Ministry of Education has released two Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) reports — for 2022-23 and 2023-24 — that show a drop of over a crore in school enrolment from the average enrolment figure from 2018-19 to 2021-22.
School Enrolment Down By 1 Crore From 2018-19 Level
Why In News
- Ministry of Education has released two Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) reports — for 2022-23 and 2023-24 — that show a drop of over a crore in school enrolment from the average enrolment figure from 2018-19 to 2021-22.
What Is UDISE+
- UDISE+ is a database on school education from the pre-primary to higher secondary levels. The Ministry of Education maintains the UDISE+ online platform, through which data on school education is collected from the states.
- It prepares the report based on this data on parameters like school enrolment, infrastructure, and teachers. This data is key while allocating funds for schemes like PM-POSHAN (midday meals), Samagra Shiksha, and scholarships.
What Do New UDISE+ Reports Say
- Enrolment in schools across the country remained above 26 crore from 2018-19 to 2021-22, showing increases of a few lakh students each year except for the COVID year of 2020-21, when there was a slight drop. This figure fell in 2022-23 to 25.17 crore. It dropped further to 24.8 crore in 2023-24.
What Accounts For The Drop In Enrollment
- Officials in the Ministry of Education have maintained that the drop in school enrolment does not necessarily mean that more children are now out of school. Instead, they have pointed to a “major departure” in how data was collected for the two new reports as the reason for the fall.
- For past years’ reports, data was collected school-wise, which means that each school would upload details on how many children are in a class, how many boys and girls etc.
- In contrast, from 2022-23 onwards, data is being collected student-wise, which means that details of each student — their name, address, parents’ name, Aadhaar details — is being entered into the UDISE+ system.
- A senior official said this is likely to have weeded out “ghost” students — students who may have enrolled both in a government and a private school in order to draw government benefits.
- The schools enter the details, and officials said this data is verified at the level of a school cluster, and at the district and State levels. Bihar has seen the sharpest drop of 35.65 lakh in 2023-24 enrolment from 2018-19, followed by UP with a drop of 28.26 lakh.
- A senior official in the Ministry said that the data in the report was arrived at after “engagement” with the states — states that showed large changes from previous years were asked to verify their data.
Why Was The Change In Method Introduced
- In the new system, data of over 60 items is collected for each student. In addition to details like parents’ name, address, Aadhaar, height, and weight, it also covers the student’s exam result and attendance for the year. The official said that with this, UDISE+ has become “a more accurate registry”.
- The Ministry has attributed the change in data collection to a recommendation in the National Education Policy 2020, which aims “to achieve universal participation in school by carefully tracking students, as well as their learning levels”. The details that are now being collected for each student are expected to help track their performance and attendance.
- The new system also includes a registry for teachers with a profile for each teacher. Officials said this is also expected to help deploy teachers suitably, and track their attendance. There were around 98 lakh teachers in 2023-24.
When Was UDISE Launched
- UDISE was launched in 2012-13 by merging information management systems in place separately for elementary education and secondary education. UDISE was then being managed by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, which functioned under the Centre.
- Each school would enter school-wise data on enrolment, infrastructure, and teachers, manually on paper. This would then be computerised at the block or district level, and collected at the state level before it was shared with the Centre.
- From 2018-19 onwards, UDISE became UDISE+, and has since then been directly monitored by the Ministry of Education. With this, schools are required to upload their data online on the UDISE+ platform.
- It provided for offline filling-in of data in remote areas, but even this would have to be uploaded online at the block level. This also helped maintain a record of those responsible for filling in the data, ensuring better accountability.
