Steady decline in school dropout rate: Prez Murmu

President Droupadi Murmu, in her pre-Budget speech, said that every day two colleges are established in India as numbers from the Economic Survey showed that enrolment in school increased between FY21 and FY22. Dropout rates during the same period fell.

"While there were only 725 universities in the country eight years ago, over 300 universities are registered with the union education ministry now," Murmu said.

Numbers showed that in 2022, a total of 26.5 crore children were enrolled in schools and 19.4 lakh additional children were enrolled in primary to higher secondary levels. At the pre-primary level, enrolment reduced from 1.1 crore in FY21 to 1.0 crore in FY22. During the year, about 1.0 crore children were enrolled in pre-primary, 12.2 crore in primary, 6.7 crore in upper primary, 3.9 crore in secondary and 2.9 crore in higher secondary.

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The Gross Enrolment Ratios (GER) as well as the Gender Parity Index (GPI), too, showed improvement. The GER in the enrolment to primary schools, between the first and fifth standard, as a percentage of the population between children ages 6 to 10 years, improved this fiscal for both boys and girls.

"This improvement has reversed the declining trends between FY17 and FY19,” the Economic Survey states.

The GER in the upper primary level, between the sixth to eighth standard in comparison to the population of children aged 11 to 13, also improved this fiscal, after seeing a dip in FY17 and FY19. The GER among girls in these categories remained better than boys.

The availability of teachers, measured by pupil-teacher ratio, has improved at all levels from FY13 to FY22, the Survey said. It went from 34 to 26.2 at primary level, 23 to 19.6 at upper primary level, 30 to 17.6 at secondary level, and 39 to 27.1 at the higher secondary level.