The government's education expenditure as a percentage of GDP has never ever risen above 4.3% of GDP, despite the target of 6% having been set as far back as 1968 by the Kothari Commission.

The country’s education system turns out millions of graduates every year but the key challenges before the Government are:

• Improving access and quality at all levels of education
• Increasing funding in higher education
• Improving Infrastructure
• Improving Management
• Improving literacy rates
• Universalization of elementary education

Despite efforts to include all sections of the population into the Indian education system, through various programmes and schemes, large numbers of young people are still without schooling. It is true that enrollment in primary education has increased (at least 35 million) but as many as 60 millions of children under the age group 6–14 years are still far from school. One of the major problems is the non availability of schools within a reasonable distance. Many remote areas of the country have no educational institute at all. This difficulty should be overcome to improve the education system of thecountry.

Improving the quality of education is another challenge before the government to reach at the target. The quality should get international recognition in terms of effectiveness of teaching, attainment level of the students, availability of adequate teachers etc.

Other challenges are: inadequate school infrastructure, high teacher-student absenteeism, large number of teacher vacancies, poor quality of education and inadequate funds.

Other groups of children ‘at risk’, such as orphans, child-laborers, street children and victims of riots and natural disasters, do not necessarily have access to schools.

To raise the literacy rate, all sections of the society will have to realize the value of education and hence should come forward to improve the Indian education system.