Economic Survey 2023: Education GER, infrastructure on a rise but data suggests scope for improvement

As per the Survey, FY22 saw a marginal improvement in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in schools and improvement in gender parity.

In FY22, a total of 26.5 crore children were enrolled in schools while in FY21 a total of 26.4 crore students were enrolled in schools.

Enrolment for boys was 13.28 Crore and that of the girls was 12.28 Crore. This was an increase by more than 19 lakhs over 2020-21.

Total enrolment of Children With Special Needs (CWSN) in FY22 stands at 22.7 lakh as compared to 21.9 lakh in FY21, which is an increase of 3.3 per cent.

When it comes to school dropout the rate increased from 0.8 percent in 2020-2021 to 1.5 percent in 2021-2022 for primary schools. For upper primary the rate increased from 2 percent to 2.7 percent and for secondary it declined from 14 percent to 12.6 percent in 2021-2022.

Report on Unified District Information System For Education by the Ministry of Education for 2021-2022 showed that the total number of teachers has declined by 1.95 percent in 2021-22 compared to 2020-21.

Total number of teachers in 2021-22 was 95.07 lakh, decreased from 97.87 lakh in 2020-21. The decrease in teachers during 2021-22 as compared to 2020-21 was 0.9 percent in Government schools, 1.45 percent in Government Aided Schools, 2.94 percent in Private School and 8.3 percent in Other schools.

Further the Pupil Teacher Ratio, (PTR) which shows availability of adequate number of teachers for teaching the children enrolled at different levels of education saw a decline.

A reduction in the PTR indicates that the number of students per teacher has reduced, implying more focus of the teacher on students resulting in improvement in the quality of teaching.

PTR for primary has reached 26 in 2021-22, which was 28 in 2018-19. Further the PTR of higher secondary schools has improved to 27 in 2021-22 from 30 in 2018-19, showed the UDISE data.

Total number of schools in India in 2021-2022 stood at 14.8 lakh out of which 13.9 lakh schools have functional girls toilet facilities and 3.8 lakh have functional CWSN toilet facilities. Notably as per the data in 2021-2022 from primary to higher secondary 22.4 lakh CWSN students enrolled in schools.

Further 7 lakh or 47.5 percent schools have computer facilities and in this 45.8 percent have functional computer facilities and only 33.9 percent schools have internet facilities.

Notably, out of over 10 lakh government schools in India, 5 lakh or 24.2 percent have internet facilities.

The data however shows that as compared to last year infrastructure in schools have improved but there are still things that are lagging.

Apart from an increase in enrollment the number of teachers have also grown. The number of Teachers has grown from 13,65,786 in 2016-17 to 15,51,070 in 2020-21. Based on actual response at undergraduate level, enrollment is highest in Arts (33.5 percent) and at postgraduate level, maximum students are enrolled in Social Science stream (20.56 percent).

Further out of the total enrolment 3.26 crore students enrolled in Undergraduate level followed by 47.16 lakh enrollments at PG level.

AISHE data showed that the number of teachers has increased by 47,914 in 2020-21 over 2019-20. The number of universities has increased by 70 during 2020-21, to 1,113 in 2020-21 from 1,043 in 2019-20.

Notably the enrollment from 2020-2021 increased by 28.80 lakh while the number of teachers increased by 47,914. Further there are 75 female teachers per 100 male teachers.

At All-India level, 56.2 percent teachers belong to the General category; 32.2 percent teachers follow OBC; while SC and ST teachers are 9.1 percent and 2.5 percent respectively.

About 5.6 percent teachers come from Muslim minority group, and 8.8 percent are from other minority groups.

The number of medical colleges in the country has been increased from 387 in 2014 to 648 in 2022 and the number of MBBS seats has increased from 51,348 to 96,077. Number of Indian

Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), respectively stand at 23 and 20 in 2022 against 16 and 13 in 2014. The strength of Indian Institutes of Information Technology

(IIITs) is 25 in 2022 against 9 in 2014, stated the data.