Telangana scores 5 out of 10 in Niti Aayog report on school education system

A decade after the creation of a separate Telangana, a Niti Aayog report titled “Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement”, presents a mixed picture of the state of education here.

Data shows that the State has made rapid progress in enrollment rates and infrastructure, however, learning outcomes have dipped over the same period.

Upper primary Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) has gone up from 87.92% to an unmatched 111.6%. For Andhra Pradesh, it has gone up from 81.36% to 101.0%. Primary education GER is at 114% for the State in 2024-25 that is up from 105.64%.

The data is drawn from Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2014-15 to UDISE+ 2024-25, national survey on performance assessment, National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2017, 2021, and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024. The NAS is prior to the COVID pandemic.

At the secondary level, the GER reached 99.9%, a sharp rise from 76.7% a decade ago. The State has reached universal levels for students moving from primary to upper primary stages and maintains a near-universal rate of 98.9% for the transition from upper-primary to secondary level.

Infra advances

The Availability of computer facility in schools has gone up from 37.9% to 86%. However, internet facility has gone up 15.6% to 69.3%. In the same period, AP’s internet facility for students has gone up from 12.3% in 2014-15 to 99% in 2024-25.

The coverage of functional boys’ toilets has improved from 57% to 86.7%, while the girls’ toilets access has improved from 70.7% to 92.9%. GER for girls at the upper-primary level jumped from 88.91% to 102%, at the secondary level it has gone up from 78.58% to 101.5%.

Lagging learning outcomes

It is when the National Achievement Survey data is used that the education picture for Telangana is not so rosy. The performance of students in the state dipped between 2017 and 2021. While Grade 3 students scored 340 out of 500  in 2017, it dropped to 294 in languages, it dropped from 314 to 304 in Math. Similarly for Class V  students, it dropped from 314 in 2017 to 286 in 2021. The drop in learning outcomes continued for Grade 8 students.

Despite the drawbacks, Telangana continues to have a pupil-teacher ratio of 18, which is within the permissible limits of 20 at the primary level.

But the State has the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of schools with zero enrollment at 2,245, right behind West Bengal at 3,812, and at the same time, the State also has 5,001 single-teacher schools, which serve over 62,000 students.