Universal schooling has long been considered imperative in attaining better future; both for the state and its people, especially in the Global South. This presentation traces these narratives of ‘better future’ in education, uncertainty of this imagined future, and its implications for the projects of state-making and self-making. I’ll draw on my fieldwork in one ‘model’ government school and its students, in the post-2015-earthquake context of Nepal, to elaborate on hopes and uncertainties attached to imagining a future through education.