School enrollment registers unprecedented drop of 1 crore since 2018-19, officials cite data cleanup

The latest report shows that school enrolment stayed above 26 crore from 2018-19 to 2021-22, with slight increases of a few lakh students each year. While there was a small dip during the Covid year of 2020-21, the numbers remained above 26 crore throughout this period.

For the first time, enrolment figures fell to 25.17 crore in 2022-23 and further declined to 24.8 crore in 2023-24. This represents a drop of about 1.55 crore students (nearly 6 per cent) from the 2018-19 to 2021-22 period, when enrolment averaged 26.36 crore.

Ministry officials acknowledged the drop in enrolment but said it stemmed from revised data collection methods implemented in 2022-23. Under the new system, schools must now provide student-specific information rather than just school-level numbers.

This requires detailed records for each student, including their name, parent’s name, address, and Aadhaar number, instead of simply reporting total class numbers. “This may have weeded out certain numbers, like children who may have been enrolled in both a government school and a private one,” a senior official said.

The latest UDISE+ report in fact states that the new data collation method would lead to “identification of beneficiaries for benefit transfers of Samagra Shiksha scheme, PM POSHAN Scheme, National Scholarship scheme etc” and that this “can bring significant savings to government in future years.”

But this also means that the government data was inflated by as much for many years. According to government officials, the Ministry of Education has asked states with a significant drop in enrolment figures to explain the drop.

Among the states, the largest fall in enrolment in 2023-24 compared to 2018-19 was in Bihar, where it dipped by 35.65 lakh, followed by Uttar Pradesh (28.26 lakh), and Maharashtra (18.55 lakh). Most states and UTs have recorded a fall in enrolment in 2023-24 compared to 2018-19, except for Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Telangana.

A senior official in the UP government said that “de-duplication” had helped remove names that may have been repeated. “Kids would get enrolled in government schools for scholarships or other benefits, and may also have been enrolled in private schools, resulting in multiple entries that have now been removed. The data is now Aadhaar-linked,” the official said.

However, officials in Maharashtra said the use of Aadhaar may have also led to some genuine students being left out of the enrolment figures and that the final tally may improve once these teething issues are sorted out. “This happens because of technical issues such as mismatched data. For example, a student’s name on Aadhaar and in school-record does not match. Thus, verification remains incomplete until that is corrected on the Aadhaar card. Initially, this was possible with a request on the school’s letter-head, now this change has to come from parents who should have their own Aadhaar card. This entire process is time-consuming, thus delaying their inclusion in the total enrolment,” said an official.

Compared to the 2018-19 to 2021-22 average, the 2023-24 enrolment data shows a drop in both government (12.74 crore in 2023-24 compared to the four-year average of 13.5 crore) and private school (around 9 crore in 2023-24 compared to the four-year average of 9.34 crore) enrolment, but a larger drop of around 5.59% in government schools against a 3.67% drop in private ones.

Similarly, enrolment among both boys and girls dropped, but marginally higher for boys. A total of 12.87 crore boys were enrolled in 2023-24, a drop of around 6.04% compared to an average of 13.7 crore from 2018-19 to 2021-22. Around 11.93 crore girls were enrolled in 2023-24, compared to the four-year average of 12.66 crore.

The drop in 2023-24 compared to the four-year average has been seen in the primary (Classes 1 to 5), upper primary (Classes 6 to 8), and secondary (Classes 9 and 10) levels. In contrast, the pre-primary and higher secondary (Classes 11 and 12) levels have seen an increase in enrolment in 2023-24, compared to the 2018-19 to 2021-22 average.