Higher-secondary school GER improves; UP sees sharpest rise in enrolment: UDISE

NEW DELHI: The ministry of education announced that the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher secondary schools has made significant improvement from 53.8% in 2020-21 to 57.6% in 2021-22. More than 8 lakh new girl students enrolled in in primary to higher secondary last year, according to the UDISE+ report.

The ministry released a detailed report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-22 on school education today.

There has been a decline in the total number of schools last year mainly due to closure of private and other management schools and clustering of schools by various states, the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-2022 report revealed.

Total number of schools in 2021-22 stood at 14.89 lakhs as compared to 15.09 lakhs in 2020-21. However, compared to 2020, the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) which measures the general level of participation has improved in 2021-22 at primary, upper primary, and higher secondary levels of school education.

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Total students enrolled in school education from primary to higher secondary stood at 25.57 crore as compared to 25.38 crore enrolment in 2020-21, registering an increase of 19.36 lakh enrolments. Uttar Pradesh witnessed the highest number of enrolment of students in government schools and recruitment of teachers.

Number of students enrolled under SC, ST, OBC and Children with Special Needs (CWSN) also saw an increase last year, as per the report. As per the last year UDISE report, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Mizoram were among the seven states that had the highest dropout rates in the country at the primary level.

Out of the 95.07 lakh teachers engaged in school education during 2021-22, more than 51% are female teachers. “Further, in 2021-22, the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) stood at 26 for primary, 19 for upper primary, 18 for secondary and 27 for higher secondary, showing an improvement since 2018-19,” it said.

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Nearly 77% schools in India had playground facility in 2021, an improvement of 3.4% over the year 2018-19. 4.98 lakh schools, ie. 33 percent, have been certified under Fit India Schools.