Enrolment in government schools increase post covid-19; decline in private schools during 2021-22: MoE

NEW DELHI: Government run schools across the country continued to see rise in enrolments for the second consecutive year since COVID-19 outbreak while private schools saw decline, the Parliament was told Monday. The data was shared by Union Minister of State for Education Annapurna Devi in a written reply in Lok Sabha.

"The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), Ministry of Education has developed the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) system to record data on indicators of school education provided by all the States and Union Territories," Devi said.

As per the data recorded in UDISE+, the enrolment in government schools was 13.09 crore during 2019-20. It rose to 13.49 crore in 2020-21 and to 14.32 crore in 2021-22. However, the enrolment in private schools declined to 8.82 crore during 2021-22 from 9.51 crore (2020-21) and 9.82 crore (2019-20) crore, according to the Ministry of Education (MoE) statistics.

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During the period, the number of teachers declined across government, government-aided, private and other schools, the minister said. "Education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution. The recruitment, service conditions and deployment of teachers come under the purview of the respective State and Union Territory (UT) government. The recruitment of teachers in schools is a continuous process and the vacancies keep arising due to retirement, resignation and additional requirements on account of enhanced students' strength and new schools," Devi said.

"However, the ministry of education requests the state and UT governments for filling-up the vacant posts of teachers and their rational deployment, through review meetings and advisories from time to time. Further, the central government through the centrally sponsored scheme of samagra shiksha, provides assistance to the states and UTs for deployment of additional teachers to maintain appropriate Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) as per the prescribed norms for various levels of schooling," she added.