Declining youthful population leading to lower student enrolment: NCERT

Overall enrollment in schools will have fallen by more than 14% by 2025, starting in 2011, with girls’ enrollment expected to decline by more than 2% compared to boys’, according to a study by NCERT.

Enrollment of Scheduled Caste students would remain unchanged over the next 510 years, while the number of Scheduled Tribe students will stagnate after 2023-24, the Education Survey Division study added ( ESD) from NCERT.

The report states that schooling is population-based, so a decline in the child population in the 611, 1114 and 1416 age brackets is reflected in schooling at each stage.

The ‘Projection and Trends of School Enrollment by 2025’ report considered the National Achievement Survey (NAS) conducted by NCERT and annual data figures from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) .

The study looked at NAS reports from 21 states where the population was over 5 million at India’s 2011 population census, indicating that there is a lot of fluctuation in data from northern states. -is and some statistics are not available.

“The growth of enrollment at the primary level continued until 2011. After 2011, enrollment decreased and this will continue until 2025. During the period 2011-2025, total enrollment will decrease by 14, 37% while the enrollment of boys and girls will decrease by 13.28% and 15.54% respectively, according to the study report.

“At the upper primary level, the enrollment of boys, girls and the total percentage started to decline from 2016. During this period, enrollment decreased by 9.47% (in total), 8.07% (boys) and 10.94% (girls). ).

Similarly, a decline in enrollment was also recorded at the secondary level, but here the decline started from 2020, he said.

In Social Groups, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the decline in schooling pattern was very similar to the schooling pattern of India.

“After 201617 and 201718, the enrollment of children from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was almost uniform at all stages for a few years. This may be due to population stagnation,” he said.

It was predicted that after 2020-2021, the enrollment of Scheduled Caste students would remain unchanged for the next 510 years, while in the case of Scheduled Tribe students, there will be stagnation in this group after 2023-24 , he added.

“Enrolment is a function of population. If there is less of a gap between the number of enrollments and the population of children of the respective age or age group, the growth in enrollment will be directly proportional to the growth in the population of children of that respective age or age group., it said.

The NCERT report looked at trends since 1950, when the country had 2,171 schools with 2.38 million students.

The study is an outcome of the PAC program’s goal to project schooling in the country from 2016 to 2025.

This will help identify possible trends in the schooling of boys and girls as well as marginalized groups in society for all states and UTs in the country, said Indrani Bhaduri, head of the surveys division at the National Research Council and of Education Training (NCERT). She said the analysis can provide insight and help the government plan future education policies.

“This forms the basis for many investment decisions such as opening new schools, upgrading existing schools, employing and deploying teachers, and providing infrastructure,” Bhaduri said.

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