Vacademy Research · Market data

India Education Market 2026: Schools, Coaching and Digital Adoption in Numbers

India has 14.7 lakh schools teaching 24.7 crore students, and 27% of school students take private coaching. This report collects the latest official numbers on schools, coaching, higher education, regulation and digital adoption, with every figure linked to its source.

By the Vacademy research team · Published · Updated

Disclosure. Vacademy publishes this report and sells an education platform, so we are one of the vendors in this market. Every figure links to its source, the scoring method is published below, and anything we could not verify is marked as not published rather than estimated. Spot an error? Write to [email protected] and we will correct it.

Key numbers

14.71 lakh

schools in India in 2024-25, with 1.01 crore teachers, the first year above one crore.[1]

24.69 crore

school students in 2024-25, about 11 lakh fewer than the year before.[1]

27.0%

of school students took private coaching in 2025: 30.7% in cities, 25.5% in villages.[3]

4.50 crore

students in higher education in 2023-24, across 64,756 registered institutions.[5]

24.07 bn

UPI payments in September 2026, worth ₹29.37 lakh crore: over 800 million a day.[16]

13 May 2027

date most DPDP Rules duties apply, including verifiable parental consent for under-18s.[13]

Schools and students

India's school system is the largest in the world by enrolment. UDISE+ 2024-25 counts 14,71,473 schools, 24.69 crore students from pre-primary to Class 12, and 1,01,22,420 teachers[1]. Enrolment fell by about 11 lakh from 24.80 crore in 2023-24, so growth for school software now comes from digitising existing schools rather than from new ones.

Higher education is growing instead: AISHE reports 4.50 crore students in 2023-24, up from 4.46 crore, with a gross enrolment ratio of 30.0 for ages 18-23 and 2.24 crore women enrolled[5].

Coaching: how many students, and what they spend

The strongest official signal for coaching demand is the government's own household survey. In the NSO Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education 2025 (52,085 households, 57,742 students), 27.0% of school students were taking or had taken private coaching in the current year[3]. Spending rises sharply in the final school years.

Average yearly coaching spend per student, 2025Rupees per student per year, NSO Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education 2025
  • All, urban₹3,988
  • All, rural₹1,793
  • Higher sec., urban₹9,950
  • Higher sec., rural₹4,548

Source: MoSPI / NSO, CMS: Education 2025[3]. Survey period April-June 2025.

Show the data as a table
Group₹ per student per year
All school students, urban3,988
All school students, rural1,793
Higher secondary, urban9,950
Higher secondary, rural4,548

How big is the coaching market? Estimates disagree by about 48 times

There is no single trustworthy figure. Research firms measure different things: online-only test prep, all coaching institutes, or all test preparation. Quote the scope with the number, never one figure as “the market”.

Published estimates of India's coaching and test-prep marketUS dollars, base year as published. Each firm defines the market differently.
  • Online test prepUSD 0.24 bn (2024)
  • Coaching institutesUSD 7.2 bn (2025)
  • All test prepUSD 11.6 bn (2025)

Sources: IMARC Group[6][8], Ken Research[7]. Estimates, not official statistics.

Show the data as a table
EstimateScopeBase yearProjection
USD 0.24 bnOnline test preparation only (IMARC)202427.7% CAGR to 2033
USD 7.2 bnCoaching institutes (IMARC)2025USD 17.8 bn by 2034
USD 11.6 bnAll test preparation (Ken Research)2025USD 20.8 bn by 2032

There is also no official count of coaching centres. Industry bodies have cited figures from about 48,000 registered centres upward, and many centres are unregistered, so we do not publish a number.

Regulation institutes now plan around

Coaching-centre guidelines, 2024

  • A coaching centre is one with more than 50 students; each branch registers separately[10].
  • No enrolment below 16 years of age, and no advertisements promising ranks or marks.
  • Fees must be stated with receipts and cannot rise mid-course; a student who leaves gets a pro-rata refund within 10 days.
  • Each centre must publish a website listing tutors, courses, fees and its refund policy.
  • Penalties: ₹25,000 for a first offence, ₹1 lakh for a second, then the registration is revoked.

The guidelines are advisory: education is on the Concurrent List, so states enforce them through their own laws[11]. Rajasthan's 2025 bill, for example, applies above 100 students with penalties of ₹50,000 and then ₹2 lakh[12].

Student data: DPDP Act 2023 and Rules 2025

When the DPDP Rules 2025 apply
  1. 13 Nov 2025
    Data Protection Board in force
  2. 13 Nov 2026
    Consent-manager rules apply
  3. 13 May 2027
    Consent, security, breach and children's-data duties apply

Source: DPDP Rules 2025, G.S.R. 846(E), notified 13 November 2025[13].

Show the data as a table
DateWhat applies
13 Nov 2025Data Protection Board provisions in force
13 Nov 2026Consent-manager rules
13 May 2027Most duties: notices, consent, security, breach reporting, children's data

Everyone under 18 counts as a child, and processing a child's data needs verifiable parental consent. Educational institutions have a partial exemption for their own teaching and child-safety work, but sharing student data with marketing or analytics vendors falls outside it[13].

Digital rails: internet and payments

India had 1,101 million broadband subscriptions at the end of August 2026[14], and the IAMAI-Kantar survey counts 958 million active internet users in 2025, 57% of them rural[15]. Payments have moved online with them: UPI processed 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹29.37 lakh crore in September 2026[16], which is why online fee collection and instalments are now standard requests from parents.

The edtech market itself was about USD 7.5 bn in 2024, with a projection of USD 29 bn by 2030, according to an IAMAI and Grant Thornton Bharat study; that is an industry estimate, not an official figure[9].

AI in teaching

India does not yet publish a national survey of AI use in classrooms. International surveys show how quickly it is arriving: about 41% of lower-secondary teachers across OECD countries used AI in their teaching, and about 75% in the UAE and Singapore[17]. In the US, 60% of K-12 teachers used AI in 2024-25, and weekly users report saving 5.9 hours a week[18]. In the UK, 92% of undergraduates use AI tools[19].

Beyond India: Gulf, Australia and New Zealand

School systems in the markets Indian education companies sell into
  • Dubai, private schools (2024-25)
    387,441 students
    227 schools · 26% on the Indian curriculum
  • Saudi Arabia (Oct 2024)
    6.72 million students
    about 513,000 teachers
  • Australia (2025)
    4,160,918 students
    9,673 schools · 62.8% in government schools
  • New Zealand (Jul 2025)
    856,412 students
    2,536 schools

Sources: KHDA via WAM[20], Saudi Ministry of Education via Argaam[23], ABS[21], NZ Ministry of Education[22].

Show the data as a table
MarketStudentsSchoolsNote
Dubai (private schools, 2024-25)387,44122726% of students follow the Indian curriculum
Saudi Arabia (general education, Oct 2024)6.72 millionnot statedAbout 513,000 teachers
Australia (2025)4,160,9189,673Government schools 62.8% of students
New Zealand (1 Jul 2025)856,4122,536Up from 850,999 in 2024

What this means for institutes

  • Coaching demand is broad (27% of students) but regulated: published fees, refunds within 10 days and a public website are now expected.
  • Student data rules arrive on 13 May 2027; institutes should know where student and parent data lives and who it is shared with.
  • Parents already pay digitally at scale, so online fee collection with receipts is a baseline, not a feature.

To see which software vendors cover these jobs, read our Education Platform Landscape 2026.

Method and limits

We used the latest edition of each official series available on 20 October 2026: UDISE+ 2024-25, AISHE 2023-24, NSO CMS: Education 2025, TRAI (August 2026) and NPCI (September 2026). Where a government website could not be reached directly, the figure was cross-checked against at least two independent reports of the official release, and the source list names both. Market-size figures from research firms are labelled as estimates and shown as a range. We will update this page when new editions are released.

Sources

  1. [1] UDISE+ 2024-25 (schools, enrolment, teachers), as reported — Ministry of Education; reporting by Careers360 (Primary)
  2. [2] UDISE+ portal — Ministry of Education (Primary)
  3. [3] Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education 2025 (NSS 80th round), as reported — MoSPI / NSO; reporting by Vision IAS (Primary)
  4. [4] CMS: Education 2025 microdata catalogue — MoSPI (Primary)
  5. [5] AISHE 2022-23 and 2023-24 reports, as reported — Ministry of Education; reporting by Drishti IAS (Primary)
  6. [6] India coaching institutes market — IMARC Group (Estimate)
  7. [7] India test preparation market — Ken Research (Estimate)
  8. [8] India online test preparation market — IMARC Group (Estimate)
  9. [9] Impact study of EdTech in India (Jan 2025), as reported — IAMAI and Grant Thornton Bharat; reporting by Business Standard (Estimate)
  10. [10] Guidelines for Registration and Regulation of Coaching Centres, 2024 — Ministry of Education (Primary)
  11. [11] Lok Sabha unstarred question on coaching-centre regulation — Parliament of India (Primary)
  12. [12] Rajasthan Coaching Centres (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2025 — PRS Legislative Research (Primary)
  13. [13] MeitY notifies Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 — SCC Online (Primary)
  14. [14] Telecom subscription data, press release 125/2026 — TRAI (Primary)
  15. [15] Internet in India 2025, as reported — IAMAI and Kantar; reporting by tele.net (Survey)
  16. [16] UPI product statistics — NPCI (Primary)
  17. [17] Results from TALIS 2024 — OECD (Survey)
  18. [18] The AI dividend: teachers and AI (June 2025) — Gallup and Walton Family Foundation (Survey)
  19. [19] Student Generative AI Survey 2025 — HEPI and Kortext (Survey)
  20. [20] Dubai private school sector enrolment 2024-25 — KHDA via WAM (Primary)
  21. [21] Schools, 2025 — Australian Bureau of Statistics (Primary)
  22. [22] Number of schools — NZ Ministry of Education (Education Counts) (Primary)
  23. [23] Saudi general-education students and teachers (Oct 2024), as reported — Saudi Ministry of Education via Argaam (Primary)