By Dhurjati Mukherjee
The Cockroach Janata Party’s launching of “School Thik Karo” campaign with an aim to improve condition of government schools in rural areas across the country, is refreshing.
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Imagine the state of education which has its share in the Union budget having declined from 4.6 to around 2.5 per cent over the past decade and the number of government elementary schools across the country decreasing by nearly 10,000 in a year with Meghalaya, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh recording the steepest decline.
The government has been harping on progress, but recent data showed that though the population has been increasing, the enrolment figures are not encouraging.
Even after the much publicised ‘Right to Education’ Act came into existence, there has not been any perceptible change in tackling the number of dropouts. The poor are affected as a significant section cannot afford higher education in private schools.
The recent Unified District Information System Plus [UDISE+) report for 2025-26 found the number of students in government schools dropping from 12.16 crore in 2024-25 to 11.89 cores in the last fiscal despite a marginal increase in total enrolment in private and government-aided schools.
The number of government schools also decreased at a faster rate from 10.13 lakh to 10.05 lakh to 10.05 lakh during the same period than the total number of schools.
It is distressing to note that over one lakh schools – government, government-aided and private – are functioning with a single teacher as revealed by government data in the Rajya Sabha. It highlights several deployment gaps despite the country’s overall pupil-teacher ratio remaining within the national norms. Additionally, teaching has been affected by teachers’ involvement in the Special Intensive Revision and census work. Educationists have decried the roping in of teachers for non-academic activities, thereby affecting their educational obligations. It’s a well-known fact that students in government schools come from poor backgrounds and most of them cannot afford private tuition. It has been contended, and quite rightly, that this is a design to deprive the poor of quality education.
Some facts need to be considered. A recently released NITI Aayog report titled ‘School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis & Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement’, reveals that nearly one lakh government schools closed down between 2014 and 2024, playing a significant role in the decline of 2.26 crore in children’s enrolment during this decade.
Reports also indicate that subjects such as mathematics, specially algebra and geometry, may be a reason for dropouts.
Many experts consider Class VIII a kind of academic watershed for children, which has caused the increase in dropout rates. This is surprising as midday meals are being given to students, but perhaps the economic compulsions of students’ families is greater, especially for girl students which may be the overriding factor.
Higher education needs focus with a proper curriculum so that students, who do not want to pursue further studies, can eke out a living. It’s critical that an expert committee should frame a policy paper in consultation with educationists at the earliest.
As for higher education, enrolment in under-graduate programmes at educational institutions declined for the first time with experts attributing the trend to the government’s increased emphasis on vocational education, growing disillusionment among young people about the value of higher education and job availability.
As per reports of the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) for 2022-23 and 2023-24, Under-Graduate enrolment fell by one lakh students in 2023-24 compared with previous year.
Prof. S. Thorat, former UGC chairman and other experts attributed the decline to greater emphasis on skill education at the school level, multiple exit options at the UG level, reduced public funding for higher education institutions and discontinuance of several scholarship schemes, both at the school and college levels.
Based on the above data and ground realities in rural schools, it can be established without any doubt that the prevailing situation fails to raise much hope. Other than the reasons cited, education per se doesn’t receive priority as a crucial facet of life.
Thus, there is an urgent need for the government to ponder over the grim state of affairs and act by taking corrective and concrete steps.
