Students’ enrolment in Indian schools declined by 37 lakh in 2023-24

In a shocking development, India has witnessed a decline in students’ enrolment in schools by 37 lakh in the academic year 2023-2024 as compared to the previous session. While the number of female students declined by 16 lakh during the said year, the number of male students went down by 21 lakh and minorities represented only 20 per cent of the total enrolment.

This has been revealed in a report by the Ministry of Education’s Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE). UDISE+ is a data aggregation platform initiated by Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education which covers more than 14.72 lakhs of schools, 98.08 lakhs of teachers and 24.80 crores of students across the country.

UDISE’s report further reveals that there is a higher gap of more than 1 crore enrolments between the academic years 2022 and 2024 as compared to the academic years 2018-2019 before the Covid -19 pandemic. The purpose of this report is to track enrolment in schools from pre-primary to secondary classes across India. Data is submitted by every Indian state directly onto this portal on different parameters of school education, including enrolment, number of teaching staff, and number of schools.

Academic year wise enrolment of students

As per the report the average total enrolment stood around 26.36 crore.

Academic year 2023-2024 – 24.8 crore students enrolled

Academic year 2022-2023 – 25.18 crore students enrolled

Academic year 2021-2022 – 26.52 crore students enrolled

Academic year 2020-2021 – 26.44 crore students enrolled

Academic year 2019-2020 – 26.45 crore students enrolled

Academic year 2018-2019 – 26.03 crore students enrolled

“Individual student-wise data reflects a realistic and more accurate picture of the education system, which is being attempted for the first time at the national level, marking a departure from the school-wise consolidated data collected till 2021-22. Hence, the data is not strictly comparable to the previous reports on various educational indicators such as Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), Net Enrolment Rate (NER), dropout rates, etc. With individual student-wise data, dropout of students can now be identified precisely, who can be tracked and be brought back to school.

This will also help monitor the progression of students through their entire school life. It is calculated based on actual movement of students from one level to another using individual student-wise data. It represents the actual scenario more precisely,” an Education Ministry official told PTI.

States with a higher number of schools

The report further discloses that the availability of schools, teachers and students enrolled in different states are different. In states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, the number of schools are higher as compared to the percentage of students enrolled.

States with lesser number of schools

However, in states like Telangana, Punjab, West Bengal, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Bihar, the percentage of available schools is significantly less as compared to enrolled students, indicating better utilisation of infrastructure.

Digital Education facilities in schools

The report further highlighted the existing gaps in digital education and access to technology in schools located in different parts of the country. Only 57 percent of schools in the country have functional computers while 53 percent schools have access to the internet, as revealed by the UDISE report.