PTI INFOGRAPHICS | Over 5,000 govt schools sit empty with zero students; 70% in Telangana and West Bengal
Of 10.13 lakh government schools across India, 5,149 have no students at all. And more than 70 per cent of these schools reporting zero enrolment in the 2024-25 academic year are in Telangana and West Bengal, according to government data.
The broader category of schools "with less than 10 or zero enrolment" has also seen a sharp surge, reveals data shared by the education ministry in Parliament recently.
The number of such government schools grew by 24 per cent over the last two years - from 52,309 in 2022-23 to 65,054 in 2024-25. These schools now account for 6.42 per cent of the country's total government schools, the government said in a written reply to questions by MPs Karti P Chidambaram and Amrinder Singh Raja Warring in the Lok Sabha.
Imagine being the 1 person at one of these schools lol
And still coming third in your class
You gotta ask the janitor to prom because you don’t see anyone else in the hallways
i don't know if prom is a thing in India or anywhere else outside USA to be honest.
This "prom" thing sure is a cringey exclusive one in the west.
nor the hallway culture lol
The school near my house is one such 11 kids from class 1-5
we had 4 including me 🙄
Why are these situations common in India?
Private schools turned education into a business, so they attract parents by promoting every seat like its a product. and people choose them even if they can't afford it.
more the students shift to pvt schools, more the trust on Govt schools is lost. Govt schools can't even be compared to Pvt schools because of poor management due to less number of students in many of them. only Govt aided schools can compete with Pvt schools.
moreover the classist mindset of people makes them not to choose govt schools because they have students from societies under the poverty line, in short, the slums, due to its affordability and multiple schemes to enforce education on every child.
Would feel unreal just you a teacher and a whole building echoing all day like what even is school at that point
Totally. I think you gotta say it’s lacking so, so much of what makes school school. The socialization with your peers is such an elemental part of life, even though it’s so often hard.
Have got to answer on each class, look like terrifying experience
No one there to laugh at you though.
Just you the teacher the bell and a whole empty building vibe
I live near one of these government schools with 0 student in West Bengal, with a few more in my city.
I'd say declining population and increasing income are the primary cause from what I can observe near me. Government schools have this stigma of being horrible (rightfully so) and in small towns private schools and often missionary schools are not too expensive, for example I used to pay about 300-700 INR per month for private schools up until my high school about 15 years ago, which was still considered affordable by lower income class at that time.
Some 1-3 government schools which managed to survive solely because of their internal management and sheer will of their teachers to provide quality education and not because of any government help to be so (important to point that out because the state government really don't care about primary education).
So, are there any plans for the government to close those empty schools and use them for possibly other purposes?
Most likely they will be closed and merged with some other bigger schools nearby.
Right now they only serve as polling booths for elections, they don't even have any appointed teaching or management staff so these schools are properly defunct and are treated as landmarks and buildings with "school" in their names.
They no longer host social gatherings, marriages as well. The last non election event was the vaccination drive during covid.
Wild how something that used to be such a community hub is basically just a polling place now.
I'm surprised the government doesn't try to sell off these properties. Do they plan to just keep them abandoned? My city (in the US) is in constant talks with developers, trying to pawn off every vacant building they own.
This particular school in my neighbourhood did sell off their playground to be developed into a residential apartment but kept the main building to be used as a polling station etc.
I can't say for all of them but I think the scale of schools in our imaginations might be larger than they are. Most of these ghost-schools were just a single room buildings with no playground resembling a gurukul in some sense.
Is that cost annual or what?
Forgot to clarify, that was monthly fee.
Declining population in india? That can't be right
Declining birth rate maybe but it's still quite early for the population to also see a decline
They don't mean declining population in India as a whole. What they're really referring to is the hollowing out of rural areas as people move to cities.
Sorry, I made another phrasing mistake there, I meant to say declining birthrates. Birthrates are very low here in WB and as for my city the population has increased significantly due to influx of people moving in from rural regions.
What makes you say “rightfully so”?
Any Indian citizen ( moreso from the state of West Bengal) would tell you about the worsening economic situation of the state for the last 50 years brought on by a plethora of different seemingly disconnected reasons.
My parents' generation suffered from the shortsighted decision of introducing English as a second language in Bengali medium schools run by the state board in late 80s in the fifth standard (rather than in the 1st standard) which robbed them of opportunities in the long run. This brought many in my generation ( those who could afford, painstakingly I should add) to be educated in mediocre English medium schools run by CISCE / CBSE .
With the change in government in 2011, the ones who came to power decided to hollow out the system from the inside.
That is all.
Yes " near you " . There are many poor backward parents india who don't send their children to even school
And why is this? Bad allocation of schools, maybe fraud schools set up to profit from govt funding, or what is the main reason?
Generally government funded schools have a bad reputation (rightfully so in most cases) and private schools and the like aren’t too expensive now with increasing salaries, the population decline also plays a part in it to.
It's not population decline, more like lower TFR meaning lower and lower cohorts of school aged children than in the 1990s and 2000s.
You are right, my mistake.
Making public schools so shit people are forced to send kids to private schools if they want them to have future prospects is a strategy not unique to India
Well, despite still having a large population, India is close to having below a replacement birthrate, so it will become an even more common sight in the future as their population has hit its ceiling and will now start to decline, same thing happened to China and Japan.
Honestly our government is not prepared for this We still talk about overpopulation but we're heading towards the opposite
Momentum will keep the general population increasing for a few more decades, like how China had a population growing for decades, even with sub-replacement fertility. India just went under sub replacement, and it varies state to state. The Hindi belt still has an overall above-replacement-rate fertility rate.
is that a penis in rajasthan
Why do all indians think lakh is an international unit of measurement? It means nothing outside of india mate
I and most people here have no clue what it means
Its basically the same reason Americans use Fahrenheit or Yards
A big country thinking its the only place that matters. This is also true with the Chinese...its just that we have the great Chinese Firewall.
Btw:
1 lakh = 100,000
1 crore = 10 million
To be fair, using Americans as a example does not make sense in the context of reddit because around half of Reddit users are Americans anyway.
Why are you trying to incorporate malice into this? Citizens of big countries constantly have conversations with each other that use those terms, people talk how they write, it’s not even a conscious thing most of the time. I would feel more pity if you weren’t reading this on a device that can define whatever term or convert any unit you desire.
Bro what...I'm not trying to incorporate any sort of malice on this...what are you talking about...i meant the above comment in a very neutral way
Wouldnt really compare those two as 1. imperial units of measurement are used in more than one country. And two they where international at one point(that point being 200 years ago, but still)
I'm not gonna argue thst point, but the thing is this number conversion is just simple easy compared to converting fahrenheit to celsius and other such stuff..
If you know what it is ye, its simple
You don't even know a lakh is a 100k, why would you expect people to know each celcius is 1.8 fahrenheit or each mile is 1.6 kilometers.
Exactly this lol
Im european and i know. Because at one point in time it was an international unit of measurement, and still a few countries use it, even in europe(UK)
Expecting me to know a unit of measurement thats used in a singular country that 15 yesrs ago didnt even have the internet is much more of a strech
You are just racist ragebaiter, so no point talking to you. India is a nuclear power from half a century, you are here talking as if you are from high heavens. Leave alone basic mistakes on where/were usage. Going back to school if you have one near you will be a good start for you.
[removed]
Definitely not a racist /s
I mean the reason you know is because America absolutely dominates and overpowers your culture at every step. Also why the fuck are you guys so butt hurt about this in the first place... My top comment explained the conversion...which by the way is extremely straight forward....just look at that and move the fuck on....
Dude… its not even an american measurement system. Its british. You know the country that literally owned you
Do the british use it now? So not relevant to the overall point.
Aaannnd there pops out the racism in the 2nd sentence...
Now i know you're gonna reply saying how is that racist thats the truth...but the whole point of putting that statement in this context in that way is to belittle and be passive aggressively racist.
Which by the way is fine....everyone gets a little bit over the top in the internet blackhole that is reddit...but im just pointing it out
Do they not teach you English in Europe? Spelling, punctuation, grammar, capitalisation?
Imagine you are a 6 year old at a birthday party.
Someone asks you what your moms name is, and also the name of another kids mom is.
You have a reasonable chance of knowing your moms actual name, despite having called her mom your whole life so far.
You have almost no chance of knowing the other kids moms name, because who cares?
Now apply that to lahk and we're all on the same page.
Yeah Myanmar and Liberia also use some imperial units, two major countries... By international you mean British I guess.
India is 20% of the world btw, the USA less than 5%.
Myanmar uses its own units, not imperial
Devastating blow for the imperial team, they're down to two members then
2.5
US, Liberia, and 0.5 UKs.
Yeah 0.5 Canada as well but still, Liberia is the heavyweight
Myanmar does not use imperial unit. This is a ridiculous idea that stems from a shockingly widespread misundersanding of maps of the World that show countries which don't officially use the metric system.
Thanks for telling me
Seeing as britain controlled 30% of the world ( including india ;))when it was using imperial units. Yes i mean the britain when talking sbout the world 200 yesrs ago
Did you just dunk on your own point homeboy?
I'm british and prefer metric, because decimalisation makes more sense, in an obvious way.
Are you somking some crap weed? Never said it was better. I use metric. People in the comments started asking why one should know imperial but not the wierd indian measurement
Why not learn the Indian terms if plenty of people use them?
Lakhs are also used in more than one country (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Trinidad off the top of my head)
Of the top pf your head cause these are all. All these countries where basically one less than 100 years ago
And how does that matter at all? They still make up like 30% of the world
And how does that matter? Its a very localizied and not relevant 30% globally speaking and The other 70% still doesnt know what it means
Trinidad?
And Tobago?
In case you didn’t know, other than India it’s also used in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Also, just compare the populations of the countries that use lakhs with those that use imperial
10 lakhs = 1 million, so 10.13 lakhs = 1.013 million.
So lakh is 100k?
yep
Is there a word for 10k? Since 1000 is thousand and 100000 = lakh.
So 10k is called ten thousands. Here is Indian number system: 1- one, 10- ten, 100- hundred, 1000- thousand, 10000(10k)- ten thousands, 100000(100k)- 1 lakh, 1000000(1 million)- ten lakhs, 10000000(10 million)- 1 crore, 100000000(100 million)- ten crores, 1000000000(1 billion)- 1 arab, 10000000000(10 billion)- ten Arabs, 100000000000(100 billion)- 1 kharab
..... and so on
Isn't it 1.013 million?
yep. guessing typo.
Ugh sorry it was a typo. Edited it.
This was more targeted to Indians rather than outside
The whole thread could have been a reply
1lakh= 100k
But some people really are interested in setting up meetings
ye for sure, no clue why all these people are taking it personally
Why do all americans think pounds is an international unit of measurement? It means nothing outside of america mate
I and most people here have no clue what it means
It's less "think" It's international, and more they simply just don't really think about the rest of the world like that.
I imagine it's the same way in India. Why think about these things when your county is so large it basically is your whole world.
Ask the americans mate, im not one of them
I agree with both of you.
Pounds are definitely colloquially well known in Canada and the UK as well, just not as the official measurement system.
Also lakhs are worse because it's literally just numbers, not a unit of measurement of some physical quantity.
I'd argue a flat 10x or 100x multiplier is easier to understand than something like 9x/5 +32 or 1.6x , but ok
It's not easy if nobody understands the notation.
very easy to understand tho. lakhs are just 10^5, k is 10^3 and m is 10^6
You don't need to explain SI unit notation to me; I'm Canadian. We use both metric and imperial for different situations.
I'll probably forget the lakh thing before the next time I'm exposed to it because it's completely irrelevant and confusing notation outside of one specific country.
Dude how is it confusing. I’m not even Indian and it’s pretty simple to me, instead of the base changing per 1000 it’s 100
The point is that it's irrelevant. Sure I get it right now, but I guarantee I'll have forgotten it by the next time I see it. The last time I saw the word lakh in this context was probably more than 5 years ago.
Same here, and while I can remember that they have lakh and crore for 100k and 10M, I can't remember which one is which because it just doesn't matter for my daily life, so it's a guessing game each time these numbers/words come up.
Where are you from? I am German, and even my grandma, who never went beyond primary education, knew that a pound is exactly half a kilogram (500 grams).
That's a different pound than the one the rest of the world (that still uses pounds) uses. I'm Canadian and I've never heard of "metric pounds" before.
I'm from Asia, pounds is an unknown unit. Also 1 pound is around 450gms, not 500gms
In Germany, a pound is exactly 500 grams, as we are metric: https://conversion.org/mass/pound-metric/
that makes everything worse lmao
It shows that she didn’t went beyond primary education given 1 pound is not exactly half a kg.
The German pound is has been defined to be 500g in the 19th century. It's different from the US customary pound.
Least needlessly defensive Indian.
It's same case like the imperial system the Americans use
Dude, ye i also get pissed at americans when they use it. But contrary to the indian „measurements“ miles are used in lots of countries to measure speed and distance. So they are somewhat more known
the problem with the post is, it's a data used by an Indian team which is posted here also these measures are like second nature to us and we are a young internet population so we often don't consider these things.
i get ya
Again, i have no problem with it. My point was that adding a small explnanation in the end for the people that have no clue what lakh or crore is would be nice.
But a lot of people (mainly indians) seem to think that it was racially motivated comment or that i am american/british and attacking me for it.
The post seems interesting, and ye ofc if its normal in your country one tends to forget that other people dont know what it means.
yeah exactly
If i may ask
Indias population is still growing. How can it be that in so many places the schools are completely empty?
Are births down in these places to to migration to more prosperous parts of the country or do the kids just not go to school?
My guess is that those places are scarcely populated and parents there prefer sending their children to private schools.
And even tho the population is still growing, the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate.
Some of these places seem to be the poorer ones. How can every parent afford to send their kids to private school?
And its barely below replacement. Having 0 students so suddenly seems way tol drastic to be justified by that. Especially given that poorer areas usually have higher birthrates and the avg is brought down by the richer ones
Private schools aren't very expensive. Iirc over 55% of all Indian students study in private schools
Reading other comments it seems like these schools have 0 students enrolled because the schools got merged with a bigger one
the problem is concentration of population, high opportunities of white collar jobs are located in few cities only followed by blue collar.
also rural India population is scarce. The gov school having no student are generally located at areas where there is not enough population or the population prefers a bigger gov school or pvt school in nearby area.
also this differs state vise (as shown in the map) due to their economic conditions.
Okey so it is rural flight thats driving this. Makes sense, thats a thing in a lot of places as the cities in general offer better living conditions.
Are more wealthy states spread out or the poorer ones?
In exception of Southern states.
all the other states are kinda spread out.
the other states where there is no issue of empty schools generally mean they are handling the issue better
I personally prefer million/billion/etc because it is easier and more consistent, but might switch to using lakhs/crores more just to trigger the racist albanians.
Ye mate, do you know how many of your people are begging to come work in my country or even just to see it. Every day on our sub some indian cries cause he didnt get his visa approved . Have never heard of an albanian trying to get to india
I love how it sounds when i give an order to an indian employee and they say yes sir immediately sir with that funny accent
stop sending scamsters like Anjezë to scam Indians.
Yee mate if not for her people in your literal capital at that time wouldve starved to deat lol. Maybe start feeding your people
we are feeding them much better as we reduce the influence of albanian scamsters. by the way, kolkata was already no longer the capital by the time that scamster came to india.. no idea if her followers scammed you into believing otherwise.
yee mate i think you gotta go back to school and learn the history of the british empire ;) cause youre wrong kiddo
Don't you think that by mentioning Telangana by name this infographic is targetted to Indians?
Please check where it was posted. This is an international sub not an indian sub. If its posted here its aimed at a global audience. If its for indians only then post it in an indian map sub
This is MapPorn, so if it's a map, then it fits.
And FYI this one, this one, this one or this one are just some example showing in my front page.
Youre the one saying its aimed at indians.
Also the text is written by the guy. He couldve easily changed it to fit an knternational audience
And as stated in other comments. Im not advocating for imperial units. But metric ones
It's aimed at Indians and it's a map, so why doesn't it fit here? I need to understand the difference between Wales and Scotland and you can learn a damn unit? Grow up and get educated.
I think you meed to grow up. This is an international sub not a british, or indian one. So use stuff thats understandable to the world
This is not something difficult to understand. And that's a chance for you to understand. If this is too important for you, then go in all the post with maps of specific countries or regions.
Ye well someone told me what it means and that was it. The only reason im having to reply in this thread is cause butthurt indians like you get mad cause i said most people dont know what lakh means
He’s not Indian man. Go look at his post history ffs
For the same reason americans use their measurement system, that no one else in the world uses.
In the near future, India will have more English speakers than all of the Anglo world put together. Indians don't have to change what is part of Indian English.
ye mate thats literally never gonna happen, cause the whole world speaks english, and youre just a fraction of it. and you dont count as natives so dont compare yourselves to the anglo world, cause you aint part of it. youre just some other foreigners that speaks english, how its spoken will be dictated by the anglo world ;)
and also, i didnt advocate for imperial units. dont know why everyone is assuming that.
Americans should change it too
Well the original decimal number system Invented by Indians has these, the one west copied and modified, introduced millions and gazillions, so it's really the other way
Yes you are right. The whole world is wrong and indians are right
Never expected the indians to be so nationalist while still shitting in the streets
It's not too hard to look this up. The current number number system used worldwide is somewhat derived from the Arabic numeric system, which in turn is from the Hindu numeric system.
And what does being "street shitters" have to do with being nationalistic? In fact, doesn't it make sense that the poorer sections of society are more prone to nationalistic chest thumping?
I guess I can't expect more than one simultaneous thought stream from someone so openly racist.
It has a lot to do with being nationalist. Because how can you be proud of a country that hasnt mastered basic sanitation yet.
And yes poorer people are more prone to that. But id sure hope that the poor people that dont have acces to a toilet dont have acces to a phone . Cause then they would have their priorities very very wrong
Never seen someone shit in the street but okay
All Indians? lol ok
Why do all Americans think miles are the international unit of measurement? It means nothing outside to literally all except few countries.
I and most people in the world have no clue what it means.
This mostly attributes to the rise of private schools & household income. Even 10 years ago most of these government schools had full classrooms. But one thing held back these schools is overly dependency on regional language & ignoring English till middle school. So private school students were better in the English curriculum & it reflects at the college level.
Back in 2015 i read a report by Jaiprakash Narayan (IAS) that mentioned that each government school student costs the government 65000 rs a year in cost. A big reason for that was there are thousands/lakhs of schools with less than 10 students where the governement still pays teacher salaries and for school maintainence etc. Teachers fight for postings in such schools where they barely have work and often students and teachers both dont show up. Now that amount is probably well over 1 lakh spent per student.
it would help to know the degree of closed schools relative to the district. because right now it’s not clear if it’s just or or two schools in some districts vs 100s in another that don’t have a school
Yeah, there has been a lot of population movement inside India as people move to new work or just where resources are concentrated, so some districts don't have many students, and so don't get much resources given to them (thus they are not that good), so the people that remain go sedn their kids to private schools or missionary schools that are affordable enough for many.
Close those schools if there isn't a population nearby, invest in the existing schools. Merge closeby schools with less number of students.
How is anything empty in India ???
Some states in India have same quality of life as developed nations. In fact one state in India basically has no poverty, we aren’t all living in slums you know.
Because government schools are crappy.
Government schools are gutter schools with bare education, private schools are proper buildings with quality education.
Are schools with 0 enrollment being kept open or do they eventually close?
they have paid faculties.
Yeah, but for how long?
until they find vacancy in nearby government schools.
Government have to pay its employees even if there is no work to do.
Wow, that's absurd.
OP, this is a good opportunity to emphasize with you and other Indians that nobody outside the region understands what "lakh" is. If you are presenting to an international audience, I recommend you take this into account.
How is this any different from America using imperial measurements?
As an American, this measurement does make the information not immediately clear to me, but I could always clear things up with a quick google search
It's not different and both should be avoided because they hinder communication.
In both cases miscommunication could be rectified easily with a Google search. Similar to how Yen or Euro or Rand or USD conversion is just one Google search away
I was impressed that there are no government schools with zero students in Goa and Sikkim. They are the best states in India after all.
Not sure what this means but ok
Let me guess, they are being replaced with private schools esp. religious?
no. they are being closed/merged with other bigger schools nearby.
Cheers for the reply. That's good to hear.
Religious schools are not common in India except some madrasas which are Muslim schools but they are not that common. India is a religious country but we have a better record with minorities than most western nations.
Only minority religions have any meaningful religious schools and they're still for the most part secular.
Shining India.
[deleted]
No, it's just that you're going to see Indian content whether you like it or not. You can cry in a pillow if your racist self can't tolerate it though.
[deleted]
What does a cultural tradition of scamming mean lmao. Indian scams are small scale and mainly focus on rich western nations but organised fraud which hurts a very large amount of people is far more prevalent in developed nations.
[deleted]
Average american naivety here lol.