Education: the policy setting and a documented role

School education in India is a concurrent responsibility of the Union and the states. At the Union level the Ministry of Education works through two departments — School Education & Literacy, and Higher Education — and sets national frameworks and centrally sponsored schemes that the states implement. A Minister of State assists the Cabinet Minister across the Ministry’s work, including answering to Parliament.

Between 2021 and 2024, the years of Annpurna Devi’s tenure, national school policy was organised around the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, the recovery of learning after pandemic-era school closures, and new schemes for school quality and foundational learning.

The National Education Policy 2020, approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2020, replaced the 10+2 school structure with a 5+3+3+4 design: a five-year foundational stage (three years of pre-school and Classes 1–2), followed by preparatory, middle and secondary stages. It placed foundational literacy and numeracy at the centre of early schooling, which the Government took forward through the NIPUN Bharat mission launched in July 2021.

The policy also called for universal access to school education from the pre-school years to the secondary stage, multilingual learning, and the integration of vocational education.

Article 21A of the Constitution, inserted by the 86th Amendment in 2002, makes free and compulsory education a fundamental right for children aged six to fourteen. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 gives effect to it, with norms for schools, teachers and admissions, including the reservation of a quarter of entry-level seats in private unaided schools for children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections.

Because NEP 2020 extends the policy horizon beyond the RTE Act’s six-to-fourteen age band — to the pre-school years at one end and the secondary stage at the other — the relationship between the two became a subject of review.

Three centrally sponsored schemes framed school education in this period. Samagra Shiksha integrates support for school education from pre-school to Class 12, including teacher training, inclusive education and vocational education. PM POSHAN, the successor to the mid-day meal scheme, provides hot cooked meals in schools. PM SHRI develops selected schools as exemplars of NEP 2020.

Parliamentary records show her answering written questions on each: PM SHRI schools (July 2022, December 2023, February 2024), the honorarium of PM POSHAN cook-cum-helpers (August 2022) and per-student allocations (December 2023), the alignment of Samagra Shiksha with NEP 2020 (April 2023), vocational education under Samagra Shiksha (December 2022), and the DIKSHA platform and NISHTHA teacher training (August 2022). See the register.

NEP 2020’s foundational stage brings three years of pre-school into the structure of education — years that, for most Indian children, are spent at an Anganwadi centre run under the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Early childhood education therefore sits at the meeting point of her two ministries.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development’s Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi initiative (launched 10 May 2023) strengthens pre-school education in Anganwadis, and national frameworks — Navchetana for children up to three and Aadharshila for ages three to six — were launched in March 2024. On 3 September 2025, as Minister for Women and Child Development, she jointly launched with the Minister of Education the Guidelines for Co-location of Anganwadi Centres with Schools (PIB 2163452).

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched at Panipat on 22 January 2015, links the protection of the girl child with her education. The Ministry of Women and Child Development reports that girls’ gross enrolment ratio at the secondary level rose from 75.51% in 2014–15 to 83.4% in 2025–26, according to UDISE data (PIB 2287683, July 2026).

As Minister of State for Education she gave a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on NEP 2020 initiatives for the education of the girl child (14 December 2022, PIB 1883472).

NEP 2020 groups the children most at risk of exclusion as socio-economically disadvantaged groups — defined by gender, social identity, disability, geography and economic status — and ties schemes such as Samagra Shiksha’s inclusive-education component to them.

At a review of central schemes in Namakkal, Tamil Nadu, on 10 October 2022, she spoke — as reported by PIB — of Kasturba Gandhi Balika schools and talent-development centres approved for the district (PIB 1866412).

She served as Union Minister of State, Ministry of Education, from 7 July 2021 until she joined the Union Cabinet in June 2024. The following engagements are documented by the Press Information Bureau: