Nearly 39.7 lakh students of government aided and private schools shifted to government schools during 2020-21. Similarly, there is also an impact of Covid-19 pandemic on enrolment in schools, showed a report released by Union Ministry of Education on Wednesday.
The impact has been particularly noticed in the enrolment of young and vulnerable kids like pre-primary, class 1 and 'Children With Special Needs' (CWSN), which can be attributed to postponement of admissions due to Covid-19.
In 2020-21, enrolment of students in schools 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, the ministry's report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21 on school education of India noted.
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, it said.
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 per cent during 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20.
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.
The report said that 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 30respectively during 2018-19.
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, the report added.
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 per cent from 89.7 per cent in upper primary, 99.1 per cent from 97.8 per cent in elementary, 79.8 per cent from 77.9 per cent in secondary and 53.8 per cent from 51.4 per cent in higher secondary respectively.
"96.96 lakh teachers are engaged in school education during 2020-21. This is higher by about 8,800 in comparison with number of teacher in school education in 2019-20," the report said.
According to the ministry, 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.
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, the 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.
The report also revealed that the schools with functional electricity have made impressive progress during 2020-21 with net addition of 57,799 schools provided electricity. Now 84 per cent of the total schools have functional electricity facility in comparison with 73.85 per cent in 2018-19 showing "remarkable" improvement of 10.15 per cent during the period.
Percentage of the schools with functional drinking water has increased to 95.2 per cent in 2020-21 from 93.7 per cent in 2019-20.
Percentage of the school with functional girl's toilet facility has increased to 93.91 per cent in 2020-21 in comparison with 93.2 per cent in 2019-20 by adding the facility in additional 11,933 schools during the year.
Similarly, percentage of schools with hand wash facilities has also improved during 2020-21 and now stands at 91.9 per cent as compared to 90.2 per cent in 2019-20.
As per the report, 40 per cent of the schools have functional computers.
Further the report suggested that the number of schools having internet facility increased to 3.7 lakh in 2020-21 from 3.36 lakh in 2019-20.