Punjab has a government school in almost every village. It also has a rate of private school enrolment among the highest in India, because families who can pay do.
The result is a two-tier system in which the government school takes the children of migrant labourers, Dalit households and the poorest farming families, and the private school takes everyone else, in the same village, often three hundred metres apart.
Punjab's school results have improved markedly in national assessments in recent years, from a low base, and the state has run smart classroom and teacher training programmes that have been noticed elsewhere.
The medium of instruction is a live argument. Punjabi is compulsory and the aspiration is English, and a great many private schools teach in a nominal English that is neither.
Enrolment in government schools in emigration-heavy districts of the Doaba has fallen sharply as families leave, and some village schools have closed for want of children.
The state runs most of the schooling in rural Punjab and the private sector has taken the towns and the aspiring rural households. Public schools have improved on some measures recently and the enrolment shift has not reversed.
The medium is the standing argument. English medium private schools are what parents buy, and the government schools that added English sections did so in answer to that.
Punjabi as a subject is compulsory by statute. Its actual position in the timetable and in the marks that matter is another question.