IMG1 · IMG2 placed Artist's impression of the campus at golden hour: a three-storey cream and terracotta academic block with deep shaded verandahs and rooftop solar panels, a yellow school bus at the open gate, children in blue uniforms walking in past the compound wall, hedges and marigold beds alongside.

100% GOVERNMENT · 100% FREE

Gen-Alpha
Govt School

by Akunuri Murali, IAS (Retd.) — Chairman, Telangana Education Commission (2024–2026)

Based on the Telangana Public School model · Education Policy for Telangana 2026

This is not a private international school. This is what a government school can be — for every child, at no cost.

See how

The gap we accept today

IMG3 — four real photographs Four photographs of government schools as they are today, in a two-by-two grid: children sitting on the bare floor of an empty room with no furniture at all; a classroom ceiling collapsed to expose rusted reinforcing bars; schoolgirls walking past a classroom wall broken open to rubble; and a long tin-roofed school block behind open ground strewn with rubbish. Today
IMG4 — four artist's impressions Four artist's impressions of the same four things done right, in the same two-by-two grid: children at desks in a bright classroom with a teacher at a digital display; a computer and language lab with headphones and a reading shelf; the campus gate with a sound multi-storey block, a guard and a school bus; and an arts room where children sit around a teacher at a harmonium with their paintings on the wall. Tomorrow

The difference isn’t money the country doesn’t have. It’s a plan the country hasn’t demanded. Here’s the plan.

The big idea

Stop patching failing schools. Build one that’s world-class — and bus every child to it.

A mandal is split into 2 to 4 clusters, and each cluster gets one big campus — around 1,500 students, pre-primary to Class 12, with no school fees. Every village in that cluster is on a bus route.

How the cluster model works A map showing six separate villages, each drawn as its own cluster of houses and trees, each labelled Village 1 to Village 6, connected by roads to one large government school campus at the centre. School buses travel along the roads from every village to the central campus.
  • 2–5 campuses per mandal
  • ~1,500 students each
  • Pre-primary → Class 12
  • 5 school buses
The campus is not built from scratch: in every cluster one suitable government school is upgraded with world-class infra & facilities — and buses bring the rest of the cluster’s children in.
  • Aerial view at golden hour of the new campus set among farmland, its blocks arranged around a green quadrangle with playing fields, a running track and a row of yellow buses, linked by narrow roads to the surrounding villages.
  • A yellow school bus stopped in a village lane in the early morning as children in uniform climb aboard, one small girl lifted up by her older sister while a woman waves from a doorway.

Artist's impression

The blueprint, not a wish list

The report defines exactly what a real school needs — 45 things. Ours will have all 45.

Tap a zone to see exactly what is in it. All of it standard — not “premium add-ons.”

Plan of the campus A bird’s-eye plan of the campus showing eight zones: the academic block with its classrooms of desks facing a board, the laboratories with computer stations and lab benches, the libraries with shelves of books and reading tables, the sports field with its running track and courts and playground, the arts rooms and the amphitheatre beside Constitution Park, the health and care block, the dining hall and its kitchen, and the compound wall with its gate, guard post and cameras.

45 / 45

45 out of 45. That’s the standard. Why should a poor child get anything less?

A day in this school

The timetable is already written.

Not a vague promise about “holistic development.” The report sets out the actual day — down to what is served on a Tuesday.

  1. 9:00

    Assembly, then breakfast

    Over the public-address system, inside every classroom. Food before lessons.

  2. Every day

    A games period. Every single day.

    Four houses — Blue, Yellow, Green, Purple — from Class 1 to 12.

  3. Twice a week

    Library, on the timetable

    Two periods a week. Every grade, 1 to 12.

  4. Weekly

    A walk outside

    UKG to Class 5. Insects, leaves, what grows where.

  5. After lunch

    The little ones sleep

    Pre-primary carry no textbooks at all. A water bottle and a snack.

  6. 4:00

    School ends

    Or stay till 5:15 — a club, a sport, extra help.

  7. 4:30–6:30

    Coaching. On campus. No fee.

    For Classes 9 and 10 — the thing families take loans to pay for.

  8. Till 8:30

    The athletes stay later

    With a physical-education teacher alongside them.

  • Young children walking in a loose line along a path at the edge of the grounds with their teacher on a nature walk, two crouched down to look at something in the grass and another holding up a leaf. Nature walk
  • A pre-primary classroom after lunch with the blinds half drawn, fifteen very young children asleep on thin colourful mats laid out on the floor, and a teacher sitting quietly on a low stool at the side. Nap time
  • A classroom at dusk with the lights on and blue evening light at the windows, teenagers at desks doing extra tuition after school hours while a teacher explains a problem at the board. Evening coaching

Artist's impression

Straight from the report This week’s food
  • Overhead view of one child's school lunch on a compartmented stainless-steel plate: white rice, a vegetable curry, dal, a boiled egg and a slice of banana, with a steel tumbler of water beside it.

Artist's impression

The proposed weekly menu for breakfast, lunch and evening snacks at a Telangana Public School
DayBreakfastLunchEvening snack
MonIdly with chutney + milkRice, beerakaya curry, pappu chaaru + eggCorn flakes mixture
TueVegetable pongal or poha + ragi maltRice, beans curry, leafy dal + eggFlattened rice mixture
WedUpma + milkRice, vankaya curry, pappu chaaru + bananaBoiled peanuts or chana
ThuKhichdi or tomato bath + ragi maltBagara rice, tomato-aloo curry + eggSeasonal fruit
FriLemon rice or semiya upma + milkRice, bendakaya curry, pappu chaaru + eggSamosa
SatPoori with aloo curry, or vegetable khichdi + ragi maltVegetable pulao, tomato chaaru + bananaBoiled chickpeas or corn

Every school day, for every child. The cooks are hired from the village by the parents’ committee — who also inspect the kitchen.

Inside the classroom

Play, not rote. And one promise you can hold them to.

“By the end of Class 5, every student shall acquire reading, writing and speaking in their mother tongue and English, and achieve numeracy proficiency.”

Education Policy for Telangana 2026

  • 0

    Homework, until Class 3

    Pre-primary is play — circle time, stories, songs, movement. Nothing written, nothing tested.

  • 2×

    English, every single day

    Plus a 45-seat English lab with headphones and a shelf of graded readers.

  • 6–12

    Every maths class, in a maths lab

    Geometry kits, abacuses, tangrams — and a screen to show what a graph is doing.

  • 90

    Computers, from Class 3

    Two laboratories of 45 machines. They double as AI labs.

  • Grouped by level, not age

    Regrouped as they catch up. In the early grades, tested by talking — not by writing.

  • Children teach each other

    Classes 6 to 8. And from Class 6, every project is your own.

  • A mathematics laboratory: children standing at tables covered with wooden geometric solids, abacuses, fraction strips, tangrams and measuring tapes, two of them building a large three-dimensional shape together. Maths lab
  • An English language lab: students at long desks wearing headsets, some speaking into microphones and one laughing at what she has heard, a teacher helping at one desk and a readers' corner along the wall. English lab

Artist's impression

Same SCERT curriculum as every other government school. What changes is how it is taught.

Who works here

A school is not just a building. This one is staffed by 29 kinds of people.

One campus of 1,500 children can afford specialists that a village school of 20 never could.

  • The whole staff of the school gathered informally on the front steps and lawn before the day begins — teachers, a sports teacher in a tracksuit, a music teacher with a tabla, a nurse, a librarian, lab assistants, kitchen staff, drivers and security and cleaning staff, all mid-conversation.

Artist's impression

  • 1Head of School
  • 3Head MastersNursery–3, 3–8, 9–12
  • +20%TeachersOne for every section — and then a fifth as many again
  • 4Pre-school teachers
  • 1:100Literacy & numeracy tutorsClasses 1–5
  • 9·10Special tutorsClasses 9, 10 and intermediate
  • 6Physical-education teachers
  • 3Music, art and danceOne teacher each
  • 2Librarians
  • 2Laboratory assistants
  • 2Computer instructors
  • 1Nurse, on campus
  • 1:2CounsellorShared with the next campus
  • 1Estate ManagerEverything that isn’t teaching
  • 1:150Sanitation staffHalf of them women
  • 2:300Security guards
  • 1Head cookWith cooks and kitchen helpers
  • 1Transport supervisor

40 hours of training a year — for the teachers

In person, for every one of them. And the gaps are found by an outside agency watching real classrooms, not by the school marking itself. The Head Masters never stop teaching either: 12 periods a week, each.

29 categories of staff in all. Source: Education Policy for Telangana 2026, §4.3.2 and the operational manual.

How the marks are made

Exams, done right.

A school that sets its own paper, invigilates its own hall and marks its own answer sheets can produce any result it likes. So this one does none of the three.

  • Someone else sets the paper

    An independent authority — the Telangana Education Standards Authority — prepares one standard question paper for the whole state, for every grade from Class 2 to 12, and its own officials conduct the examination.

  • Answer sheets lose their name

    Evaluation happens entirely online. Papers are scanned and uploaded, stripped of school and student names, and then randomly assigned to teachers across the state.

  • Board students swap schools

    Classes 10, 11 and 12 sit their examinations in a different school from their own. Two CC cameras in every room, so that every corner is covered.

  • The school still tests — it just doesn’t grade

    Teachers run their own assessments through the year, half competency-based and half syllabus-based. What they cannot do is mark the exam that counts.

None of it asks you to trust the school. That is the whole point.

Who marks the school

For once, it’s the school that gets a report card.

Children have always been the ones ranked. Here, every six months, so is the school — and unlike yours, its report card is published.

School report card Issued every six months · published, not filed away

Student attendance

Learning outcomesContinuous assessment, learning levels, national survey scores

EquityWhether girls, Dalit, Adivasi and disabled children are learning as well as everyone else

Feedback from parents and inspectorsWhat families say at meetings, and what officials see on a visit

Sport and competitionsExtra credit when children win

Scored, then ranked against every other school — in its mandal, its district and the state. The Chief Minister reviews the rankings.

  • Watched live, not once a year

    Every campus is wired into the state’s Vidya Samiksha Kendra: enrolment, student and staff attendance, assessment results, classroom observations, whether the meal was actually served, the state of the buildings, and where the money went.

  • And officials have to turn up

    The Director of School Education must visit at least four schools a month; the Education Secretary at least two. Which schools is decided randomly by an app — not by the officer, and not by the school.

  • The parents review it monthly

    The parents’ committee meets every month to go through exactly this: attendance, results, remedial progress, repairs — and how the school’s money was spent.

Equity isn’t a paragraph in the introduction. It is one of the numbers the school is scored on.

The scale of the promise

This isn’t a pilot dream. It’s a costed, phased plan.

  • 2,190

    schools across Telangana, fully scaled

  • 632

    mandals covered

  • ~33 lakh

    students set to benefit

  • ~65 lakh

    parents relieved of the burden

  • ₹15 cr

    to build one campus — the whole thing, all 45 standardsthe feasibility anchor

  • ₹0

    school fees — completely free

  • 45

    facilities as standard

  • 5

    school buses per campus

  • 1,500

    students per campus

  • ₹10,000 cr

    saved for families every yearthe report’s estimate, if 20 lakh children come back from private schools

Two phases from 2026. Source: Education Policy for Telangana 2026, Telangana Education Commission — §4.5 and Table 4.1. What the programme costs the state is in the next section.

The obvious question

But how can the government afford this?

Fair question. The whole plan is only two bills — one you pay once, one you pay every year. That is the entire cost.

  • Paid once

    ₹34,274 cr

    Building all 2,190 campuses, and putting five buses on the road at each one. Spread across six years — then nil, for good.

  • Then every year

    ₹5,694 cr

    Salaries for the specialists a village school never had, and three meals a day for every child. The only number that doesn’t go away.

  • 2,190 campuses by 2032‑33
  • Spread over 6 years — not paid at once
  • ₹15 cr per campus

The yearly bill starts at zero — there is nothing to run until the first campuses open — and only reaches ₹5,694 crore once all 2,190 are running. After that the building stops for good and the yearly bill is all that is left. Source: Education Policy for Telangana 2026, Table 4.1 — capital ₹32,850 cr + buses ₹1,423 cr paid once; staff ₹3,285 cr + meals ₹2,409 cr a year at full scale.

What the state budget carries, year by year
  • 2026‑27 ₹6,000 cr
  • 2027‑28 ₹7,300 cr
  • 2028‑29 ₹9,240 cr
  • 2029‑30 ₹8,525 cr
  • 2030‑31 ₹8,849 cr
  • 2031‑32 ₹9,609 cr
  • 2032‑33 ₹5,889 cr
  • 2033‑34onward ₹5,694 cr
  • Building it — once
  • Running it — every year

The heaviest year is ₹9,609 crore, and it happens once. After that the building stops, the line goes flat, and the state is left carrying ₹5,694 crore a year — for 2,190 schools serving 33 lakh children.

And now the answer

The money isn’t missing. It’s spread across 24,222 crumbling buildings.

Telangana already runs 24,222 local-body schools for 16.8 lakh children, with 1.1 lakh teachers on the payroll. The problem was never the total. It is how thinly the total is divided.

And most of what a new school would normally cost, this one never has to buy.

  • 1 : 15Teachers per child — already1.1 lakh teachers for 16.8 lakh children. The state’s private schools manage 1 to 23.
  • 1,920Schools with no children in themAnd 9,737 more with thirty or fewer. Already built, already staffed, already funded.
  • 0New teachers to recruitThe teachers move to the campus with the children. The recurring budget buys specialists, not headcount.
  • 0Acres of land to buyEvery campus is an upgrade of an existing ZPHS or Model School. The land is already the state’s.
  • ₹0To a contractorThe parents’ committee awards and executes the work itself, and keeps the books.
  • 50%Of a bus — not a fleetLocal entrepreneurs buy and run them on a 50% subsidy and a 40% loan. The state owns none of them.

It costs less to run than it saves

₹5,694 crore a year keeps all 2,190 campuses staffed and every child fed three times a day. The report puts the saving to families at ₹10,000 crore a year, once 20 lakh children no longer need a private school. The state would spend a little over half of what its own citizens stop paying — and it would own 2,190 schools built to last a century.

Source: Education Policy for Telangana 2026

The heart of it

Every child belongs here.

  • A kitchen worker in apron and cap ladling hot dal onto a young boy's stainless-steel plate at the serving counter, steam rising, more children queueing behind with their plates.

    A hot breakfast, lunch, and evening snack — every day, free.

  • A school counsellor sitting on a low chair at a child's eye level in a bright, softly furnished room, listening carefully to a girl of about twelve who is talking with her hands.

    A nurse on campus, and a counsellor on a regular schedule — because children’s bodies and minds both matter.

    Once a year every child is checked properly:

    • eyes, ears, teeth, anaemia
    • screened for autism, ADHD and learning difficulties — so that nothing is mistaken for laziness
  • A boy of about ten in a wheelchair working at a desk alongside two classmates in a bright classroom, all three leaning over the same notebook and laughing.

    Built for every child:

    • fully wheelchair-accessible
    • a special-needs learning room and accessible toilets
    • modified games, so nobody sits out sports day — at school, district or state level
  • A music room mid-lesson: a teacher at a harmonium, a boy playing tabla and eight children sitting in a semicircle on the floor singing, with instruments on shelves and children's paintings pinned above.

    Music, art, and dance teachers — not “extras,” but part of growing up whole.

  • For girls:

    • haemoglobin testing twice a year
    • menstrual health support and supplies
    • a quiet partitioned room with four beds, for the days when you just need to lie down
  • The Constitution Park: a small, well-kept garden with a polished black granite plaque on a stone plinth carrying the opening words of the Preamble, benches and flowering shrubs, and six children gathered around it reading, one tracing a line with a finger.

    A Constitution Park with the Preamble engraved — so children grow up knowing they belong to this republic.

    We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic…

    JusticeLibertyEqualityFraternity

Photographs of the campus are artist's impressions

And the smallest children don’t travel far at all: each campus is fed by three or four Telangana Foundational Schools — Nursery to Class 2, built to the same standard, in the neighbourhoods themselves.

No entrance exam. No fees. Admission by lottery or first-come. Every child, welcome.

Whose school is it?

The parents run it.

Not a department in a far-away city. The people whose children walk through the gate every morning are the ones who govern the campus, and even own the buses.

  • A committee of parents governs it

    Every parent in the school is called to a meeting, and the School Development & Management Committee is chosen there.

    • The head of the school sits on it as convener — not as its boss.
    • Reconstituted every two years, with a third of the members held back by draw of lots — so nothing is forgotten and nobody settles in.

  • They build it themselves — without contractors

    While the campus is being built

    • The committee meets every week and keeps signed minutes.
    • It votes on every decision — which vendor, which rate, which material.
    • It keeps a full set of books, down to a daily log of labour and materials.
    • There is no contractor standing between the village and the school.

    Afterwards, every month

    • Student attendance, teacher attendance, exam results.
    • Remedial progress, and repairs.
    • Whatever parents raised at the last parent–teacher meeting.

  • The buses belong to the village

    • The five buses at each campus are bought and run by local entrepreneurs.
    • Ideally parents of the students themselves — and preferably from a Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Backward Class family.
    • The bus is registered in the committee’s own name.

    A parent doesn’t just use the transport; a parent can own it.

    How a family buys a school bus
    • Government subsidy
    • Bank loan
    • Own investment

  • And somebody is watching that bus

    • On board: GPS tracking, a camera, a fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit.
    • Drivers: commercial licences, police-verified, trained in child safety.
    • Never more than 70 children in one trip, and a register of who boarded, every single day.

    And every route carries a childcare assistant — chosen from the last village on that route, so she is aboard from the first stop to the last — to lift the small ones up the step and hand them down again.

  • And nobody is forced into it

    No village school is closed down to make this work. Parents keep three choices:

    • the small school nearby
    • a private school
    • or this one

    It simply happens that the free one is now the best one: better resourced than the private school, with safe transport to the door.

  • A school management committee meeting in a bright school room: twelve village parents, mostly mothers in cotton sarees, around a table with a register and papers, one woman standing and speaking while the headmaster sits among them rather than at the head of the table. Parents’ committee
  • Inside a school bus in the morning: children in uniform with backpacks on their laps, one looking out of the window at the fields going past, while the route's childcare assistant stands in the aisle checking on a small child. School bus

Artist's impression

The person behind it

Akunuri Murali, IAS (Retd.)

Akunuri Murali, IAS (Retd.)

Chairman, Telangana Education Commission, 2024–2026

@Murali_IASretd

He is not a commentator on government schools. He has rebuilt them at scale before — which is why this plan is costed like something meant to be built, not argued about.

  • 15,715

    government schools rebuilt

    As school-infrastructure adviser to Andhra Pradesh he ran Mana Badi: Nadu-Nedu, which rebuilt 15,715 existing small schools in its first phase — classrooms, drinking water, and toilets that girls could actually use.

  • 40 yrs

    in public service, here and abroad

    Joined the state engineering service in 1981 and rose to the IAS. From 1994 to 2000 he was National Project Manager of the United Nations Development Programme’s South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme — the SAARC initiative in Mahabubnagar that first organised self-help groups into village and block federations. Later Director of MGNREGS in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Director General of the State Archives, and District Collector of Jayashankar Bhupalpally from 2016 to 2018.

  • SERP

    chief executive

    Ran Telangana’s Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, the World Bank‑supported body that organises rural women into self‑help groups — among the largest programmes of its kind anywhere.

  • This plan

    his last official act

    Appointed Chairman of the Telangana Education Commission in September 2024. He handed the government Education Policy for Telangana 2026 — the report on this page — and stepped down in May 2026, four months early, saying the Commission’s work was done.

You can help send every child in India to a school like this. Free.

The plan exists. The cost is known. What’s missing is demand. Make some noise.

One decision away

Akunuri Murali built this plan as chairman of the Telangana Education Commission, and stepped down when the government did not act on it. Some say the private school lobby will not allow it, but we don’t know. Telangana is governed by the Congress — so the plan begins the day Rahul Gandhi says “start”.

  1. Ask Rahul Gandhi to start it in Telangana

    Congress governs Telangana. One instruction from him and the first campuses begin — and he may not know this plan exists.

    Tags @RahulGandhi on X and @rahulgandhi on Instagram.

    Post on X

  2. Ask Cockroach Janta Party to take up this cause nationally

    They have just started campaigning on government schools called #SchoolThikKaro. This is the thing that campaign is missing: a finished, costed plan, ready to be demanded.

    Tags @Cockroachisback and the team on X, and @cockroachjantaparty, @abhijeetdipke, @seven_shots_, @ashutosh_ranka on Instagram.

    Post on X