UP records zero dropout inclasses 3-5: UDISE report | Lucknow News
Lucknow: UDISE Plus 2024-25 report of the Union education ministry shows decline in dropout rates in UP across all school levels, with no dropouts at preparatory level (from Class 3 to 5) in 2024-25.In 2022-23 and 2023-24, the dropouts at preparatory level were 5.4% and 20.2% respectively.With this, UP is among six states, Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana that have zero dropout at preparatory level.At middle level (from Class 6 to 8), the dropout rate fell from16% in 2022-23 to 3.9% in 2023-24 and 3% in 2024-25. At secondary level (from Class 9 to 12), UP has 2.8% children not in school as against 5.9% recorded in 2023-24 and 12.7% in 2022-23.Gender wise, while girls drop out more at the middle school level, more boys tend to drop out at the secondary level. In 2024-25, the dropout rate for boys and girls at the middle level stood at 2.9% and 3.1%, respectively, against 3.1% for boys and 4.8% for girls in 2023-24. At the secondary level, it is vice versa, with 3.9% of boys dropping out of school in comparison to 1.5% of girls. In 2023-24, 6.9% of boys dropped out of secondary school against 4.8% of girls.The report shows improvement across educational levels in terms of Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER). The preparatory level boasts a GER of 90.6%, up by 3.9% from 2023-24, when it stood at 86.7%. The GER at the foundational level is at a mere 31.6%, slightly up from 31.9% in 2023-24. GER at middle and secondary levels are at 83.9%, up from 78.8% in 2023-24, and 60.9%, up from 58.5% in 2023-24, respectively.Retention rates reflect a similar trend, with a significant jump at the preparatory level, from 79.6% in 2023-24 to 86.9% in 2024-25. At the secondary level, the retention rate went to 42.8% in 2024-25 as against 37% recorded in 2023-24. At middle school, 70.4% of students were retained as against 69.3% in 2023-24.However, UP has a long way to go to curb the digital divide. Though over 90% of schools have basic amenities like gender-specific toilets, electricity, and hand-washing units, merely 60% of schools, up from 40% in 2023-24, have computer facilities, with 45.9% having internet (up from 38.6% in 2023-24), while 2% of schools have a digital library.Only 19.8%, up from 14.5% in 2023-24, of the 2.62 lakh schools in UP have functional smart classrooms used for teaching with digital boards and smart TV availability, and less than one-fourth — 22.5% (19.5% in 2023-24) — use mobile phones for teaching purposes.
