The Private Tax: What Indian Families Pay for School

A family that moves a child from a government school to a recognised private unaided school spends about ten times as much a year. More than a quarter of school children also take private coaching. Parents are paying to lower a risk. The receipt does not tell them whether their child learned to think.

India's household survey of school spending, run by the National Statistical Office in 2025, asked tens of thousands of families what one child's schooling cost them in the current academic year. [1]

The answer depends almost entirely on the kind of school.

In cities the gap widens. A recognised private unaided school cost an urban family ₹35,758 a year on average, against ₹4,128 for a government school. [1]

Then the second bill

School is not the only payment. In the same survey, 27.0% of school children were taking or had taken private coaching that year: 25.5% in rural India and 30.7% in urban India. The share rises with every stage, from 22.9% in primary to 37.8% in secondary and 37.0% in higher secondary. [1]

The average coaching spend per student was ₹2,409. For an urban student in higher secondary, it was ₹9,950. [1]

So a family pays twice: once for the school, and again for the preparation the school is not trusted to give.

What the money is buying

Nobody pays ten times as much for nothing. The survey does not ask parents why they pay, so this part is argument, not data.

What families are buying is a lower risk at the next gate: the board examination, the entrance test, the admission. Our article on NEP makes the case that when the classroom rewards explanation but the selection gate rewards rehearsal, parents buy rehearsal. Coaching is rehearsal sold by the hour.

This is also why the share of children in private schools keeps rising. In 2025-26 it reached four in ten.

What the receipt does not show

A fee receipt shows what a family paid. A mark sheet shows what a child handed in. Neither shows whether the child can explain why an answer works, notice when it is wrong, or change course when the facts change.

That gap is getting wider, not narrower. When an AI can produce a polished answer in seconds, the finished homework says less about the child than it ever did. Families are paying more for school and seeing less of what it produced.

Ilanooo works on that second problem: giving parents evidence of how their child thinks when the machine is in the room, without adding another test to buy. The Direction Report is where that starts. The larger argument, that children should learn by creating things with AI, with an adult beside them, is in our paper.

The private tax is a sign of a system families do not trust. Lowering it does not start with a cheaper school. It starts with schools, public ones first, whose results families can see and believe.

Sources

1. Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, National Statistical Office, NSS Report No. 595, Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education, 2025 (NSS 80th round): average expenditure per student by type of school (rural, urban, combined), share of students taking private coaching by level of enrolment, and average expenditure per student on private coaching.