There was a time when it was difficult to answer even the most basic questions about Indian school education. How many schools do we have? How many children are enrolled? How many teachers are there? Where are the gaps? Which districts are struggling? The UDISE system has changed that.
The latest UDISE+ 2025-26 report is a remarkable exercise in bringing together the enormous and complicated picture of school education in India. It covers 14.67 lakh schools, 1.03 crore teachers and 24.72 crore students. That itself is no small achievement. A country as large and diverse as India needs such a system if its education policies are to be based on something more than assumptions and anecdotes.
The latest report also gives us several reasons to feel encouraged. The number of teachers has crossed one crore. The pupil-teacher ratio has improved. Dropout has declined at important stages. Transition rates have gone up. Basic facilities such as drinking water, toilets and electricity are now available in the vast majority of schools. These are real improvements. They deserve to be acknowledged.
However, the best use of a report like UDISE is not simply to celebrate the good numbers. It is to ask what lies behind them and sometimes, the numbers that look reassuring at first raise even more questions.
A Very Good Report Can Still Leave Us with Difficult Questions
The overall pupil-teacher ratio, for example, is now 24:1. At different stages, it stands at 10:1 at the foundational level, 12:1 at the preparatory level, 17:1 at the middle level and 21:1 at the secondary level. On paper, this looks quite comfortable but then we come across another number.
There are still 1,00,843 single-teacher schools in the country. The number has fallen by around 3 per cent, which is welcome but one lakh schools functioning with a single teacher should make us pause. Because a national average can sometimes be deceptive.
Imagine two schools. One has 10 teachers for 200 children. Another has one teacher for 20 children. Both may contribute to a favourable national ratio, but the experience of a child in these two schools is obviously not the same.
A single teacher is not merely a statistical unit. That teacher has to manage different classes, different subjects, different learning levels and often a number of responsibilities that have little to do with teaching. So perhaps we should ask a slightly different question. Not simply: How many teachers do we have? But: Where are they and what kind of schools are they teaching in?
When a School Disappears, Does the Problem Disappear Too?
There is another number in the report that deserves closer attention. The number of zero-enrolment schools has fallen by about 29 per cent, from the previous year, to 5,663. At first glance, this is obviously good news. Empty schools are difficult to justify. Public money should be used wisely and schools with no children need to be examined.
Nonetheless, there is another side to this story. What happened to these schools? Did children return to them? Did families move? Were the schools closed? Were they merged with another school? Did children have to travel farther?
The number tells us that there are fewer zero-enrolment schools. It does not, by itself, tell us the human story behind that decline. This is important because school rationalisation and school closure are not the same thing as educational improvement.
A school may have only a small number of children and still be extremely important to that community. This is particularly true in rural, remote and economically weaker areas. For a young child, a school two kilometres away and a school ten kilometres away are not the same school.
If a school is merged, the spreadsheet may show one less school but for a child, it may mean a longer journey, a different social environment or, in some cases, simply dropping out. Therefore, a decline in the number of schools should never automatically be treated as a sign of progress. We need to know what happened to the children after the school disappeared.
A School is More Than Four Walls
This brings us to a larger question about how we think about schools. There is a growing tendency to look at schools through numbers: enrolment, teachers, classrooms, toilets, computers, internet and expenditure. All of these matter but a school is also a place that belongs to a neighbourhood.It is often the first public institution that a child encounters. It is where children meet people outside their immediate family, learn to sit together, speak together and imagine a future beyond their surroundings.
When we close or merge a school because its enrolment is low, we may be making a perfectly rational administrative decision. Nonetheless, education cannot be reduced entirely to administrative rationality. Perhaps before closing a school, we should ask: Why is enrolment low? Are families migrating? Is the school poorly managed? Are teachers unavailable? Is the medium of instruction a concern? Do parents prefer another school because they believe its teaching is better? Is the school too far from the main settlement? Sometimes the answer may be closure but sometimes the answer may be to improve the school.
Infrastructure Has Improved, Now Comes the Harder Part
The infrastructure numbers are encouraging. About 99.5 per cent of schools report drinking water, 98.5 per cent have girls’ toilets, 95 per cent have electricity and 90.5 per cent have libraries. Internet connectivity has also expanded, although it is still available in only 67.4 per cent of schools.
This is important progress but a toilet does not teach a child. A library does not automatically create a reading habit. A computer does not automatically create digital learning and a classroom with four walls does not necessarily become a good classroom.
The next challenge is, therefore, much more difficult than building infrastructure. It is about what happens inside the classroom.
Perhaps the most important question is also the one that UDISE cannot answer on its own: How much are children actually learning? The report can tell us whether a child is enrolled. It can tell us about the teacher, the school building and many facilities available there.
Nevertheless, whether a Class V child can read a simple passage with understanding, whether a Class VI child can perform basic arithmetic or whether a secondary-school student can think independently requires other kinds of evidence. This is why UDISE should be read alongside ASER, NAS and PARAKH.
Enrolment is important. Attendance is important. Retention is important. Infrastructure is important. However ultimately, learning is the purpose behind all of them.
Secondary Education is Still Asking for Our Attention
The report shows that the Gross Enrolment Ratio at the secondary stage has reached 71.7 per cent, while the middle-stage GER is 89.6 per cent. There is a noticeable gap here. The system is able to bring children into school in large numbers but as they grow older, keeping them in education becomes more difficult.
The secondary dropout rate has improved from 8.2 per cent to 7 per cent. That is certainly encouraging. Yet 7 per cent is still not a small number when we are talking about millions of children.Behind every percentage point are children with different stories. Some may be working. Some may have financial difficulties. Some may live too far from a secondary school. Some may have fallen behind academically and lost confidence. Some may simply feel that school has little connection with their lives. A falling dropout rate is good news but we should not stop at asking how many left. We should ask why they left.
The Next Chapter Should Be About the Last Mile
UDISE+ has done something very valuable. It has given India a much clearer mirror in which to look at its school education system. The picture reflected in that mirror is neither completely gloomy nor completely comfortable. There is progress;we should recognise it. There are also gaps;we should not hide them.
The number of teachers has increased but one lakh schools still have only one teacher. Zero-enrolment schools have declined but we need to know whether this happened because schools improved or because schools disappeared. Infrastructure has expanded but access to a facility is not the same as its meaningful use. Dropout has fallen but thousands upon thousands of children still leave the system before completing their education and perhaps most importantly, better school statistics do not automatically mean better learning.
The next stage of India’s education journey therefore requires a change in the questions we ask. Instead of asking only how many schools we have, we must ask how many are functioning well. Instead of asking only how many teachers we have, we must ask whether every school has the teachers it actually needs. Instead of celebrating the closure of empty schools, we must ask where those children have gone and instead of being satisfied that children are enrolled, we must ask the most difficult question of all: What are they learning? That is where the real story of Indian school education begins.