What is it that affects Education the most?

I feel that this is a very subjective question and varies from country to country and in a country as diverse as India, varies from state to state. 

But a common thread across boundaries could be in my opinion the system of meritocracy (Goodman & Kaplan, n.d.) that ensures only the best reach the university. On the outset it may look very simple for the best wins, but it leads to biases. 

There is subconscious bias against women. 

In the premier engineering colleges in India, only 8% are women. Even though in India, there is education for all, but the children in villages or the hills, as observed in the Himalayas (Goodman & Kaplan, n.d.) do not have fair access to education. Hence a fair access to higher education under meritocracy would also not be possible. We also have a heavy caste system and children of marginal castes, never having found a place in good schools, cannot hope to achieve in a meritocracy system. In fact meritocracy has served the elite and justifies their success.

Absence of equal opportunities, meritocracy being the basis of higher studies and that being the basis of further opportunities has created vicious loop under which another problem India faces, and that is of migration (Satyarthi, 2017). Several migrate from their hometowns looking for opportunities and end up being abused at every level possible.

Meritocracy leads to a vicious loop that doubles on itself and feeds upon itself.

References

Goodman, R., & Kaplan, S. (n.d.). The Mantra of Meritocracy (SSIR). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_mantra_of_meritocracy

Satyarthi, K. (2017, August 03). Free children from chains: India and the world need a multi-dimensional strategy to stop human trafficking. Retrieved March 1, 2018, from https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-children-from-chains-india-and-the-world-need-a-multi-dimensional-strategy-to-stop-human-trafficking/