Nearly half of Gujarat students do not stay in school through Class 12, government data shows

Millat Times Desk

14 July 2026 (Publish: 08:43 AM IST)

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Nearly half of students enrolled in Gujarat’s school system do not remain through Class 12, according to the latest government education data, despite the state’s retention rate being slightly above the national average.

Gujarat retained 54.5% of students from entry into school through the completion of secondary education in 2025-26, compared with the national average of 51.9%, according to the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report released by the federal education ministry.

The state recorded a retention rate of 53% for boys and 56.2% for girls.

Gujarat enrolled 11.5 million students across 53,425 schools during the 2025-26 academic year, the report said.

While the state achieved full retention at the foundational and preparatory stages, the rate fell to 90.4% at the middle stage before declining sharply at the secondary level, the data showed.

The report put Gujarat’s secondary-stage dropout rate at 12.5%, compared with the national average of 7%.

Gujarat had an average of seven teachers per school, matching the national average. However, the state’s student-teacher ratio stood at 29, higher than the national ratio of 24.

The report also identified 58 schools in Gujarat with no enrolled students despite employing 74 teachers. Nationwide, 5,663 schools had zero enrolment while employing 20,667 teachers.

Gujarat had 2,335 single-teacher schools with a combined enrolment of 80,053 students, compared with 100,843 such schools across India serving about 2.91 million students, the report showed.

Opposition Congress lawmaker Nasir Hussain said the figures reflected what he described as a deterioration in school education under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat.

“The BJP government in Gujarat is moving away from the needs of students and schools,” Hussain said in a statement. He said the data showed the government had failed to ensure children remained in school, deploy teachers where they were needed and provide quality education, adding that India could not aspire to become a knowledge economy while neglecting the foundation of its education system.