What’s in the news?

• The Ministry of Education has  released the report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21 on school education of India.
• The UDISE+ system of online data collection from the schools was developed by Department of School Education & Literacy in the year 2018-19 to overcome the issues related to erstwhile practice of  manual data filling in paper format and subsequent feeding on computer at the block or district level in the UDISE data collection system since 2012-13.
• In UDISE+ system, improvements have been made particularly in the areas related to data capture, data mapping and data verification. The present publication relates to UDISE+ data for the reference year 2020-21.

Students and Teachers in schools:

• In 2020-21 total students enrolled in school education from primary to higher secondary stood at 25.38 crore. There is an increase of 28.32 lakh enrolments as compared to the 25.10 crore enrolment in 2019-20.
• Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) which measure the general level of participation has improved in 2020-21 at all levels of school education compared to 2019-20.  Level wise GER in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20 are:  92.2% from 89.7% in upper primary, 99.1 % from 97.8% in elementary, 79.8% from 77.9% in secondary and 53.8% from 51.4% in higher secondary respectively.
• 96.96 lakh teachers are engaged in school education during 2020-21. This is higher by about 8800 in comparison with number of teacher in school education in 2019-20. 
• In 2020-21 the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) stood at 26 for primary, 19 for upper primary, 18 for secondary and 26 for higher secondary, showing an improvement since 2018-19. The PTR for primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary was 28, 20, 21, and 30 respectively during 2018-19.
• In 2020-21 over 12.2 crore girls are enrolled in primary to higher secondary showing  an increase of 11.8 lakh girls compared to the enrolment of girls in 2019-20. 

Non-teaching staffs

• The number of non-teaching staffs has also improved over the years. Total non teaching staffs during 2020-21 stood at 15.8 lakh as compared to 12.37 lakhs in 2018-19. Among, the non-teaching staffs, number of accountants, library assistants, laboratory assistants, head clerks, LDC/UDC staffs has grown from 5.79 lakh to 7.8 lakh by adding 2.05 lakh from 2018-19 to 2020-21. 

School Infrastructure:

• Schools with functional electricity have made impressive progress during 2020-21 with net addition of 57,799 schools provided electricity. Now 84% of the total schools have functional electricity facility in comparison with 73.85% in 2018-19 showing remarkable improvement of 10.15% during the period.
• Percentage of the schools with functional drinking water has increased to 95.2 % in 2020-21 from 93.7 % in 2019-20.
• Percentage of the school with functional girl’s toilet facility has increased to 93.91 % in 2020-21 in comparison with 93.2 % in 2019-20 by adding the facility in additional 11,933 schools during the year.
• Percentage of schools with hand wash facilities has also improved during 2020-21 and now stands at 91.9 % as compared to 90.2 % in 2019-20.
• Number of schools having functional computers increased to 6 lakh in 2020-21 from 5.5 lakh in 2019-20 showing an increasing of 3 %. Now, 40% of the schools have functional computers.
• Number of schools having internet facility increased to 3.7 lakh in 2020-21 from 3.36 lakh in 2019-20 with an increase of 2.6%.
• More than 85.6 % schools in India had a library/reading room/ reading corner in 2020-21 with a marginal improvement of 1.6% from the previous year.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on enrolment:

• Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is cross-cutting, this is particularly noticed in the enrolment of young and vulnerable kids like pre-primary, class 1 and Children With Special Needs (CWSN) may be attributed to postponement of admissions due to COVID-19.
• In 2020-21 enrolment of students in school education from primary to higher secondary is around 25.4 crore. This is higher by 28.3 lakh as compared to the enrolment of students in 2019-20. However, enrolment of students in pre-primary level and class 1 has reduced by 29.1 lakh and 18.8 lakh respectively in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20. This may also be due to postponement of school admission of young children during pandemic.
• Total enrolment of CWSN students in 2020-21 stands at 21.69 lakh as compared to 22.49 lakh in 2019-20 showing a decrease of 3.56 % during 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20.
• During 2020-21, 39.7 lakh students of government aided, private school students shifted to Government schools.

Reference:

1. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1804511