Business News | Twelve Years of Schooling, But What Do Children Actually Become?
Get latest articles and stories on Business at LatestLY. New Delhi [India], February 18: Twelve years of education, countless exams, thousands of hours in classrooms, and at the end of it all, a certificate that supposedly proves readiness for the world. But ask any employer what's missing in fresh graduates, and the answer isn't about grades or academic credentials. It's about the ability to think independently, communicate clearly, and handle problems that don't come with answer keys.
VMPL
New Delhi [India], February 18: Twelve years of education, countless exams, thousands of hours in classrooms, and at the end of it all, a certificate that supposedly proves readiness for the world. But ask any employer what's missing in fresh graduates, and the answer isn't about grades or academic credentials. It's about the ability to think independently, communicate clearly, and handle problems that don't come with answer keys.
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The disconnect is staggering. Students graduate with distinction but struggle to articulate their own ideas in a meeting. They ace competitive exams but freeze when asked to present their thinking without a script. They've memorized textbooks but never learned to trust their own judgment. Somewhere between kindergarten and graduation, the system taught them everything except how to actually use what they know, and the numbers prove it.
A Mercer Mettl report, India's Graduate Skill Index 2025, finds that just 42.6% of Indian graduates are employable, down from 44.3% in 2023, revealing that the gap isn't in knowledge but in capability.
The Confidence Crisis No One's Tracking
Walk into any college classroom and ask students to present their ideas without notes, then watch the panic spread across the room. This happens not because they haven't studied but because they've never been asked to think on their feet in all their years of formal education.
"The issue isn't intelligence, it's uncertainty," says Aadhi Dileep Kumar, Founder and CEO of De-Skoolit. "Students have learned how to arrive at the 'right' answer, but they haven't learned how to navigate ambiguity, explain incomplete thinking, or make decisions when there's no single correct path."
Research from the World Economic Forum highlights that skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and resilience top employer wishlists, while according to LEAD's Student Confidence Index, only 36% of students report high confidence levels and the rest constantly doubt themselves. Formal education systems rarely measure or develop these capabilities intentionally, leaving a significant gap between what students learn and what they can actually do.
What Real Problems Look Like in Practice
Changing how we measure learning isn't about lowering standards but about raising them to match reality, which means moving away from hypothetical case studies toward actual challenges. Students might design a community garden, create a sustainability audit for their school, or develop a budget proposal for a local initiative. These problems are messy, require collaboration, and don't have single "correct" answers.
De-Skoolit focuses on what students can demonstrate rather than what curriculum they've completed, centering their approach on practical skills development through real projects, presentations, feedback, and iteration so that students learn to think by actually thinking, not by memorizing someone else's thoughts. A group might research water usage patterns in their neighborhood and present findings to local authorities, while another might prototype an app addressing a campus problem, with the learning happening through doing, iterating, and presenting rather than passive consumption.
When students work on something that matters beyond the grade, the quality of their thinking changes in measurable ways as they ask better questions, push through obstacles differently, and care about the outcome because they've connected their learning to real impact.
Making Presentation Routine, Not Rare
When presenting becomes a weekly practice rather than a once-a-semester ordeal, confidence follows naturally as programs moving toward capability-based learning ask students to share their work regularly through "work-in-progress" sessions where they present what they're exploring, not finished products. Classmates ask clarifying questions and offer perspectives while students explain their projects to parents and community members, practicing the skill of making complex ideas accessible to non-expert audiences.
Over time, the anxiety around speaking publicly diminishes as students learn that stumbling through an explanation is part of thinking rather than a sign of failure. They learn to defend ideas under scrutiny, change their minds when evidence demands it, and argue positions they may not personally agree with. Regular debate and student-led discussions build intellectual rigor, teaching them to think clearly under pressure and engage with ideas in real time.
Building With Others, Not Just Against Them
Ranking students against each other creates a zero-sum mindset, while the real world runs on collaboration and collective problem-solving. Capability-focused learning shifts the default mode from individual competition to teamwork, with students working in groups with rotating roles so everyone experiences leading, supporting, and coordinating. They teach concepts to one another, which reinforces their own understanding while helping classmates, and success gets measured by what the team produces together rather than who outscored whom on the last test.
"When you change the question from 'what did you score?' to 'what can you build?', everything shifts," says Aadhi. "Students stop performing for grades and start solving for impact, and that's when real learning happens."
De-Skoolit structures learning around group projects where students regularly build, critique, and improve ideas together, rather than working in isolation. Assessment is based on practical outputs like projects, presentations, and portfolios that show how students think, test ideas, learn from mistakes, and improve over time, instead of relying on recall-based exams.
This approach produces graduates who don't freeze in interviews, can explain their thinking clearly, work well with others, and handle uncertainty without panicking because they've spent years practicing these exact skills.
What Twelve Years Should Actually Build
Twelve years is too long to spend proving you can follow instructions when the world is waiting to see if you can lead, adapt, and create, and the students crossing graduation stages deserve an education that prepares them for what comes next.
"We need learning environments where students build things, break things, defend ideas, and collaborate through conflict," says Aadhi. "Where they walk away not just with knowledge, but with confidence in their ability to figure out what they don't yet know, because that's the education that actually prepares someone for life."
An education that teaches not just what to think but how to think, how to communicate, and how to trust yourself when the answer isn't already written down.
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