India has 1.44 lakh teachers in over 65,000 government schools with less than 10 students

India has 65,054 government schools with fewer than 10 students or zero enrolment in 2024-25, the education ministry told Lok Sabha in response to a question on Monday. These schools collectively have 1,44,238 teachers on their rolls, according to state-wise data placed before the House.

The ministry submitted that the numbers are drawn from the UDISE Plus 2024-25 record and include both schools with underenrolment and no enrolment. UDISE Plus, or the Unified District Information System for Education Plus, is the only central repository of data on school education in India.

West Bengal has once again reported the highest number of government schools with fewer than 10 students at 6,703. It had the dubious distinction of being the state with most such schools in the previous edition of the UDISE+ report as well but both numbers have grown significantly.

With a clutch of schools in Dum Dum, Kolkata, Academia360 had reported how a mix of factors – poor infrastructure, mushrooming of English-medium private schools and even government schools, and inefficient linking of secondary with primary levels – had led to the situation.

UDISE+: States with most underenrolled schools

Uttar Pradesh follows West Bengal with 6,561 low-enrolment schools, and Maharashtra reported 6,552; Karnataka reported 5,327 and Rajasthan, 5,235. These are also some of the largest and most populous states.

10 states with most low-enrolment schools

The number of low-enrolment schools has risen even though the total number of government schools has shrunk from 10,32,570 in 2019-20 to 10,13,322 in 2024-25.

School Enrolment, government teacher

Himachal Pradesh reported 1,818 underenrolled schools, while Assam had 1,545. Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Odisha and Arunachal Pradesh have between 500 and 1,000 schools with zero to 10 enrolment. The rest, including smaller states like Haryana and Punjab and the Northeastern ones, have under 500 such schools each.

Goa has 110 underenrolled schools and the remaining UTs, less than 50 each. Chandigarh and Lakshadweep reported no government schools with fewer than ten students in 2024–25.

The teacher deployment pattern for the year 2024-25 shows that West Bengal records the highest number of teachers posted for fewer than ten students at 27,348. Uttar Pradesh follows with 22,166 teachers. Rajasthan has 11,620 teachers for 5,235 schools and Maharashtra has 11,056 teachers for 6,552 schools with less than 10 students enrolled.

School mergers

Over the last few years, different states have attempted to merge schools with low enrolment – a process the policy-makers describe as “school rationalisation” – to make better use of resources, including teachers.

After a ‘pilot’ phase in certain states, primarily Rajasthan, the union government’s think-tank, NITI Aayog oversaw the closure and merger of thousands of schools across states as part of its reform project, Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital in Education (SATH-E). A late 2023 report said it had helped merge 35,000 schools in Madhya Pradesh, over 4,300 in Jharkhand and 2,000 in Odisha.

More recently, other states have taken that step. Uttar Pradesh initiated mergers in 2023 and announced a fresh round, in the face of massive opposition from teachers as well as political leaders, in 2025. Others, including Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, have also taken steps to merge schools.

In Karnataka, the state government is planning to merge 41,000 small government primary schools — typically those with low student enrolment — with larger, better-equipped institutions, such as the newly created Karnataka Public Schools (KPS) or "Magnet" schools under the KPS Magnet scheme launched by the state government.

However, large-scale school mergers have harmed the education of many communities, usually the most marginalised. In Kanpur, mergers pushed students from minority communities, some of the city’s poorest, out of school altogether. In Odisha, multiple villages fought back against school closures when they required children as young as 6 years old to move to hostels or walk through forests to reach their new school. In Karnataka, several student and teachers’ groups are opposing the KPS Magnet scheme.