TL;DR India’s latest UDISE+ 2025–26 data reveals a school education system in transition. While government schools continue to educate the majority of students nationally, private schools are steadily gaining ground, particularly at the primary level and in several states. The report also highlights persistent gaps in early childhood education, with one in five children entering government schools without preschool experience. Together, these trends point to shifting parental preferences, changing enrolment patterns, and emerging policy challenges around school planning, teacher deployment, and foundational learning.

Context
School education is often discussed through the lens of board exam results, budget announcements, or ambitious policy promises. Yet the quieter story lies in the data that captures who enters the classroom, who stays, where schools are expanding, and where the system continues to fall short. Released annually by the Ministry of Education, UDISE+ is India’s most comprehensive administrative database on school education, offering a granular view of nearly every recognised school, teacher, and student across the country. The 2025–26 report arrives at a crucial moment, as governments seek to achieve the National Education Policy’s goals of universal participation and improved learning outcomes while confronting slowing demographic growth, uneven digital readiness, and persistent regional disparities. Beyond headline numbers, the data reveals how India’s schooling landscape is changing, highlighting shifts in enrolment, infrastructure, teacher deployment, equity, and access that will shape education policy in the years ahead.

In today’s story, we examine the report’s most important findings and what they reveal about the state of school education in India.

Who compiles this data?
The data is compiled annually by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Education, through the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+). Schools upload data directly to the UDISE+ platform, where it undergoes multiple stages of verification at the block, district, and state levels before being consolidated into a national database, making it the government’s primary repository of school education statistics.

Where can I download clean & structured data related to this?
Clean, structured, and ready-to-use datasets on Indian School Education system are available on Dataful. The datasets cover key indicators such as student enrolment, teacher strength, school infrastructure, and performance metrics, with granular breakdowns by gender, states, school management, school category, and other dimensions wherever available, making them suitable for research, policy analysis, journalism, and data-driven reporting.

Key Insights

Private schools now enrol the majority of students in several states
The balance between public and private schooling varies sharply across India, reflecting differences in income levels, urbanisation, and the historical strength of government school systems. Nationally, government and government-aided schools continue to educate the majority of students, accounting for 58% of total enrolment in 2025–26, compared with 40% in private schools. However, this lead has narrowed steadily from 65% versus 33% in 2022–23, underscoring the continued shift towards private schooling.

The trend is even more pronounced in several states. By 2025–26, private schools enrolled a majority of students in Haryana (62%), Telangana (65%), Nagaland (67%), Manipur (66%), Andhra Pradesh (57%), Uttar Pradesh (54%), Uttarakhand (62%), Punjab (53%), Rajasthan (53%), Puducherry (61%), Mizoram (51%) and Ladakh (53%), while Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were evenly split between government and private schools. In contrast, government schools continue to dominate enrolment in states such as West Bengal (87%), Goa (86%), Bihar (81%), Odisha (78%), Tripura (73%), Kerala (70%), Assam (69%) and Jharkhand (68%), where they remain the principal providers of school education.

Several states have also witnessed notable shifts over the past four years. Andhra Pradesh moved from a near-even split in 2022–23 (51% government, 49% private) to a clear private majority in 2025–26 (43% government, 57% private). Uttar Pradesh crossed the halfway mark for private enrolment, with the private share rising from 42% to 54%, while Haryana saw private schools increase their share from 55% to 62%. Telangana recorded one of the largest changes, with private enrolment rising from 56% to 65%, and Uttarakhand from 51% to 62%. By contrast, states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Kerala and Goa have seen only marginal changes, with government schools continuing to enrol a large majority of students despite a gradual increase in the private share. These contrasting trajectories suggest that the shift towards private schooling is not uniform across India but is concentrated in a relatively small group of states where the expansion of private education has accelerated over the past decade, along with changing preferences.

Public-Private enrolment gap at the Primary level shrinks by 54%
India’s school enrolment landscape has steadily shifted towards private institutions over the past four academic years. Between 2022–23 and 2025–26, enrolment in government and government-aided schools declined across almost every stage of schooling. The sharpest fall was at the primary level, where public schools lost over 1.53 crore students (21%), while elementary enrolment (Classes 1–8) declined by 1.93 crore students (16%). In contrast, private unaided schools recorded consistent growth, adding 51 lakh primary students (14%) and 88 lakh elementary students (16%) over the same period.

Although government schools continue to educate more children than private schools, the gap is narrowing rapidly. At the elementary level, the enrolment difference between government/government-aided and private unaided schools shrank from 6.33 crore students in 2022–23 to 3.53 crore in 2025–26, a reduction of 2.81 crore students (44%). The gap at the primary level more than halved, falling from 3.83 crore to 1.78 crore students. The trend is far less pronounced at the secondary and higher secondary levels, suggesting that the shift towards private schooling is strongest during the foundational years.

The trend carries important policy implications. Government schools remain the backbone of India’s education system, particularly in rural and disadvantaged regions. Falling enrolment affects teacher deployment, school consolidation, and infrastructure planning, while the growing preference for private schools raises important questions about parental perceptions of quality, affordability, and the future role of public education in delivering equitable access to schooling.

1 in 5 children entering government schools begin Class 1 without preschool
A child’s first day in Class 1 is not their first day of learning. Preschool helps build the language, social, cognitive, and motor skills that prepare children for formal schooling, which is why the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 places Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) at the heart of the foundational stage.

Yet the latest UDISE+ data shows that one in five children (~20%) entering Class 1 in government schools had no preschool experience, a proportion that has remained largely unchanged since 2022–23. In private unaided schools, the share has fallen from 25% to 16% over the same period, meaning roughly one in six children now begin Class 1 without preschool.

The data also points to two distinct pathways into primary education. Among government school students who attended preschool, 55% came through Anganwadi or ECCE centres, while 36% attended preschool in the same school. In private schools, the pattern is reversed: 76% of children transitioned from the school’s own preschool, 18% came from another school, and only 6% had attended an Anganwadi or ECCE centre. The contrast underscores the central role of India’s public ECCE system in preparing children for government schools, while private schools largely rely on integrated preschool-to-primary pipelines.

Why does it matter?
UDISE+ is more than a statistical exercise; it provides the evidence that shapes education policy, public spending, and school planning across India. As the country moves from expanding access to improving quality under the National Education Policy 2020, understanding where students enrol, how they enter the school system, and which institutions they choose becomes increasingly important. The trends highlighted in this report have implications for teacher allocation, infrastructure investments, early childhood education, and the long-term role of government schools in delivering equitable, high-quality education.

Key Numbers

• Enrolment in Govt and Pvt Schools
  2022-23: Govt: 65%, Private: 33%; 2025-26: Govt: 58%, Private: 40%

• Enrolment by Level of Education and School Management (2025-26)
  • Primary: Govt and Govt Aided: 5.8 Crore, Private: 4.1 Crore
  • Upper Primary: Govt and Govt Aided: 4.0 Crore, Private: 2.2 Crore
  • Elementary: Govt and Govt Aided: 9.8 Crore, Private: 6.3 Crore
  • Secondary: Govt and Govt Aided: 2.4 Crore, Private: 1.4 Crore
  • Higher Secondary: Govt and Govt Aided: 1.7 Crore, Private: 1.1 Crore

• Pre-School Experience for New Admissions to Class 1 (2025-26)
  • Govt Schools: 79%; Private Schools: 84%

Note: Featured image generated with ChatGPT