New Delhi: Nearly 78 per cent of schools in India still don’t have internet facilities and more than 61 per cent do not have computers, the latest UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education) data released by the central government for 2019-20 shows. The UDISE data covers both government and private schools.
The report adds that even though more than 84 per cent of schools have libraries and reading rooms, only 69.4 per cent of them have libraries with books.
UDISE, first released by the Ministry of Education for the academic year 2012-13, is one of the largest Management Information Systems on school education. It covers more than 15 lakh schools, 85 lakh teachers and 25 crore school children. UDISE+ is an updated and improved version of UDISE.
The UDISE data is also used for the calculation of various other parameters to measure school education levels, such as the Performance Grading Index that was released earlier this month.
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More girls enrolled for pre-primary education
In terms of student enrollment, the data shows that a total of 26.45 crore students were enrolled from pre-primary to higher secondary level in 2019-20, up by 42.3 lakh as compared to the 2018-19 session. The enrollment of girls increased at all levels, highest at the pre-primary level —14.2 per cent more girls were enrolled at the pre-primary level in 2019-20 as compared to the academic year 2018-19.
The report has pointed out that the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at all levels of school education had improved in 2019-20 compared to 2018-19. “The GER increased to 89.7 pc (from 87.7 pc) at Upper Primary level, 97.8 pc (from 96.1 pc) at Elementary Level, 77.9 pc (from 76.9 pc) at Secondary Level and 51.4 pc (from 50.1 pc) at Higher Secondary Level in 2019-20 (from 2018-19),” it said.
“Between 2012-13 and 2019-20, the GER for girls at both secondary and higher secondary level has increased more than that of the boys. GER for girls at the secondary level has gone up by 9.6 pc to reach 77.8 pc in 2019-20, it was 68.2 pc in 2012-13,” it added.
The number of teachers in school education increased by 2.72 per cent in 2019-20 compared to 2018-19. In 2019-20, 96.87 lakh teachers were engaged in school education, about 2.57 lakh higher compared to 2018-19.
Pointing to infrastructure facilities, the report said that more than 90 per cent of schools in India had hand-washing facilities, a notable improvement from just 36.3 per cent in 2012-13. In 2019-20, 83.4 per cent schools had electricity, an improvement of 7 per cent as compared to 2018-19.
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