Down the learning curve: Govt schools need greater accountability

But the steadily deteriorating standard of government schools has played a key role in providing the impetus for this preference

The latest findings of the National Statistics Office’s Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education have underlined the well-known fact that the government-schooling system is failing, a development that has a bearing on demographic trends. The survey reveals a decline in attendance in government schools in rural and urban areas since 2017-18. The decline was worryingly sharp in rural India, with a nearly 10 percentage-point drop in the number of higher-secondary students attending government schools from 68 per cent to 58.9 per cent in 2025. In urban areas, the drop was smaller from 38.9 per cent to 36.4 per cent.