What has school education in India looked like over the past decade? From a “notable shift” towards private education and growing challenges in retaining children beyond grade 8, a NITI Aayog analysis of the school education system in India, released this month, points to trends and challenges.

Using existing data from the Education Ministry’s Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), the National Achievement Survey and the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan (which the Centre used to measure learning outcomes from 2017 to 2024), and NGO Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report, here’s the snapshot of school education that the NITI Aayog analysis provides for the decade from 2014-15 to 2024-25.

What has the overall school enrolment trend looked like?

Overall, school enrolment has dropped by about 8% over the past decade: from 26.95 crore in 2014-15 to 24.69 crore in 2024-25. The analysis attributes this drop to three reasons: “demographic shifts, particularly falling fertility rates leading to a smaller school-age population”, “the effects of school consolidations” or mergers, and challenges in retaining students at higher levels of education.

Pointing to a rising demand for private schooling, the analysis notes that around 54.3% of school enrolment was in government schools in 2014-15, and this figure dropped to 49.25% in 2024-25. In contrast, enrolment in private schools jumped from 31.7% to 38.8%. The rest are in government-aided or other schools.

Enrolment trends have seen a marked shift: enrolment in government schools plummeted from 71% in 2005 to 49.24% in 2024-25, going by the analysis.

The number of government schools in 2024-25 (10.13 lakh) fell by 8% compared with the figure in 2014-15 (11.07 lakh). Over the same period, private schools saw an 18% surge from 2.88 lakh to 3.39 lakh.

The analysis attributes the drop in the number of government schools to the impact of “consolidation and rationalization measures”. School mergers — merging schools with low enrollments — have been undertaken in several states over the past few years, prompting political pushback in states like Uttar Pradesh.

A NITI Aayog project initiated in 2017 merged and reorganised schools with low enrolment in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. In the time since then, the National Education Policy 2020 has also recommended setting up school complexes so that resources can be shared.

What are the most ‘fragile links’ in the schooling cycle?

The analysis flags secondary education as a key gap: the GER (gross enrollment ratio, which is the total enrolment at a particular level of education, expressed as a percentage of the official age-group population for that level) at the secondary level is 78.7%, compared with over 90% at the primary and upper primary levels. At the higher secondary stage, GER falls further to 58.4%, and the analysis points out that nearly four out of every 10 children who enter school don’t continue till the higher secondary level.

NITI Aayog has marked secondary education as the “most fragile link” in the schooling cycle, “where economic constraints, social factors, and weak institutional support converge to limit participation”. The GER at the secondary level has only seen a marginal rise over the past decade — from 75.68% to 78.7%.

The analysis notes that the Right to Education Act guarantees free and compulsory education only up to the age of 14, and beyond class 8, the financial burden of continuing schooling falls on households, resulting in children from low-income and marginalised families dropping out of school.

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An additional factor could be keeping children from progressing to high school: few schools (only around 5% of the total of around 14.71 lakh schools) provide continuous schooling from classes 1 to 12. While there are over 7 lakh primary schools, this figure drops sharply to 1.42 lakh at the secondary level.

“This fragmentation without any established linkage between schools for transitioning requires students to shift schools at key stages, depending on local availability, which further contributes to declining retention rates and limits the likelihood of progression to higher stages of education,” the analysis notes.

How have dropout rates changed over the past decade?

The dropout rate at the primary level has fallen to near zero: from around 4% in 2014-15 to 0.3% in 2024-25. Dropout levels become a concern from the upper primary stage onwards. At the upper primary stage, the figure was 3.5% in 2024-25, close to the 3.77% a decade ago.

The secondary stage dropout rate has dropped from 17.86% to 11.5% over the decade, but the rate remains the highest at this stage of schooling.

Pointing to barriers including weak foundational learning, social pressures for girls, and financial constraints, the analysis recommends introduction of an “early warning system” in the UDISE+ school registers to flag “at-risk” students using attendance, learning levels, and markers of socio-economic vulnerabilities.

Across the transition stages of grade 5 to 6, grade 8 to 9, and grade 10 to 11, the transition rate (proportion of students who progress from one educational level to another) was higher among girls than boys in 2024-25. From the secondary to higher secondary level, for instance, the transition rate among girls was 77.9% against a figure of 72.4% among boys.