India: Number Of Teachers Crossed One Cr. But Only One Teacher In 1 lakh Schools

• By Thetripurapost Desk, Delhi
• Aug 29, 2025
• 530

For the first time in the country, the number of teachers in an academic session has reached more than 1 crore. 

However, there are 1,04,125 schools across the country in which there is only one teacher. At the same time, there is not a single enrollment in 7993 schools, meaning no one studies there. However, both these figures have decreased compared to the last session.

These figures have come out in the report of the academic session 2024-25 of the Unified District Information System for Education (UDICE). 

UDICE is the database of the Union Ministry of Education, which aims to collect education related information from all schools.

The latest report shows that the total number of teachers in the session 2023-24 was 98.83 lakh, which has now increased to 1 crore 1 lakh 22 thousand 420. 

Of these, 51% (51.47 lakh) teachers are in government schools. The number of women teachers has also increased rapidly in a decade.

In 2014-15, there were 45.46 lakh male teachers and 40.16 lakh female teachers, which will increase to 46.41 lakh and 54.81 lakh respectively in 2024-25. 

The major reason for the increase in the number of female teachers by about 8% in the last decade is their recruitments. Out of the 51.36 lakh recruitments since 2014, 61% have been of female teachers.

At the middle level, 10 years ago, a teacher had 26 students, which has now come down to 17. At the secondary level, it has come down from 31 to 21. 

This means that the communication between students and teachers is improving. The fewer students a teacher has, the more time they will be able to give them.

The dropout rate has decreased. At the secondary level, it was 10.9% in 2023-24, which has come down to 8.2% in 2024-25. At the middle level, it has come down to 3.5% compared to 5.2% and at the primary level, it has come down to 2.3% from 3.7%.

The retention rate at primary has increased from 85.4% to 92.4% in 2023-24. At middle it has increased from 78% to 82.8% and at secondary it has increased from 45.6% to 47.2%. The enrollment rate at the secondary level has increased to 68.5%.

Bengal has the highest number of primary schools (80%) and Chandigarh has the lowest (3%). Chandigarh has 1222 students per school. Ladakh has 59 students.

At the higher secondary level, in Jharkhand schools, a teacher has to teach an average of 47 students. In Sikkim, this figure is only 7 on an average.

Bihar ranks lowest in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at all levels - upper primary (69%), secondary (51%) and higher secondary (38%). 

This ratio tells how many children of eligible age are studying in school at any level.

This ratio is highest in Chandigarh where the GER for upper primary is 120%, middle is 110% and higher secondary is 107%.