the four-year ITEP | By 2030 the four-year integrated B.Ed is intended to be the minimum teaching qualification |
| CBSE and state boards | School curriculum, examinations, CTET and state TETs | The eligibility test you must clear before any government school application |
| MSDE, NCVET and NSDC | Skilling, apprenticeships, NSQF levels, PM-SETU | Governs the fastest-growing funded part of the sector |
| CCPA | Advertising and consumer protection in coaching | Has issued more than 60 notices and over ₹1.46 crore in penalties to coaching institutes |
| State governments | Most school recruitment, fee regulation, coaching centre rules | The actual employer for the large majority of teaching posts in India |
Four rule changes have altered what the job looks like, and all four are live right now.
Each is either in force or on a published timetable
- Under the National Education Policy 2020, the four-year integrated B.Ed is intended to become the minimum qualification for all school teachers by 2030.
- Admission runs through the National Common Entrance Test, whose 2026 cycle closed in March 2026.
- ITEP launched in March 2023 across 57 teacher education institutions.
- If you are choosing a teaching qualification now, this is the one decision that dates fastest.
- Draft UGC regulations allow biannual admission, in July or August and again in January or February.
- Multiple entry and exit, recognition of prior learning, and two simultaneous programmes are all provided for.
- Students must earn 50% of credits in their major, with the remainder available for skills, apprenticeships or other disciplines.
- The Academic Bank of Credits and the National Credit Framework are the plumbing that makes this work.
- The Central Consumer Protection Authority issued guidelines against misleading coaching advertisements on 13 November 2024.
- Claims such as 100% selection are prohibited, and success claims must disclose which course the successful candidate actually took.
- More than 60 notices have been issued and over ₹1.46 crore in penalties imposed.
- Rajasthan introduced a coaching centre regulation bill on 19 March 2025 following student deaths in Kota.
- AI and computational thinking enters classes 3 to 8 from the 2026-27 academic year.
- It becomes a compulsory subject in classes 9 and 10 from 2027-28, and an elective specialisation in classes 11 and 12.
- NCERT is developing the material with an expert committee; teachers are trained through NISHTHA.
- This is the largest single addition to the Indian school curriculum in years.
The mechanism is worth understanding once, because it explains most education news you will read. A policy sets a date, a regulator writes the detail, states implement at different speeds, job descriptions change, and the statistics confirm it two years later. If you can place a news story on that chain, you can say something useful about it.
10. What could go wrong
Read this as a list of things to watch rather than reasons to stay away. Every risk here is documented in an official publication or a company filing, and most of them are also, from a career point of view, job descriptions. The independent ASER surveys are worth reading alongside the government data, because they measure what children can actually do rather than whether they are enrolled.
Ranked by how directly each one touches an early-career role
| Risk | The evidence | How likely | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| A shrinking student base | School enrolment fell to 24.69 crore in 2024-25, a third consecutive annual decline, driven by falling birth rates | Certain, already happening | Growth will come from higher enrolment ratios and better retention, not more children. Avoid roles whose only plan is more students |
| Learning outcomes | Retention at the secondary stage is 47.2%. PARAKH found 52% of students up to grade 3 met minimum numeracy standards | Certain, already measured | This is the sector's central unsolved problem, and therefore the most durable source of funded work |
| Public funding constraint | Combined central and state education spending is about 4.1% of GDP against the 6% goal in the National Education Policy | High | Close to 10 lakh sanctioned teaching posts were vacant in 2024-25. Sanctioned is not the same as funded |
| Coaching economics | Aakash revenue was flat in FY26 with an EBITDA margin of 0.75%. Allen profit fell 70% in FY25 | High | Be careful about joining a fixed-cost classroom business purely for the brand name. Ask about batch fill |
| Edtech funding drought | Funding fell from US$4.3 billion in 2021 to US$214 million in the first eight months of 2026 | High | Ask any edtech employer directly how long its cash runway is and whether it is profitable at the unit level |
| Regulatory tightening on coaching | CCPA has issued 60-plus notices and over ₹1.46 crore in penalties. Rajasthan introduced a regulation bill in March 2025 | Moderate | Marketing and admissions roles in coaching now carry genuine compliance risk. Learn the rules before you write the copy |
| Outbound study collapse | Indian students going abroad fell about 31%, to 6.26 lakh in 2025 from 9.08 lakh in 2023 | Moderate | Bad for study-abroad consultancies, good for Indian universities and foreign campuses in India. Pick the right side of it |
The risk that education organisations name most often in their own filings is not demand. It is cost, and specifically the cost of a fixed teaching base that has to be paid whether the seats fill or not. That is the single most useful thing to keep in mind when you compare two job offers in this sector: ask which one can still pay you if enrolment is flat for a year, because for several large employers in FY26 it was.
11. One company's year, in detail
PhysicsWallah is the largest organised education company in India by revenue, it listed recently so its numbers are audited and public, and FY26 is the year its model was tested. It is also the clearest available answer to the question “can education be a real business in India”.
PhysicsWallah sells test preparation and school-stage content at fees far below the traditional coaching price point, delivered online and increasingly through physical centres attached to those online courses. FY26, the year to 31 March 2026, is the year that combination stopped losing money.
What it establishes. Growth and margin do not have to trade against each other in education, but only if the cost of teaching one more learner is close to zero. PhysicsWallah added roughly 8.8 lakh paid users and ₹1,013 crore of revenue while its cost base grew far more slowly. The same year, Aakash added almost no revenue and its EBITDA fell 65%, because every additional student in a classroom model needs a seat, a teacher and a building. That contrast is the most useful thing in this report to be able to explain in an interview.
What it does not establish. One good year is not a track record. The company is still loss-making at the net level, its price point limits how much it can earn per learner, and much of its treasury is money raised rather than money earned. Say all of that if you are asked. Being able to argue both sides of a company you admire is unusual in a graduate candidate.
12. Latest news
The sector restates itself every quarter. These are the developments from the last two quarters that have actually changed something, each with the date it happened.
Pick one item, not all eight, and have a view on it. “The upGrad and Unacademy deal closed at about 6% of Unacademy's 2021 valuation, which tells me this sector is now being priced on revenue rather than users” is a better answer than reciting the list. Interviewers are testing whether you read, not whether you memorise.
13. The jobs themselves
Education hires into a small number of well-defined tracks, and the promise is real: you will be given a class, a course, a centre or a programme to own far earlier than in most industries, because the organisations are small and the demand is enormous. The trade is that pay at entry is lower than in most sectors covered in this series, and the compensation for that arrives as responsibility rather than as salary.
One caveat before the tables. Vacancy counts, programme names and eligibility rules change every cycle in this sector, and the teaching qualification itself is scheduled to change by 2030. Always check the official notification rather than a coaching website, and check the year it was issued.
Most candidates try only the first, and it is the slowest
The public exam route, in detail
The route has two stages and most candidates underestimate the first. You must first clear an eligibility test, and only then can you apply for a recruitment process. The Central Teacher Eligibility Test is the central one; most states run their own. In the February 2026 CTET cycle, 26,49,129 candidates registered, 23,24,625 appeared and 5,97,061 qualified, a pass rate of about 25.7%. Paper 1 covers classes 1 to 5 and Paper 2 classes 6 to 8, and a candidate may sit both, which is why the two paper totals add to more than the number of people.
The important and widely missed detail: a CTET qualification is valid for life. There is no reason to wait until you have finished a degree to clear it, and clearing it early is the single highest-return decision a student interested in teaching can make. For higher education, the equivalent gate is the UGC NET, administered by the National Testing Agency, which qualifies a candidate for assistant professor recruitment.
Basic pay at the first cell of the pay level, before dearness allowance, house rent allowance and other allowances
| Post | Pay level | Entry basic pay | Gate you must clear first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary teacher, PRT | Level 6 | ₹35,400 per month | CTET Paper 1 or a state TET, plus the recruitment exam |
| Trained graduate teacher, TGT | Level 7 | ₹44,900 per month | CTET Paper 2 or a state TET, plus the recruitment exam |
| Post graduate teacher, PGT | Level 8 | ₹47,600 per month | Postgraduate degree with B.Ed, plus the recruitment exam |
| Assistant professor | Academic Level 10 | ₹57,700 per month | UGC NET, or a PhD, which adds five advance increments taking entry basic pay to ₹66,800 |
Seventh Central Pay Commission scales as applied by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan for school posts and the UGC pay matrix for assistant professors. These are basic pay only; gross pay is materially higher once allowances are added, and state government scales differ. Always check the specific recruitment notification.
What the first year actually looks like
Whichever route you enter by, the first year is dominated by the same thing: standing in front of learners, or sitting close enough to them to see what is not working. Even product, content and analytics roles in good education companies start with classroom or learner contact, and the ones that do not tend to produce people who design material nobody can teach.
Three entry routes converge on learner contact, then fan out
in year one
The tracks are not sealed. Moving from teaching into content or assessment after two or three years is the most common transition in the sector, and it is usually treated as a promotion rather than a sideways step.
The skills that actually get you hired
For the public route, selection is almost entirely the exam: child development and pedagogy, language, and your subject, on a published syllabus. Preparation is a known quantity and the highest-return move is to sit the eligibility test early, because it does not expire.
For everything else, three specific things pay off far more than general preparation. First, be able to teach something in front of a stranger. Most private schools, colleges and education companies will ask for a demonstration lesson or a recorded explanation, and it is the single largest factor in the decision. Second, learn to read the data the sector runs on. Download the UDISE+ and AISHE reports, find the gross enrolment ratio and retention rate for the stage you want to work in, and be able to say what they imply. If you are targeting one specific college or university, the NIRF rankings publish that institution's own submitted data on faculty, students and placements, which is the most concrete thing you can quote about it in an interview. Third, know one regulation properly, whichever one governs the role: the NCTE qualification timetable if you want to teach, the NSQF and NCVET framework if you want to work in skilling, or the CCPA advertising rules if you are going anywhere near admissions or marketing.
Prepare one fifteen-minute explanation of a difficult concept in your subject, and rehearse it until you can teach it to someone who does not know the subject at all. Then prepare the harder version: what you would do differently for a learner who still did not follow it. Almost every candidate prepares the first and almost none prepares the second, and the second is what the panel is actually looking for.
14. The numbers to learn, and what to do next
Eight terms carry specific meanings in this sector and are used loosely almost everywhere else. Knowing them precisely is the cheapest possible way to sound like someone who works in education rather than someone who has read about it.
Always state the stage and the year. “Retention is 47.2% at the secondary stage, grades 9 to 12, in 2024-25” is a sentence almost no candidate can say. “Dropout rates are high” is a sentence anyone can say. The sector runs on two free public datasets, UDISE+ and AISHE, and the people who have actually opened them are a very small group.
What to do next. Six concrete steps, in the order they will actually help.
Every figure in this report is traceable to a Ministry of Education publication, an official survey, a company's own results release, a budget document or a published recruitment notification, with the period stated in the text. Data is current as of 11 September 2026. School data is published annually and higher education data runs about two years behind, so treat anything undated as context rather than fact. If you are reading across this series, the FMCG version of this report uses the same method on a very different sector, and the wider careers library covers the roles named above in more depth.
