Context: Recently, Ministry of Education (MoE) has released the report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21 on school education of India.

UDISE+ system

• The UDISE+ system of online data collection from the schools was developed by Department of School Education & Literacy in the year 2018-19.
• Aim: To make improvements in the areas related to data capture, data mapping and data verification.

Key Points
Students and Teachers in schools

• In 2020-21, total students enrolled in school education from primary to higher secondary were 25.38 crore.
• There is an increase of 28.32 lakh enrolments as compared to the 25.10 crore enrolment in 2019-20.
• 96.96 lakh teachers are engaged in school education.

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER)
GER has improved in 2020-21 at all levels of school education compared to 2019-20.

• Upper Primary Level increased to 92.2% from 89.7%
• Elementary Level increased to 99.1 % from 97.8%
• Secondary Level increased to 79.8% from 77.9%
• Higher Secondary Level increased 53.8% from 51.4%

GER is the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population corresponding to the same level of education.
Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR)

• PTR has shown improvement since 2018-19.
• PTR for different categories: Primary- 26, Upper primary-19, Secondary-18 and Higher secondary-26
• PTR means average number of pupils (students) per teacher at a specific level of education in a given school-year.

Enrolment of girls

• In 2020-21 over 12.2 crore girls are enrolled in primary to higher secondary showing an increase of 11.8 lakh girls.

Non-teaching staffs

• The number of non-teaching staffs has also improved.
• Total non-teaching staffs during 2020-21 stood at 15.8 lakh as compared to 12.37 lakhs.
• Non-Teaching staff includes - accountants, library assistants, laboratory assistants, head clerks, LDC/UDC staffs.

School Amenities

• Electricity- 84% of the total schools have functional electricity facility in comparison with 73.85%
• The percentage of drinking water has increased to 95.2 % from 93.7 %.
• Girl’s toilet facility has increased to 93.91 % from 93.2 % 
• Computers has increased to 6 lakhs from 5.5 lakh.
• 40% of the schools have functional computers.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on enrolment

• 39.7 lakh students of government aided; private school students shifted to Government schools.
• Enrolment of students in pre-primary level and Class I has reduced by 29.1 lakh and 18.8 lakh.