The deeper meaning of declining school enrolment

As the world’s most populous country, India hopes to reap its demographic dividend due to its burgeoning youth population.

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Demographers and policy planners always knew that this window of opportunity would remain open, but only for a limited time. Declining school enrolment over the past decade marks the beginning of the end of this period. This means that India may become older even before becoming rich.It is no wonder that the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (U-DISE+) data for 2022-23 and 2023-24, which was released by the Ministry of Education on December 30, 2024, caused much consternation as it showed a 15.5 million drop (6%) in school enrolment since 2018-19.Official sources have attributed the decline in enrolment to improvements in data collection. They explain that seeding Aadhaar numbers with enrolment eliminates multiple enrolments. This may sound plausible because it has long been suspected that some children are enrolled in multiple schools. However, an analysis of decade-long data (2014-15 to 2023-24) on enrolment and its correlation with different independent variables, including the changes in the population in the age groups relevant to schooling, tells a different story. In fact, it shows a rather grim picture. The needle points toward the beginning of the end of the era of reaping the demographic dividend. It is a matter of concern that school enrolment has plummeted by 24.51 million, or 9.45%, over the past decade, with elementary-level enrolment registering a rather pronounced fall of 18.7 million (13.45%). Up to this level, education has been free and compulsory under the Right to Education (RTE) Act since 2009.In comparison, secondary-level enrolment declined by 1.43 million (3.75%), whereas senior secondary-level enrolments have increased by 3.63 million (15.46%) over the decade. This means that the decline began only