Executive summary
Transforming an education system requires more than structural reform or new policy directives. It also requires attention to the mindsets and cultural forces that shape how actors interpret reforms, make decisions, and enact change. This exploratory study focused on the Indian context and highlights that stakeholder mindsets, understood as attitudes, dispositions, and assumptions (Kania et al. 2018), can play a central role in how the vision of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) is interpreted. The study draws on qualitative interviews with ten national and state-level policy-influencing actors directly engaged in policy design, curriculum reform, and high-level program implementation, including policymakers, bureaucrats, academicians, and NGO leaders.
The findings therefore reflect the perspectives of actors who operate primarily at the system design and policy interpretation level, rather than classroom practitioners or students. The interviews indicated that key actors believe education systems transformation is influenced not only by structures, but also by underlying beliefs about academic success, diversity, authority, and reform. In their accounts, these mindsets appeared to interact with institutional arrangements, which can shape how the purpose of education is defined, how policy is interpreted, and how priorities are enacted.
Using the 4P framework, this report identifies the following four areas where participants perceive that mindsets and structures intersect, potentially influencing the realization of the NEP 2020 vision and its broader goal of enabling all children and young people to thrive.
1.1 Reimagining the purpose of education
Participants reported that many influential actors continue to equate academic success primarily with academic performance and employability. They perceived this emphasis as limiting the breadth of educational aims envisioned in NEP 2020, including well-being, SEL, citizenship, and thriving. The study does not establish direct causal evidence that such mindsets restrict system outcomes. Instead, respondents reflected that such framings shape discourse, expectations, and policy narratives about what counts as educational success.
1.2 Advancing equity and inclusion through pedagogy
Participants suggested that although policy documents emphasize inclusive pedagogies, prevailing assumptions about diversity may influence how inclusion is understood. Some respondents expressed concern that diversity is often approached with the goal of sameness and assimilation rather than as differences requiring specific pedagogical responses.
The study does not assess teachers’ mindsets of teaching practices. Instead, it reports participants’ perceptions that underlying beliefs about learners can shape how inclusion is conceptualized at the policy level, with implications for whether all children are supported to thrive.
1.3 Positioning actors to move from fragmented to coherent implementation
Respondents described reform efforts as frequently fragmented across curricula, teacher education, assessment, and accountability structures. They attributed this fragmentation partly to institutional arrangements and partly to prevailing mindsets geared toward short-term delivery and compliance. Their reflections suggest that orientations toward quick solutions may contribute to fragmented implementation. The study does not claim to measure fragmentation or its causes but reports how influential actors interpret these dynamics and how they see such fragmentation as limiting progress toward system conditions in which all young people can thrive.
1.4 Restructuring power, authority, and governance structures
Several participants described education governance as hierarchical and centralized. They reported that such norms can shape how authority is exercised and how agency is experienced across the system. The study does not demonstrate that these structures objectively constrain agency. Rather, it captured participants’ accounts of how hierarchical cultures are perceived as influencing levels of trust, decisionmaking, and voice among teachers, school leaders, communities, and students, with implications for student agency and thriving.
Taken together, the insights from this study demonstrate that education systems transformation can be both structural and psychological. Policies and frameworks provide direction, but lasting change also requires a shift in how educational actors understand their roles, interpret equity, engage with learners, and collaborate across the system. The study, therefore, proposes an expanded articulation of the 4Ps that explicitly incorporates mindsets as an essential component of systems transformation and introduces a draft rubric as a conversation starter for engaging in a mindset-informed approach to education systems transformation. The rubric is designed to help actors surface prevailing mindsets, begin to diagnose system-level misalignments, and ultimately design more coherent strategies that support the thriving of every young person.
Authors
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Acknowledgements and disclosures
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all those who contributed to this research and the development of this report. We sincerely thank the policymakers, NGO representatives, and academics who generously shared their time and insights. Their reflections on education systems, mindsets, and implementation challenges significantly shaped the direction and depth of this study. We sincerely appreciate the efforts of our Dream a Dream colleagues and interns on the research team, whose contributions to literature review, policy analysis, and data collection were invaluable. We would like to make special mention of our colleague Mr. Sharique Mashhadi, director – systems demonstration, Dream a Dream, for his support in facilitating conversations with respondents. We are also grateful to the Network for Education Systems Transformation (NEST) members, whose thoughtful input, discussions, and reflections during meetings enriched the depth and direction of this work.
We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of our peer reviewer, Dr. Urvashi Sahni, non-resident fellow at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, whose detailed feedback strengthened the conceptual clarity and methodological rigor of this report.
We extend our thanks to Jennifer L. O’Donoghue, senior fellow and deputy director of CUE at the Brookings Institution—for editorial guidance and support during the review process.
Lastly, our sincere thanks to Ms. Suchetha Bhat, CEO, and Mr. Vishal Talreja, co-founder of Dream a Dream, for their unwavering support, encouragement, and belief in this work.
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