BHUBANESWAR : At a time when the country has witnessed an overall drop in school enrolment, Odisha brought one lakh more students into formal education in the 2023-24 academic session as compared to the preceding year.
The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report for 2023-24 academic session released by the Ministry of Education (MoE) this week revealed 77.5 lakh students enrolled in 61,693 schools in Odisha against 76.4 lakh in 61,891 schools in the 2022-23. Nationally, there was a decline in students’ enrolment by 37 lakhs as compared to the previous session.
Since 2022-23, MoE’s UDISE+ ecosystem captures data on more than 60 fields for each student. The 2023-24 report also pointed out that Odisha has more schools than required. “Odisha is among nine states where the percentage of schools available is more than the percentage of students enrolled, which implies under-utilisation of the available schools,” the report stated.
With 61,693 schools having 77.5 lakh students, the average enrolment per school is 126 students. Interestingly, the number of schools with zero enrolment has come down to eight from 33 within the last one academic session. While these student-less schools employed 96 teachers in 2022-23, the count has now come down to 16 teachers. Besides, close to 50,000 students are in 1,095 schools that are manned by single teachers.
Compared to several states where enrolment of students is more in private schools as compared to government ones, the trend is reverse in Odisha. Among the various categories of schools, 48,671 are government and 6,042 are privately run. The number of private schools has largely remained stagnant over the years. While private schools enrolled 14.8 lakh students, these schools saw 1.4 lakh new admissions in Class 1 of which, 30,406 had done their pre-schooling from anganwadi kendras. Similarly, government schools have 52 lakh students.
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) which measures the general level of participation has improved in 2023-24 at secondary and middle (Class VI to VIII) levels. The state’s GER for secondary classes has grown impressively from 55.7 pc to 70.2 pc between 2022 and 2024.
This apart, the state which was once infamous for having the highest school dropout rate at secondary Class (IX and X) level in the country, has managed to turn the tables in the last two academic sessions.
The UDISE+ states that the dropout rate at secondary level for schools in Odisha stands at 9.11 pc, a few points below the national average of 10.9. From the highest of 27.3 pc in 2021-22, it came down to 10.29 pc in 2022-23 and in the ongoing academic session, it has marginally reduced by 1.18 pc.
Upward trend
77.5 lakh enrolled in 61,693 schools
52 lakh in government schools
14.8 lakh in private schools
126 average enrolment per school
8 schools with zero enrolment
1,095 schools with single teacher
Drop out rate falls to 9.11 pc