Madhya Pradesh school enrolment falls 6%; officials in 10 districts get notices

Madhya Pradesh's school enrolment for Classes 1 to 12 has fallen by about 6 per cent in a year, from roughly 1.42 crore students in 2025-26 to about 1.34 crore in 2026-27, according to UDISE+ data as of 13 October 2026. The Rajya Shiksha Kendra (State Education Centre) has issued show-cause notices, dated 16 October, to the district project coordinators of 10 districts over low enrolment figures and slow data entry. The opposition Congress has called the gap of about 8.66 lakh students alarming and asked for a high-level inquiry, while the School Education Department says data entry has improved compared with last year.

UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus) is the Union Education Ministry's national database of schools, teachers and students. Every school in the country, government or private, enters its student records into it each year. The numbers are not just statistics: they are used to plan teacher posts, mid-day meals, free textbooks, uniforms, scholarships and funding under central schemes. If a district's enrolment is under-reported, it may get less than it needs; if children have really left school, the state has a much bigger problem.

The key question is which of these two explanations applies. The "drop box" is a category in UDISE+ for students whose records have been removed from one school but not yet picked up by another, for example after a family moves or a child changes schools. Until a new school claims the record, the child does not show up as enrolled anywhere. Schools in the state are being asked to clear drop-box records for the sessions from 2023-24 to 2026-27. The Rajya Shiksha Kendra's notices focus on incomplete entry, which suggests the department sees part of the fall as a record-keeping gap. The opposition has asked the government to establish whether children actually dropped out, whether financial hardship is a cause, or whether errors in the records explain the gap.

The concern is not new. A reply in the state Assembly in 2021 showed that enrolment in Classes 1 to 8 in government schools fell from about 105 lakh in 2010-11 to about 64 lakh in 2020-21; the government then linked part of that fall to free admissions in private schools under the Right to Education Act and to the cleaning of duplicate records. The Congress has raised dropout rates and teacher vacancies in the state before, in September 2026.

Short-term: District officials in the 10 named districts must explain the lapses within seven days and speed up the entry and tracing of student records. Schools are likely to be asked to account for every child shown as missing or in the drop box.

Long-term: Once the data are complete, the final 2026-27 figure will show whether Madhya Pradesh has a real dropout problem or mainly a data problem. That figure will shape how many teachers, meals and textbooks the state plans for and what it receives under central education schemes.

Who is affected: School students and their parents in Madhya Pradesh, especially in the named districts; teachers and head teachers who must update records; district education officials; and the state's planning for schemes linked to enrolment.

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