The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has revealed a worrying picture of educational standards in rural India. The report titled ‘ASER 2023: Beyond Basics’ brings to the fore that many in the age group of 14–18 years in rural areas continue to grapple with learning gaps. There are critical gaps beyond enrollment and infrastructure highlighted in the report that need to be addressed on a priority basis. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is based on the principle that “education must develop not only cognitive capacities—both the ‘foundational capacities’ of literacy and numeracy and ‘higher-order’ cognitive capacities, such as critical thinking and problem solving—but also social, ethical, and emotional capacities and dispositions.” The ASER survey findings indicate that there is still some way to go to achieve the objectives of NEP. Some of these key findings, which depict the standards of foundational learning in rural educational institutions, are quite alarming. About 25% of this age group still cannot read a Standard II-level text fluently in their regional language. More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems. Only 43.3% of 14- to 18-year-olds are able to solve such problems correctly. This skill is usually expected in STD III/IV, as the report highlights. Close to 90% of households have a smartphone and know how to use it, but of those who can do subtraction or more, over 60% are able to do the budget management task. About 37% can apply a discount, but only about 10% can calculate repayment. The overall patterns in the “ability” domain indicate that having basic foundational skills like reading and arithmetic is very helpful for activities like everyday calculations and understanding instructions. However, females perform worse than males on almost all tasks, it adds. The NEP sets 2025 as the target year to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary school and describes it as the highest priority of the education system. The ASER findings show that initiatives to achieve the target need to move much faster than projected or anticipated. The NEP correctly states that the rest of this policy will become relevant for our students only if this most basic learning requirement (i.e., reading, writing, and arithmetic at the foundational level) is first achieved. Huge gaps in foundational learning in rural India, as revealed in the survey, certainly also speak volumes about past educational policies failing to prioritise it. Another key finding of the survey that deserves urgent attention from policy planners is that only 5.6% of surveyed youth report taking vocational training or other related courses currently, and 16.2% of youth at the college level are the most likely to be taking vocational training, while most youth are taking short-duration courses lasting 6 months or less. This is reflective of the wide disconnect between the Skill India Mission and the education system, and the mission is not inspiring the youth to prepare for acquiring hands-on skills through vocational training while pursuing education. The NEP envisages that by 2025, at least 50% of learners in the school and higher education systems will have exposure to vocational education. The NEP explains that one of the primary reasons for the small numbers of students receiving vocational education is the fact that vocational education has in the past focused largely on Grades 11–12 and on dropouts in Grade 8 and upwards. Moreover, students passing out from Grades 11–12 with vocational subjects often did not have well-defined pathways to continue with their chosen vocations in higher education. The admission criteria for general higher education were also not designed to provide openings to students who had vocational education qualifications, leaving them at a disadvantage relative to their compatriots from ‘mainstream’ or ‘academic’ education. This led to a complete lack of vertical mobility for students in the vocational education stream. Besides, vocational education is perceived to be inferior to mainstream education and is meant largely for students who are unable to cope with the latter. This is a perception that affects the choices students make, the policy states, and underscores the need to deal with “this serious concern” through a complete re-imagination of how vocational education is offered to students in the future. The figures revealed by the ASER survey, however, show that achieving the target by 2025 set in the NEP is a monumental task, but achieving it by the earliest possible target date is critical to building a skilled workforce. The country needs to make faster progress and address the rising unemployment or underemployment crisis. The solutions to most of the problems flagged in the ASER are already spelled out in the NEP and various other government policies. It is the implementation of the policies that matters most to achieving the outcomes. Strengthening policy implementation is the real challenge that India needs to overcome to address the problems.