The Case of Empty Desks

Attendance is Kashmir’s first education challenge, and it demands more empathy than enforcement.

- Bashir Ahmad Dar

Low attendance in schools often looks like a simple case of missing students. A teacher marks the register, counts the empty seats, and moves on with the lesson.

The National Education Policy 2020 does not fix a specific attendance bar for students to sit in exams. It leaves the number open, and does something more important.

It asks schools and families to understand why a child stays home in the first place.

This shift matters for Kashmir, where thin attendance has shaped the lives of students for decades.

Notably, attendance across India falls short of what a healthy learning system needs. Studies show a worrying pattern.

In many rural districts, between 4.73 and 17.84 percent of students in primary and upper primary classes stay absent almost every day.

Another nationwide review found that attendance has been stuck around 72 percent for years even though enrolment touches 98 percent.

Delhi offers its own sharp picture. In the 2022-23 school year, more than 3.48 lakh students in government schools were tagged “chronically absent.” A year later, the count rose to more than 6.6 lakh.

Kashmir has its own story inside these numbers.

Attendance thins for reasons tied to life at home, distance from school, and the way classrooms function.

The result is the same everywhere: lost learning, weaker confidence, and habits that travel into adulthood.

Poverty often keeps children out of school. In many parts of the valley, kids take on adult responsibilities earlier than expected. Families running orchards, farms, shops, or small businesses rely heavily on their youngest members.