School education: Despite Covid-19 disruption enrolment, teacher numbers and infra-facilities shows improvement – Times of India

NEW DELHI: During the Covid-19, 39.7 lakh students of government aided, private school students shifted to government schools. Overall, the school education space witnessed an increase of 28.32 lakh enrolments in 2020-21 as compared to the previous year. The latest report on Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2020-21 released on Wednesday night also highlighted that while the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) has improved in 2020-21 at all levels of school education as against 2019-20, the impact of the pandemic is cross-cutting and particularly noticed in the postponement of enrolment of young and vulnerable kids like pre-primary, Class I and Children with Special Needs (CWSN).

The total enrolment in 2020-21 from primary to higher secondary levels of school education was a little over 25.38 crore, which include 13.17 crore boys and 12.21 crore girls. This was an increase by more than 28 lakhs over 2019-20. Many of the schools under the UDISE+ system had pre-primary classes. Total enrolment of all the schools in the UDISE+ system from pre-primary to higher secondary, have crossed 26.44 Crore in 2020-21. “At all the levels above primary, i.e., in upper primary, secondary and higher secondary, school enrolment has increased, showing an improvement in the ability of the system to retain more and more children in the system of school education over time,” the report stated.

Along with enrollment, as per the report, the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) at different levels of school education has also shown improvement in this period. PTR for primary has reached 26.3 in 2020-21, which was 28 in 2018-19. Maximum improvement can be observed in PTR of higher secondary which has improved to 26.3 in 2020-21 from 30 in 2018-19.
Despite a significant increase in enrolment, things could have been better but due to the pandemic as its impact has been cross cutting, and more stark in the case of young and vulnerable kids like pre-primary, Class I and CWSN resulting in postponement of admissions due to COVID-19. As per the report, enrolment of students in school education from primary to higher secondary was higher compared to the enrolment of students in 2019-20. However, enrolment of students in pre-primary level and Class I has reduced by 29.1 lakh and 18.8 lakh respectively in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20. “This may also be due to postponement of school admission of young children during the pandemic,” the report said.

Another downturn due to the pandemic and subsequent disruption of physical classes is that the percentage of medical check-ups of students dropped drastically to 50% in 2020-21 from that of more than 82% schools in 2019-20.

The GER, which measures the general level of participation too, has improved at all levels compared to 2019-20. The GER of primary was 101.3% in 2018-19 which increased to 103.3% in 2020-21. The GER for upper primary in 2020-21 is 92.2%. It was 87.74% in 2018-19. The GER for secondary education has reached 79.8% in 2020-21, which is an improvement of 2.9 percentage points from 2018-19 (GER secondary was 76.9% in 2018-19). GER at higher secondary level has also shown improvement as it reached 53.8% in 2020-21 from 50.14 in 2018-19.

Infrastructure-wise an improvement of 10.15% point in the school with functional electricity was achieved and 40% of the schools have functional computers now. Based on data collection on availability of different infrastructural facilities have been enhanced over time, the report stated that hand wash facility, electricity, boys’ and girls’ toilets, library/ reading room, computers and internet are areas where substantial improvements have been observed with respect to availability. For example, the internet facility Internet has improved to 24.5% in 2020-21 from that of 18.7% in 2018-19.

The number of teaching and non-teaching staff has also improved during 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21. The teaching staff has increased to 96.9 lakh in the year 2020-21. This is an increase of 2.81% (2.65 lakh) since 2018-19. Total non-teaching staff during 2020-21 stood at 15.8 lakh as compared to 12.37 lakh in 2018-19.