More than one third of Indians, a majority of them women, have never gone to a school or even a literacy centre in their lifetime, the Census 2011 report on Population Attending Education Institution revealed.

And again of those 41.4 crore (34.28 per cent of the total population of 121 crore as per the 2011 census) people who have never visited any educational institute, the majority comes from Uttar Pradesh (8.10 crore), which is 40.57 per cent of the total population of the state.

The highest percentage of population that has never been to the school, however, is from Bihar (46.95 per cent or 4.88 crore people). The other states that follow are: Andhra Pradesh (3.16 crore), Rajasthan (2.87 crore), West Bengal (2.79 crore), Madhya Pradesh (2.74 crore) and Maharashtra (2.72 crore).

Besides Bihar and UP, Rajasthan (41.18 per cent of the total state population), Madhya Pradesh (37.84 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (37.39 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (36.36 per cent) have a share of population which has never attended schools, above the national percentage.

Though below the national average, states like Odisha (33.43 per cent), Karnataka (31.24 per cent), West Bengal (30.59 per cent), Gujarat (29.38 per cent), Tamil Nadu (25.02 per cent) also have substantial numbers in this regard though their percentage figures are below the national average.

Kerala, which has an impressive literacy rate, has just 13.11 per cent of its population (43.81 lakh) who never went to an educational institute.

No state has seen more men not going to schools than women, speaking volumes about the apathy towards women education that still exists in the country. The women numbered 24.23 crore, which is over 58 per cent of the ‘unenlightened’ population.

Uttar Pradesh has the most number of women lacking school education (4.67 crore) while Bihar and Andhra Pradesh have 2.74 crore and 1.85 crore of them, respectively.
Karnataka is home to 1.12 crore women with zero school-going experience.
In Kerala, their number is 24.74 lakh, which is 5.67 lakh more than the male figure.