Sandeep Rai

Sandeep Rai is challenging the top-down architecture of India’s education system by enabling educators and entrepreneurs to create learning institutions rooted in the local context. He is building a distributed movement of school founders, practitioner-educators, and systems leaders who are reinventing education from the ground up. He is transforming education in India by cultivating a new profession: the education entrepreneur. Through The Circle, he enables proximate leaders - deeply rooted in their communities and responsive to contemporary realities - to design and launch schools that reflect local aspirations.

Sandeep Rai is transforming the architecture for education in India by changing how new models of learning institutions are seeded. In a system where schools have historically been imposed from the top with rigid models that are centrally prescribed, Sandeep is decentralising the ownership of school design, placing the power to imagine, build, and evolve schools in the hands of educators, community leaders, and social innovators. He is enabling proximate actors to design and launch purpose-built, context-responsive institutions that reflect the aspirations of their communities.

The core innovation lies not just in delivering education differently, but in shifting who creates schools in the first place. While many education initiatives aim to improve pedagogy or scale specific solutions, Sandeep is opening a new front in the education sector: enabling proximate entrepreneurs to found entirely new institutions. These are not extensions of existing systems or replications of centralised models. They are schools and programs born from the ground up, designed by those closest to children’s lived realities.

Sandeep’s core insight is that new schools, when locally led and collectively supported, can reset the expectations of what education can deliver—rather than inherited models that replicate outdated assumptions about learning and success. What is new in his idea is the reframing of school creation as a form of community authorship. By treating school design as a local, adaptive, and entrepreneurial process, Sandeep is establishing the role of the “education entrepreneur” as a new identity within India’s education ecosystem. These entrepreneurs are not just educators; they are institution-builders who draw on lived experience, community wisdom, and systemic insight to create new blueprints for learning.

Across India, Sandeep is enabling the emergence of new learning institutions that reflect the lived realities and aspirations of their communities. These models are not isolated innovations, but part of a growing ecosystem of context-responsive, community-led institutions that are redefining what school can mean in different geographies. This shift challenges the deep-rooted belief that schools must emerge from government directives or large private players. Instead, it recognises that bottom-up innovation can lead to the emergence of schools that are locally owned, culturally relevant, and structurally capable of evolving with community needs. The Circle is the only organization in India exclusively focused on incubating new schools and after-school programs.

India’s education system has achieved widespread access, with over 95 percent of children now enrolled in school. Yet outcomes remain deeply concerning. Less than five percent of children from low-income communities reach college, and nearly 60 percent of graduates are considered unemployable. The experience of school remains largely disconnected from both the perspectives of the lived realities of students and the rapidly changing demands of the world. This disconnect is evident in the learning outcomes. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023, among children between ages of 14-18 who are enrolled in educational institutions, about 25% still cannot read a Std II level text fluently in their regional language. More than half struggle with division problems, with only 43.3% of 14-18-year-olds being able to do such problems correctly - a skill that is usually expected in Std III/IV. Only 57.3% of them can read sentences in English. These foundational deficits compound over time, leading to dropouts, and long-term barriers to economic mobility. While numerous interventions focus on delivery reform, most schools still operate within static institutional models that were never designed to prioritise early learning or adapt to diverse learner needs.

This is not simply a problem of implementation; it is a deeper issue of structural design. Despite decades of reform, most schools continue to operate on inherited blueprints prioritising standardisation and compliance over relevance and adaptability. They were never designed to foster agency, creativity, or local ownership. Even today, only 46 percent of primary school teachers hold the required diploma, and 95 percent of teacher education institutions fall short of quality benchmarks. These conditions persist not due to a lack of effort, but because the architecture of the system itself leaves little room for change from within.

At the core of the problem is a rigid architecture that defines who can create schools and what those schools are allowed to become. Without shifting the locus of power and design, the system continues to limit innovation, equity, and relevance. Sandeep’s work addresses this foundational blind spot by creating space for new institutions to emerge, designed by those who understand the local context best. While many efforts across India have focused on turning around failing schools, emerging research suggests that this approach may have limited systemic impact. A 2021 RISE working paper by JPAL researchers, Muralidharan and Singh, notes that school turnaround strategies, while well-intentioned, often face deep structural constraints that limit their effectiveness at scale in achieving sustainable improvements in student outcomes. Rather than retrofitting struggling institutions, India may need to complement these efforts by creating space for entirely new institutions — schools designed from the ground up for today’s learners.

Sandeep, who had left behind the comfort of life in the United States to transform the education ecosystem in India, founded the Circle in 2022. His approach rests on building a distributed ecosystem of change agents who are shaping education from within their communities. At the first level, the organisation identifies and enables local education entrepreneurs to create institutions that reflect the aspirations and challenges of their communities. These entrepreneurs are often educators, youth leaders, artists, social workers, and individuals with lived experience of local realities and a deep commitment to educational equity. What unites them is not a shared professional background, but a shared proximity to the communities they serve and a conviction that education can be designed differently. For instance, a national-level Taekwondo medallist recognised the absence, at the school level, of a structured training in unconventional Olympic sports such as Archery, Taekwondo, Volleyball, and 3x3 Basketball. To address this systemic gap, by leveraging The Circle’s ecosystem, the entrepreneur is building an after-school program that will engage students in unconventional sports through a holistically built educational curriculum. As 40+ unique entrepreneurial models like these take root across 10+ states of India, they form an interconnected community of practice that continues to evolve, share insights, and collectively shape the future of education in India.

Sandeep’s proactive approach is transforming schools from static service-delivery units into living institutions that reflect local aspirations. These models are diverse by design. They include schools and after-school programs rooted in storytelling, and spaces for emotional well-being and socio-emotional learning. Entrepreneurs are offered long-term accompaniment, exposure to design frameworks, peer learning networks, and catalytic capital to bring their ideas to life. These schools are not built as replicas but serve as proof points for what is possible when institutions emerge from community contexts – building partnerships with students and parents who become embedded in the community.

At the classroom level, Circle Labs is enabling educators within the existing system to reclaim ownership of teaching and learning. Over 9,000 educators have engaged with these Labs, where they participate in peer-led exploration, prototype solutions, and receive innovation capital to take their ideas forward. By integrating peer learning, contextual resources, and site-based experimentation, the Labs have created a vibrant culture of educator-led reinvention. Teachers who were once confined to top-down mandates are now leading micro-transformations in their classrooms by designing context-specific curricula, student-led projects, and new ways of building classroom relationships. These shifts are not confined to isolated programs but are spreading across the education system through communities of practice. These are not one-time touchpoints but part of a well-structured suite of offerings ranging from short inspiration sessions to immersive multi-month programs designed to meet educators at different stages of readiness. This layered approach ensures that teachers are not only inspired but also equipped and accompanied to drive lasting change.

To address the long-term pipeline of educators, Sandeep’s organisation is establishing Circle U which is a structured certification and professional learning platform, blending multiple formats ranging from short-term residencies to longer certification programs and apprenticeships designed to accommodate different educator entry points and local contexts. Circle U will cultivate a new generation of educators who are equipped not only with instructional competence but also with the mindset and adaptive capacity to lead change from within. As these educators begin their practice journeys, the classrooms they lead are designed to become visible proof points, demonstrating what reinvention looks like in action and fuelling lateral change across schools and communities. Circle U represents a shift toward long-term talent cultivation, establishing teaching as a purpose-driven, future-relevant profession capable of anchoring education system renewal.

Sandeep’s interventions are directly transforming the lives of 10,000 children across fifteen Indian states, through a network of unique entrepreneurial schools and after-school models. Through their teacher preparation and education capacity building programs, they have worked with thousands of educators who are leading schools, classrooms, and organizations. The multiplier impact of that work is reaching an additional tens of thousands of children across India. Over the next five years, Sandeep and The Circle plan to transform the lives of an additional 100,000 students - while the capacity building programs spread that work to many more - with its proof points becoming anchors of innovation across both independent and government-affiliated institutions. Notably, the Labs program reports an average Net Promoter Score above 70, and early dipstick evaluations suggest promising shifts in teaching practice and student engagement. For instance, one of these models in Kanpur Dehat, is building a chain of affordable private schools that prioritise foundational learning for children from low-income backgrounds. It has demonstrated a 30 percent improvement in numeracy and a 22 percent increase in pass rates. In literacy, 80 percent of students showed an average growth of 16 months over 5 months. The model also engages students in project-based learning through initiatives such as student-created English newspapers. Notably, 96 percent of The Circle’s beneficiaries come from underserved families with incomes of less than $10,000 per year. This growing ecosystem is not only expanding reach but also demonstrating how local ownership, educator agency, and practitioner-led reinvention can drive measurable transformation in how India educates its children.

In Manipur, educators are blending traditional practices and indigenous knowledge systems of the Rongmei Naga tribes with modern pedagogies to preserve cultural identity while advancing academic learning through Khaangchu schooling. In Kathiawada, Madhya Pradesh, a school located at the intersection of caste and gender marginalisation uses project-based learning to address gender disparity and local employability needs; today, 60 percent of its students are girls. The school is influencing the state teacher training policy, with teachers from the government schools visiting it regularly to learn from the pedagogical practices. In Punjab, one school reconnects children to their agrarian roots through a curriculum that integrates mathematics with farming techniques, countering a history of opioid abuse and migration. In Bangalore, a school has contextualised science and social studies by linking them to local environments, for example parks where students learn by measuring air quality indices firsthand. In Rajasthan, a socio-economically diverse school is bridging class divides through mixed enrolment. In Ladakh, village elders and local entrepreneurs are engaged as educators, and students shadow shopkeepers and craftspeople as part of their learning process to gain hands-on experience. In conflict-affected Manipur, schools are building resilience by working closely with parents to keep children engaged even during extended shutdowns.

Sandeep recognised that funding constraints were a critical barrier to sustaining and scaling such models, especially for entrepreneurs operating outside traditional systems. While many of these new institutions were delivering strong learning outcomes, they remained dependent on philanthropic capital and lacked access to stable, long-term public funding. To institutionalise his vision of entrepreneur-led schools, Sandeep has begun forging innovative partnerships with local governments to create a “per child funding” model. The model works by partnering with local governments to redirect existing school budgets to community-led schools that show better results. Instead of funding going automatically to government-run schools, it follows the number of students. Recognising that public education funding is often locked into inefficient delivery mechanisms, he is working with district municipalities to redirect existing expenditure toward community-led schools with stronger learning outcomes. In Nashik, this model brought down the cost of running a school by nearly 20 percent. In Pune, following early success, the government is exploring a second partnership school. Sandeep is working to embed this approach into policy, paving the way for other proximate leaders to access government funding to build purpose-designed learning institutions. If adopted widely, this approach could unlock public capital for a new generation of education entrepreneurs, creating a systemic pathway for innovation in school creation across India.

Sandeep Rai’s understanding of structural inequity is deeply rooted in his own story. Born and raised in a small town in Mississippi, USA, he grew up in his family’s corner store, helping serve a working-class neighbourhood marked by poverty and violence. He witnessed how systems of education, policing, and public services often failed those most in need.

These early experiences shaped both his proximity to inequity and his desire to lead change. Determined to tackle this, in 2008, after graduating from college, he became a Corps member with Teach for America. As a teacher in a public school, he was assigned to one of the lowest-performing schools in the city, ranked 238 out of 238 schools. Despite building strong relationships with students, he found himself grappling with the constraints of curriculum, testing, and institutional culture. He began to ask a deeper question: what if schools themselves needed to be rebuilt, i.e, a new school with a new leadership and new teachers. His idea of a new school (not a new building, but a new management, new staff, and new pedagogy) bore fruit, and the school’s ranking skyrocketed. From being ranked 238 out of 238 schools, it completely transformed and was ranked 12 out of 238. This made Sandeep realise the value of building new schools early in his career.

As the son of Indian immigrants, while Sandeep grew up thousands of miles away, he remained deeply connected to his extended family in India. During his visits, he was struck by the stark inequities in access to resources in the Global South. This dissonance, combined with his own experiences as a teacher in a low-income school, led him to move to India in 2011, driven by the conviction that education should not be determined by geography or social privilege.

Along with Ashoka Fellow Shaheen Mistry, he helped launch Teach For India, where he spent over a decade working across program design, government partnerships, alumni strategy, and systems change. He led the design of large-scale programs, supported state-level collaborations, and helped shape the fellowship’s long-term impact strategy. His work brought him into close contact with policymakers, school leaders, and grassroots educators across regions. Yet across contexts, he found a recurring pattern: schools that were trying to do better but constrained by the same centralised logic. There were few examples of institutions that were built from scratch to reflect community aspirations.
Drawing from both lived experience and global education research, Sandeep envisioned a system where schools could emerge from the bottom up, where teachers could lead innovation, and where students could find meaning and possibility.