What began as a safety net in Delhi’s government schools is now revealing deep fault lines in the city’s education model. The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) Project — launched as a pathway for failing Class 9 and 10 students to complete secondary education and rejoin mainstream schooling — is struggling to deliver even its core promise.

A decade in, the numbers are difficult to ignore. According to government data and RTI findings, nearly 70 percent of students enrolled under the NIOS Project have failed the Class 10 exam over the past four years.

Only around a third manage to pass — and even fewer actually return to the formal school system.

For a programme built to prevent dropouts, the outcomes suggest something closer to systemically losing students.

A policy meant to rescue learners — now raising questions

On paper, the NIOS Project was designed as a re-entry mechanism. Students repeatedly failing Class 9 or lagging behind academically would be redirected to NIOS, given focused support, and after clearing Class 10, brought back to Class 11 in the same school.

But the ground reality is starkly different. Roughly 22 percent of Delhi students who fail Class 9 are moved to NIOS, yet most receive little follow-up or structured teaching. Classes are frequently irregular, attendance is poorly tracked, and parental awareness is inconsistent at best.

Instead of a rehabilitation track, many children describe the project as a waiting room with no doors — neither back into school nor forward into stable career pathways.

‘A gamble with the future of children’

Teachers and education-rights advocates say the programme is being quietly repurposed.

Anonymously, school staff admitted that shifting weak students to NIOS helps improve Class 10 board results for the school — regardless of what happens to those students afterward.

Ashok Agarwal, President of the All India Parents Association, calls it “a gamble with the future of children”. He warns that those who do manage to pass often face limited academic mobility, typically restricted to the Arts stream with little preparedness for higher studies.

Instead of academic support, many students experience institutional invisibility.

The numbers that demand answers

Over the last five years alone, the enrolment scale underscores how widespread the practice has become:

·        2020–21: 11,322

·        2021–22: 10,598

·        2022–23: 29,436

·        2023–24: 7,794

·        2024–25: 11,974

Yet outcomes remain bleak:
Only 37% cleared the exam in 2024. Across the past four academic cycles, the pass average stands at just 30%.

Even among those who pass, most do not return to mainstream schooling. The programme leaks students at every stage — enrolment, support, completion and reintegration.

The design flaw: structure without ownership

Unlike the national NIOS system — which is voluntary, flexible and built for self-paced learning — the Delhi NIOS Project depends entirely on individual government schools to run support classes.

But these centres are not formally accredited, and there is no independent mechanism for monitoring whether classes occur, assignments are completed, or learning is progressing.

Responsibility lies with principals — creating a conflict between boosting recorded pass percentages and rehabilitating struggling students.

Without clear oversight or performance-linked accountability, outcome failure becomes systemic — but invisible.

The funding contradiction

While students typically pay NIOS registration and exam fees, in Delhi the government subsidises the project for many. With thousands enrolled annually, even partial support translates into significant public expenditure.

That investment might be justified — if the program delivered its promise of completion and reintegration.

But when most children neither pass nor return, the spending raises an uncomfortable policy question:

The way forward: reform or rethink?

The crisis is not with NIOS as an institution. It lies in how the Delhi NIOS Project is being implemented — and what it has silently become: a route to move struggling learners out of official performance data.

If the programme is to remain, experts say it needs:

·        consistent teaching support

·        proper monitoring and audits

·        counselling for families

·        reintegration plans that work

·        incentives tied to return, not removal

Otherwise, the project risks continuing as a sorting mechanism — not a bridge.

When a policy designed to retain children ends up losing them, the failure is not individual — it is systemic. And unless the NIOS Project is rebuilt with purpose and accountability, its numbers may continue to tell the same troubling story:

A second chance without support is not an opportunity — it is abandonment masked as reform.