The District Information System for Education (DISE) is the only nationally-comparable data source of education-related statistics in the country. It is an initiative of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUPEA) – a deemed university established by the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD).

According to a note on the DISE website, the NUPEA set it up to serve as a repository of credible data that would bolster the implementation of the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), a centrally-sponsored programme launched in 1994 to “revitalise the primary education system and to achieve the objective of universalisation of primary education”.

However, a recently-released independent report titled State of the Nation, which dissects the implementation of the Section 12 of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, throws up some glaring discrepancies in DISE’s numbers. DISE’s statistics, conspicuous in their inconsistency, are perhaps telling of how the success of India’s primary education campaign remains highly suspect – and how government statistics often paint a dubious picture at loggerheads with the ground reality.

The report, a collaborative effort of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Central Square Foundation, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Accountability Initiative (AI), and Centre for Policy Research, is titled State of the Nation: RTE Section 12(1)(c).

Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE seeks to impose a legal obligation upon private unaided schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats at the entry level class for children from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and disadvantaged categories. The premise of the provision is based on the fact that private unaided school, owing to its large numbers, are a natural stakeholder in realising the country’s vision of universal primary education.

The report, amid other things, compares “seat fill rate” and “school participation rate” in the context of the Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE.  In the case of Delhi, the seat fill rate in the city’s private unaided schools, according to DISE, was 92.08 per cent in 2013-14.  However, school participation (which is defined as a school having taken at least one admission in the academic year) rate stands at a dismal 48.2 per cent by DISE’s own admission. Which essentially means the rest of the 42.8 per cent private unaided schools, which according to DISE did not even admit one student under the EWS/socially-disadvantaged quota, account for less than seven per cent of total seats under the quota. While mathematically, it could be possible, it seems highly improbable.

What makes the numbers even more dubious is that it is very unlikely that the 48.2 per cent schools, which did admit students under the said provision, filled up all their EWS/socially-disadvantaged seats.

The incongruence in numbers is not limited to Delhi. In Chhattisgarh, the two numbers are 63.1 per cent and 26.84 per cent, respectively. The inconsistency is also stark in Gujarat – where the seat fill rate is 42.6 per cent even as school participation rate languishes at just over 10 per cent.  In Madhya Pradesh, DISE reports enrolment rate as 88.24 per cent, but school participation rate is only 31.4 per cent.  Assam’s seat fill rate is 50.23 per cent, while the school participation rate is less than 15 per cent. The discrepancy is almost as glaring in the other Northeastern states.

In fact, the list of statistical discrepancies in the primary education sector, as pointed out by the report, doesn’t just end there.

The state-wise enrolment numbers reported by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which is the government of India’s flagship programme for “achievement of Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner”, are in complete conflict with DISE’s numbers. According to SSA’s reportage, there was, rather worryingly, not a single student admitted under the EWS/socially-disadvantaged quota in any of Delhi’s private unaided schools during 2013-14. However, according to DISE, there were as many as 35,264 admissions under the said category in the same period.  As in the previous case, the disparity in data extends to almost all other states in the country.

The bizarreness doesn’t end there. The SSA portal also reports admissions of students in class 8 – which is strange since the highest class a child could have progressed to, in the four years since the implementation of this Act, is class 5. Also, the SSA data is broken into quarters – which is again curious since schools cannot possibly be admitting children throughout the year.

What, then, are the reasons for data divergences as blatant as above? Also, since both data sets come from government institutions, how do such statistical contradictions impact primary education in the country?

Praveen Khanghta, who works for the Central Square Foundation, and is one of the authors of the report lists out three reasons for the discrepancy:

1. DISE data is largely self-reported by private unaided schools.
2. DISE data is for admissions in class 1, yet substantial numbers of private unaided schools run pre-primary classes. As the admission under this section is applicable at entry level, there is a possibility that the schools in DISE data may not have reported pre-primary information.
3. There is no way to separate the data of religious and linguistic minority schools from other private unaided schools. As the former are not obligated to admit 25% EWS/ disdvantaged children, the DISE data might not accurately capture implementation of this section.

Khanghta, however, says the latest DISE data capture format (2014-15) has made some improvement. “It asks for the number of children enrolled under section 12(1)(c) at entry level (rather than class 1) and also about minority (religious) status of the school,” Khanghta stated

According to Khanghta, the most immediate implication of data inconsistency is related to the reimbursement of these private schools (private schools are eligible for government compensation in lieu of EWS/socially-disadvantaged seats they provide, according to the Act). “The state governments are using their own data sources reported from the school, rather than DISE/ SSA data. The problem is that not all states report this number publicly or share the raw data [school wise] for crosschecking. Rajasthan is an exception where the numbers are reported school, district and state wise on their RTE portal,” he said.

The reimbursement aspect of Act could indeed have major detrimental impact on the programme, particularly when one of the organisations reporting the data is closely associated to the reimbursement process:  A 24 March, 2014 notification by the MHRD directs the utilisation of SSA funds towards reimbursement of private unaided schools. So, according to SSA’s 2013-14 data for Delhi, it has no reimbursements to take care of since, according to it, there were no admissions made in the said category at all. Our multiple emails and calls to DISE and SSA remained unanswered.

It seems we will never know with any amount of concreteness the progress of one of the nation’s most critical social schemes – for there is just no data that add up.  The irony is hard to miss: there are no credible numbers to gauge the success of a program that aims to teach children how to count.