School enrolment down by over 1 crore in 2023-24, says govt

The total enrolment of students has dropped by over a crore in 2023-24 as compared to the previous years, shows the latest data released by the Ministry of Education (MoE). 

A total of 24.8 crore students enrolled in the academic year 2023-24, Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report released by the Ministry said.

Over the last four years, the enrolment data has hovered around 26 crore. 

Education officials have stated in the report that the data observes some real changes from the previous years as this exercise of maintaining a separate student base is totally different, unique and incomparable to that of 2021-22 or the previous years.

The UDISE+ facilitates online uploading of data at school level with inbuilt validation checks and the subsequent data verification at the block, district and State level ensures data reliability and timely completion.

In 2018-19, the total enrolment of students in school was 26.02 crore, which increased in 2019-20 by 1.6% and crossed 26.45 crore, an increase of more than 42 lakh students.

The enrolments slightly fell in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20. In 2021-22 as compared to 2020-21, total enrolment increased by 0.76%. Even according to data from back in 2012-13, the total enrolment was 26.3 crore.

In 2022-23, there was a drop in enrolment with 25.18 crore students being registered and there was a further fall in 2023-24 to 24.8 crore in the total enrolment, a drop of 6% (nearly 1.22 crore students) as compared to 2018-19.

In 2022-23, MoE started a revitalised UDISE+ ecosystem which captures data on more than 60 fields for each student and to maintain the uniqueness of the child the Aadhaar details were also collected on voluntary basis.