India has 7,993 schools with "zero" enrolment, or no students registered in them, a recent report published in the Hindu newspaper, citing PTI and based on the Union Ministry of Education's school education statistics, said. Strangely, these schools with no students had 20,817 teachers on their rolls in 2024-25. That amounts to 2.6 teachers in each student-less school.

The total number of such schools – with no students but only teachers – is declining, the education ministry clarified in a press note on the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE ) 2024-25, issued earlier this year.

In 2023-24, there were 12,954 such schools and in 2022-23, there were 10,294.

The government's press note also says, "...the number of schools having zero enrolment witnessed a whopping decline of around 38%. This is a positive sign."

However, the press note does not clarify why this is a positive sign. On the one hand, it does signal more efficient utilisation of public resources: teachers who do not teach will not keep getting paid. On the other hand, the very presence of empty schools signals that Indian children are being deprived of education even though both schools and teachers exist.

How can this be explained?

There are two ways of looking at this issue. First, had all 7,993 such schools registered students at the average enrolment rate of Indian schools (pegged at 168 students per school by UDISE), India would have had over 13 lakh more students attending school.

Second, there appears to be an effort to close all these non-functional schools (with teachers but no students), as several state governments have done – 1,200 were closed in Himachal Pradesh since 2023, as NDTV reported, and almost 400 were closed in Arunachal Pradesh, as the Hindu newspaper reported. In India, education is on the concurrent list, meaning that the Union and states share the responsibility.

But to understand the tendency to push for school closures, we must look at the impact of such "rationalisation" of schools on students and education.

This brings to the foreground another key statistic: the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) in India. According to the same UDISE report, the existing PTR is 24, a good number by the standards of most nations. In Assam, zero-enrolment schools are being 'merged' to help the state measure the actual PTR, which means the government regards it an important metric. In Arunachal and Himachal, the reasons cited for school closures are closer to maintaining efficiency in the public school departments and so on.

What all these discussions and the focus on the PTR conceal is that over 1 lakh schools in India have only one teacher. These teachers are teaching all levels of students, in their respective schools – a clear sign of poor education planning. The UDISE report says that over 33.7 lakh students study in 1,04,125 "single-teacher" schools, which have also been declining in number.

It is unclear if this decline in single-teacher schools is due to the "extra" teachers from zero-enrolment schools being sent to work in them, or the mergers, closures, or new hirings – or a mix of all these factors. Whatever the reason, governments like to project these mergers, closures and "rationalisations' as a sign of successful education strategy.

But it also shows that India's relatively good PTR conceals the wide inequities in the Indian public schooling system: teachers without students, schools without enough teachers, schools without students and so on.

So why would a falling number of these 7,993 schools, as the ministry's note says, be "a positive sign"? If they are closed, the immediate impact would be to increase the pupil-teacher ratio. That is, there would be fewer teachers and fewer teachers per student. This would be a minor change in the PTR, though for the worse. It would have no effect on students or education, since these teachers have no students anyway.

It would save on teachers' salaries, but that has not been a stated goal of education policy in India. It would not be more efficient, statistically speaking, as there would be more students and fewer teachers.

This brings us to the first option: what if each of these schools was, instead, filled with 168 students (India's average enrolment rate)? Multiplied by 7,993, that would mean 13 lakh more enrolled students across the country. Here, the PTR marginally worsens, but the long-term benefit from more educated youngsters would be immense.

Therefore, what the UDISE notes (on page 18 on its 2024-25 report) is somewhat inexplicable. It says, "It is observed that, Chandigarh and Delhi, has highest number of students per school with PTR within the RTE norm indicating optimum utilisation of school infrastructure. On the other side, for states such as Ladakh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, students per school are significantly low indicating need for optimisation of school’s infrastructure." RTE is a reference to the Right to Education Act, enacted in 2009, which makes education a fundamental right of all children aged 6 to 14.

Here. the UDISE appears to be conflating low enrolment with inefficiency, and high enrolment with efficiency. Whereas, as just observed, what statistics show can often have a completely different impact on the ground: 'better' resource utilisation seen on paper can mean ignoring drop-outs or making schools inaccessible. On the other hand, more schools with more students could bring gains in education, albeit at higher cost.

Zero enrolment schools, if populated with students, would bring another gain: in equity. After all, the "extra" 20,000-plus teachers would now be serving actual students, a great advantage in under-served areas. It would mean that the system has become more – not less – efficient.

Instead, it appears that states with fewer students per school are being given a gentle policy nudge: you are running too many schools. It is an idea of efficiency that many states are now willing to pursue, often without much of a nudge from the Union government.

Also read: Empty Classrooms and Rapidly Closing Schools Spell Doom for Bengal's Children

As already noted, if all 7,993 schools ceased to function, there would be no change in the number of students, which is already zero. However, even here, two policy choices or caveats arise: if the 20,000-plus teachers were assigned to actual students in functioning schools or single-teacher schools, both students and teachers (they would earn an income) would gain.

If the teachers – provided they exist and are not just 'book entries' – are sacked, there would be no significant change to the PTR, but the total number of teachers available in the country would fall. This would be an instance of statistics worsening while nothing changes for students or the country.

Sometimes, what looks like progress in numbers can mask a deeper problem like inequity – one that only better planning, not improved statistics or "rationalisation" can fix.

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