School enrolment falls by 11 lakh in 2024-25, slight increase in admission of girl students: Ministry data

New Delhi: Continuing the trend of dips in enrolment, data from the education ministry showed that compared to 2023-24, there has been a dip of over 11 lakh in enrolment in schools across all levels.

The ministry’s UDISE+ data, released Thursday, showed that enrolment from pre-primary to higher secondary levels across both government and private schools fell from 24.80 crore in 2023-24 to 24.69 crore in 2024-25.

Ministry officials attributed the drop to a fall in fertility rates and said that since the numbers are still based on Census 2011 population data, they are below par. “These numbers are based on the 2011 Census as the denominator, we believe that when the Census exercise begins in March, this is set to improve,” the official said.

The total number of schools, too, fell in comparison to the previous year – while in 2023-24 there were a total of 14,71,891 schools, there are now 14,71,473 schools. Some of these government schools have seen mergers, said officials, including over 100 schools in Uttar Pradesh alone.

Among these, the number of government schools fell from 10.18 lakh in 2023-24 to 10.13 lakh in 2024-25. On the other hand, the number of private schools increased from 3.31 lakh in 2023-24 to 3.79 lakh in 2024-25.

The number of teachers, however, saw an increase. From 98.07 lakh teachers in 2023-24, there are now 1.01 crore teachers in 2024-25 across all schools in India.

The pupil-teacher ratio (number of students per teacher) has, as a result, see a marginal increase – at the primary level (class 1 to 5) rose from 21 in 2023-24 to 20 in 2024-25, at the upper primary level (class 6 to 8) it went up from 18 in 2023-24 to 17 in 2024-25, and at the secondary level (class 9 to 10) rose from 16 to 15 in 2024-25.

At the higher secondary level (classes 11 and 12), too, it saw an increase from 24 in 2023-24 to 23 in 2024-25.

The number of girl students in the primary to higher secondary level saw an increase of over 5 per cent since last year – while in 2023-24 there were 11.32 crore girls, there are now 11.93 crore girls.