A report detailing performance, enrolment and infrastructure in India’s nearly 14.67 lakh schools was released by the Ministry of Education on July 7, 2026. The report shows some enrolment issues have persisted over the years, with improvement in some infrastructural facilities and a significant lag in others. Additionally, some States have performed poorly across levels of age-specific student enrolment, with numbers far below the national figure.

Net Enrolment Ratio

One of UDISE’s headline indicators is the Net Enrolment Ratio. For each level of education, the indicator looks at the proportion of children who are age-appropriate for that level who are actually enrolled at that level of education.

At the secondary level, which includes children old enough to attend classes 9 to 10, the NER is 50.8%. However, this figure shrinks at the higher secondary level (classes 11 to 12) to 39%. This disparity between the secondary and higher secondary levels has persisted since 2022-23, the earliest comparable year.

Additionally, the NER at the elementary (classes 1 to 8) and primary (classes 1 to 5) have been declining since 2022-23.

Repetition and dropout rates

Part of the roughly 50% of those aged 14 to 15 who were not enrolled in class 9 or 10 either dropped out of school or had to repeat the same year. Looking at dropout and repetition rates, the repetition rate has increased since 2022-23 for primary, upper primary and secondary levels, while the dropout rate has decreased with each batch.

The decrease in dropout rate is the most in primary, going from 7.8% to 0.3% between 2022-23 to 2025-26. Repetition rate, however has risen from 1.3% to 2.2%. In 2025-26, 2.5% of students aged 6 to 10 were either repeating the grade or had dropped out. Of this, 2.2% were repeat students.

While successive batches at each level have a smaller share of students who have dropped out, a bigger share is enrolled in the same grade as repeat students compared to the previous batch.

Facilities in schools

Basic facilities like drinking water, electricity and toilets have become almost universally available across schools. On the other hand, facilities like solar panels, rainwater harvesting and toilets for children with special needs (CWSN) have lagged behind.

State-level picture

Looking at state-wise age-specific enrolment ratios, some States perform worse than others. For instance, Bihar has one of the least ASER across all age groups. ASER measures the proportion of specific age groups that are enrolled at any grade in the schooling system.

Published - July 27, 2026 10:22 am IST