Nearly one lakh government schools closed down between 2014 and 2024, playing a significant role in the decline of 2.26 crore in children's enrolment during this decade, a NITI Aayog report has said.

The report — School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement — released last week found that while 26.95 crore children were enrolled in schools in 2014-15, their numbers declined to 24.69 in 2024-25.

During this period, the number of government schools declined from 11.07 lakh to 10.13 lakh, while the number of government-aided schools came down from 83,000 to 79,000. However, the number of private schools increased from 2.88 lakh to 3.39 lakh in that decade.

“Overall school enrolment remained stable at around 26 crore for much of the past decade but has declined to 24.69 crore by 2024-25. This reduction is partly attributable to demographic shifts, particularly falling fertility rates leading to a smaller school-age population, alongside the effects of school consolidation and challenges in retention at higher levels of education,” the report said.

School consolidation refers to the merger of nearby schools in case the number of students is low. The Centre and the NITI Aayog have been asking the states to merge schools with low enrolment rates for the better use of resources.

Mitra Ranjan, an education activist and coordinator of the Right To Education Forum, said such mergers had led to the reduction in the number of schools.

“The merger of schools in the name of consolidation is the primary reason for the significant drop in the enrolment of children in schools. Many children drop out after schools in their vicinity shut down. This causes a decline in enrolment,” Ranjan said.

According to the NITI Aayog report, the dropout rate was the sharpest at the secondary level, or Class IX and Class X. At the primary level, the dropout rate in the 2014-2024 decade was only 0.3 per cent, which indicated strong retention during the foundational years. This figure jumped to 3.5 per cent at the upper primary stage. The problem became more acute at the secondary level, where the dropout rate was as high as 11.5 per cent, the report found.

The transition rate — which is a combination of students staying in the system and also getting promoted — from upper primary to secondary declined from 91.58 per cent in 2014-15 to 86.6 per cent in 2024-25. The transition rate was the highest in Puducherry and Kerala, at 99.6 per cent. The rate was comparatively low in Meghalaya (65 per cent), Bihar (66.7 per cent), Mizoram (77.8 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (77.8 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (78.1 per cent), Jharkhand (81.3 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (83.3 per cent) and Nagaland (83.8 per cent).

Ranjan said Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had together witnessed the merger of nearly 40,000 schools.

“The merger of schools defeats the objective of universalisation of school education. The government of India has committed under the Sustainable Development Goal to achieve universalisation of school education by 2030. With the policy of merging schools, India cannot achieve the SDG objective,” he said.

The NITI report found that children were facing challenges in coping with studies at the secondary stage. For example, in mathematics, Class IX students were not only struggling with advanced topics such as algebra, geometry and theorems but also with everyday mathematical applications, including percentages, fractions and ratio-based reasoning.

“This suggests that early learning deficits have not been adequately addressed as students’ progress through the system,” the report said.