2021 State of Education Report for India: No teacher No class

The 2021 Status of Education report was released by UNESCO in October 2021, with the theme: No Teacher No Class. The report is based on the analysis of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of National Statistical Office (NSO) and Unified District Information system for Education (UDISE) of 2018-19.

Findings of the Report

• Single Teacher Schools:
  • There are nearly 1.2 lakh single-teacher schools in the country most of which (89%) are in rural areas.
  • States with high percentage of single-teacher schools are- Arunachal Pradesh (18.22%), Goa (16.08%), Telangana (15.71%), Andhra Pradesh (14.4%), Jharkhand (13.81%).
• Women Teachers:
  • Half of India’s 9.43 million school teachers are women.
• Pupil Teacher Ratio: The pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) at senior secondary schools is 47:1 as against 26:1 of the overall school system.
• Increase in Private School Teachers: The proportion of teachers employed in the private sector grew from 21% in 2013-14 to 35% in 2018-19.
• Availability of Computers: The overall availability of computing devices (desktops or laptops) in schools is 22% for all India, with rural areas seeing much lower provisioning (18%) than urban areas (43%).
• Access to the Internet in Schools: It is 19% all over India - only 14% in rural areas compared to 42% in urban areas.
• Gross Enrolment Ratio: For elementary schools, GER has increased from 81.6 in 2001 to 93.03 in 2018-19 and stands at 102.1 in 2019-2020.
• Retention Ratio: Overall School retention is 74.6% for elementary education and 59.6% for secondary education in 2019-20.