Enrolments in government schools up; private ones see a decline

Private versus govt. school enrolment trends see a reversal, for the second year since the COVID-19 pandemic govt. schools see a rise in enrolments

Image for representation. | Photo Credit: PTI

Government schools continued to see a rise in enrolments for the second consecutive year since the COVID-19 outbreak, while private schools saw a decline.

As many as 83.35 lakh new students sought admission in government schools in 2021-2022, where enrolments increased from 13.49 crore in 2020-2021 to 14.32 crore, according the the Ministry of Education’s Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-22 report on school education in the country. The number of new joinees at government schools was more than double the previous year when 39.72 lakh sought admission in government schools. This resulted in a total increase in enrolments of 9.4% over the two-year period since 2019-2020.

In private schools, these numbers dropped from 9.51 crore to 8.82 crore in 2021-2022. The drop of 68.85 lakh students last academic session was more than double that of 30.52 lakh who exited these schools the previous year. Since 2019-2020, there has been a total decline of 10.10% in enrolments in private schools.

The trend in enrolments in government schools versus private schools has reversed since the last academic session before the outbreak of the pandemic. In 2019-2020, private schools had seen an increase in enrolments of 6.5% with 60.14 lakh new students, and government schools had seen a decline of 1.3% with a drop of 1.81 lakh students.

The rise in student enrolments comes at a time the number of government schools have shrunk. In 2021-2022, there were 20,000 fewer schools. Out of these, government schools accounted for 48.25% reduction, and private schools 24.51%.

“The decline in total schools is mainly due to closure of private and other management schools and grouping or clustering of schools by various States,” according to a press statement issued by the Ministry of Education.

At the same time, all categories of schools have also seen a decline in the number of teachers resulting in 1.9% or 1.89 lakh fewer teachers in the last academic session. Of these, government teachers account for 44,653 fewer teachers.