In January 2025, the Ministry of Education (MoE) released a comprehensive report on the ‘Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2023-24’ on school education in India. As per the report, school enrollment of students in India decreased from 25.17 crore (in 2022-23) to 24.8 crore (in 2023-24), a drop of nearly 1.22 crore students (6%) as compared to 2018-19.
- The report further revealed that enrollment in schools across the country remained above 26 crore from 2018-19 to 2021-2022, showing consistent increase annually except COVID year of 2020-21.
About UDISE+:
i.Initially, Government of India (GoI) launched UDISE in 2012-13 by integrating Information Management Systems(IMS) in place separately for elementary education and secondary education.
- It was then being managed by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration(NIEPA), New Delhi(Delhi).
ii.Later in 2018-19, the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L) under MoE, introduced UDISE+, which is one of the largest management information systems.
- It has covered over 14.72 lakhs of schools, 98.08 lakhs of teachers and 24.08 crores of children in India.
iii.The UDISE+ provides online uploading of data at school level with inbuilt validation checks and subsequent data verification at the block, district and state level ensures data reliability and timely competition.
iv.The latest edition of UDISE+ report has captured data on over 60 fields for each student and to maintain the uniqueness of the child the Aadhaar details were also collected on voluntary basis.
- It further revealed that over 19.7 crore students provided Aadhaar numbers by 2023-24 voluntarily.
- Other than Aadhar card, a separate unique Educational ID (EID) for every student has been created in the UDISE+ portal.
Key Findings:
i.As per the report, total number of boys enrolled in school has decreased by 4.87%, from 13.53 crore (in 2018-19) to 12.87 crore (in 2023-24).
- Similarly, the total number of girls enrolled in school has declined by 4.48%, from 12.49 crore (in 2018-19) to 11.93 crore (in 2023-24).
ii.Bihar, witnessed the highest drop in enrollments, from over 2.49 crore students (in 2018-19) to 2.13 crore students (in 2023-24), followed by Uttar Pradesh (UP) decreased from 4.44 crore (in 2018-19) to 4.16 crore (in 2023-24) and Maharashtra decreased from over 2.32 crore (in 2018-19) to 2.13 crore (in 2023-24).
iii.The UDISE+ report showed that the number of single-teacher schools in the country has decreased by 7219, from 1,18,190 (in 2022-23) to 1,10,971 (in 2023-24).
- Among the States, Madhya Pradesh (MP) (13,198), recorded the highest number of schools with single teachers, followed by Andhra Pradesh (AP) (12,611).
iv.The report highlighted that enrollment in single-teacher schools has decreased from around 47.43 lakh students (in 2022-23) to 39.94 lakh (in 2023-24).
v.As per the report, the number of schools with zero enrollments has increased from 10,294 (in 2022-23) to 12,954 (in 2023-24).
- Among all Indian states, West Bengal (WB) has the largest number of schools with zero enrollments (3254), followed by Rajasthan (2167) and Telangana (2097).
vi.The report showed that female representation of school teachers has increased to 53.3% between 2018-19 and 2023-24,while male representation decreased to 46.6% during the same period.
vii.Minorities accounted for around 20% of total enrollment in 2023-24. Among the minorities, 79.6% were Muslims, followed by Christians (10%), Sikhs (6.9%), Buddhists (2.2%), Jains (1.3%) and Parsis (0.1%).
- Category-wise: Other Backward Class (OBC) accounted 45.2% of total students registered in UDISE at the national level, followed by General Category (26.9%), Scheduled Caste (SC) (18%) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) (9.9%),
About Ministry of Education (MoE):
Union Minister- Dharmendra Pradhan (Lok Sabha Constituency- Sambalpur, Odisha)
Minister of State (MoS)– Jayant Chaudhary (Rajya Sabha- Uttar Pradesh, UP); Dr. Sukanta Majumdar (Constituency- Balurghat, West Bengal, WB)
