All over the country, nearly 84,000 government and government-aided schools have shut down, and student enrolment has declined by nearly 15 million since 2018-19. Access to basic facilities like electricity, toilets, internet, and computers remains limited in several states, painting a bleak picture of the public education system in India.
A Mint analysis of government and government-aided school data in 21 states and Union territories with over 10 million population on eight indicators—school closure, decline in enrolment, and access to electricity, drinking water, toilets, library, computers and the internet—shows Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Chhattisgarh among the worst performing states.
School enrolment in government and government-aided schools has declined much faster in states with average or low scores on the six facilities than in the top five states. Only a handful of states, such as Bihar and Uttarakhand, are spending over 15% of their budgets on education, while there are concerns about the shrinking space for education and other important areas as cash transfers take a large share of the pie.
Experts say long-standing issues in the public education system—from a shift towards private schools to inadequate facilities and poor learning outcomes—can be addressed by channelling more funds towards education. However, the “priorities are wonky”, said Anil Swarup, former school education secretary.
“All these issues can be addressed, but usually a politician is at best interested only in tomorrow, not what happens five years down the line. So they would rather give 10,000 rupees to a family to win elections and spend crores on publicity and statues instead of investing in education,” Swarup added.
State-wise performance
States display varying performance on different indicators.
For example: Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand are among the states that have seen the highest decline in enrolment in government and government-aided schools. In absolute terms, many of these states have seen a sharper decline in school enrolment than the fall in the population of school-going children aged 3-17, signalling that demographic change was not the only factor responsible for the decline in numbers. Read more about it in the first part of the story.
When it comes to basic facilities, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and West Bengal are among the worst-performing. To ascertain a more comprehensive picture, Mint calculated a weighted composite score out of 100 based on eight indicators related to government and government-aided schools: change in number of schools in 2025-26 relative to 2018-19 (weight: 17.39%), change in enrolment relative to 2018-19 (weight: 17.39%), and share of schools having access to facilities like electricity, drinking water and toilet (weight: 13.04% each) and library, computer and internet (weight: 8.7% each).
Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu stand out with the highest score, while Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka emerge poorly.
The story, however, is more nuanced than what the composite scores indicate, with some outliers also. For example, both Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal, despite ranking among the worst, managed to lift school enrolment (103.4% and 100.8%) relative to 2018-19 figures. Madhya Pradesh, with 99.6% of schools having access to toilets, is ahead of 13 of the 21 states and UTs, while Karnataka, with 100% of schools having access to drinking water, tops the list on this front along with some other states.
Facilities and enrolment
One of the main criticisms of the public education system is that a lack of proper facilities has been pushing children towards private schools or out of the system.
An analysis of school enrolment relative to 2018-19 and access to facilities shows that the top five states that have better facilities have lost fewer students compared to the remaining states. If there were 100 students enrolled in 2018-19 in the top five performing states—Delhi, Gujarat, Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu—there were 95 in 2025-26.
When it comes to other states, the figure stands at 89. While this decline in enrolment has happened at all levels, lack of proper facilities may be related to the decline in enrolment numbers, notwithstanding some outlier states like West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir.
Elections over education?
Indian states are spending 13-14% of their budgets on education on an aggregate basis in the last few years, data from the Reserve Bank of India showed. This falls short of the 15-20% prescribed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).
More worrying, this share has declined from 16% or more recorded consecutively between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
Among the states that fare poorly on the indicators mentioned above, Bihar (18.7%), Uttarakhand (17.4%), Rajasthan (16.9%), and Chhattisgarh (16.2%) are the only ones that have, on average since 2018-19, spent more than 15% of their budgets. This is reflected in a higher number of schools in Bihar (up 5.2% from 2018-19), Rajasthan (up 3.5%), and Chhattisgarh (up 0.3%).
Maharashtra, which is an average performer overall but spent over 15.4% of its budget on education during the period, also witnessed a 0.6% increase in schools.
Beyond the varying degree of spending on education among states and below-the-mark aggregate spending on education, shrinking space for such spending in recent years, mainly due to cash transfers as election doles, has also been a source of big worry. At least 12-14 states and union territories have announced some form of cash transfers over the last few election cycles. Data on sectoral shares of the subsidies and transfers in the states’ total revenue expenditure in the 16th Finance Commission report shows that the share of cash transfers has jumped from just 3% in 2018-19 to 20% in 2025‑26.
At the same time, the share of subsidies and transfers on health, education and housing has declined from 13% to 11%. The report noted that expansion of subsidies and cash and in‑kind transfers, if driven by populism, may crowd out other high-priority expenditures such as on education and health, among others.
(This is the second part of a two-part series on India’s government schools. The first part featured all-India trends on government schools, enrolment, facilities and learning outcomes.)