Closing schools puts the right to education at risk: India had 11.07 lakh government schools in 2014-15. A decade later, the count has gone down by around 10% to 10.13 lakh. Total school enrolment also fell, from 26.95 crore to 24.69 crore. The more consequential change is in the composition of enrolment. Government schools imparted education to more than 70% of Indian schoolchildren in 2005, but the share fell to below 50% by 2024-25.
UDISE+ 2025-26 reveals that the decline continued. The number of government schools fell by another 8,077 during the financial year, after a fall of 4,338 in 2024-25. Enrolment fell by more than 26 lakh, while private schools added around 30 lakh students. Falling fertility rate and school mergers account for part of this fall. So does the trend of parents who shift their children from government to private schools wherever they can afford it.
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Several forces are at work. India has fewer children entering school as fertility declines. Families continue to move towards private schools where they can afford the fees. State governments are also merging small schools as part of rationalisation programmes. These trends overlap, which makes it difficult to read every fall in the school count as a closure caused by policy. The direction, however, is clear. Public education is being provided through fewer schools.
Why states are closing schools
The case for consolidation starts with the large number of small government schools. NITI Aayog has found out that more than half of primary schools in several states have fewer than 60 pupils. Many function with one or two teachers. A teacher may have to handle several classes while also doing administrative work. Adding more teachers to every such school is expensive; leaving them understaffed produces poor schooling.
NITI Aayog’s SATH-E programme helped Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha reorganise their school networks. Jharkhand merged 4,380 government schools in 2016-17 and 2017-18. The exercise involved savings of around Rs 400 crore. NEP 2020 is in favour of school complexes that can share teachers and facilities. NITI Aayog’s 2026 report carries the argument further by recommending rationalisation based on evidence.
The difficulty begins when enrolment and expenditure become the main tests of whether a school should survive. A school with 30 children is small from the point of view of a state education department. For those 30 children it may be the only school they can reach without transport. Closing it may improve the numbers used to measure teacher deployment while making attendance harder.
The movement towards private schools adds another dimension. UDISE+ 2024-25 recorded about 5.9 lakh fewer pupils in government schools and an increase of roughly 5.8 lakh in private unaided schools. Teacher shortages give parents another reason to leave. A Parliamentary committee has drawn attention to around 10 lakh vacant teaching posts across the country. A family with enough income to pay modest private fees is unlikely to wait for vacancies in the local government school to be filled.
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Closing schools is largely a state story
The national total also does not reveal how concentrated the decline has been. Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, Madhya Pradesh recorded 6,972 fewer government schools. Odisha recorded 4,589 fewer and Jammu & Kashmir 4,380 fewer. These states accounted for most of the net decline in the country during those five years.
Bihar and Rajasthan moved in the other direction and increased their government-school numbers. Rationalisation has therefore not produced a uniform withdrawal of the state from schooling. State governments have made different choices.
Those choices have different consequences because geography differs. A school merger in a well-connected town may mean little more than a longer bus ride. In a hill district or a remote tribal area, the next school may be several kilometres away and public transport may not exist. The same administrative rule can produce very different outcomes.
The right to education also means access
The Right to Education Act requires governments to provide free and compulsory elementary education to children between six and fourteen and gives the neighbourhood school an important place in that obligation. That provision becomes relevant when rationalisation increases the distance a child must travel.
Arunachal Pradesh closed 386 zero-enrolment government schools in June 2025 and redeployed their teachers. Few would argue for keeping a school open after its last pupil has left. Decisions involving schools that still have children are harder to defend on enrolment numbers alone.
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Distance can alter attendance. It can also alter a family’s decision about whether a child, particularly a younger child, should attend at all. Transport costs enter the household budget even when schooling remains nominally free. These effects will be strongest where families have no private school nearby and little ability to arrange transport.
They are also easy for the government to miss. The education department records the saving from closing a building or transferring teachers. The extra hour spent travelling to another school is borne by the child. The bus fare, where a bus exists, is paid by the household.
NEP 2020 and the limits of rationalisation
Keeping every government school open regardless of enrolment would make little sense. Some villages have lost population. Some schools have no pupils. Others are so small that staffing them adequately would absorb teachers who are needed elsewhere.
That still leaves a large category of schools where the decision cannot be made from enrolment figures alone. Before approving a merger, a state government should know how far children will have to travel and whether the receiving school has room for them. It should also know what happens afterwards. If enrolment or attendance falls, part of the saving has been purchased by reducing access to education.
NITI Aayog’s preference for evidence-based rationalisation offers a sensible standard, but the evidence cannot stop with school size, staffing ratios and expenditure. The children who cease to attend after a merger belong in the calculation as well.
Krishna Uppuluri is a development professional, educator, and research scholar whose work explores the intersection of public policy, governance, rural development, and institution building.