‘School Thik Karo’: Lakhs of schools, crores in public money, but do they meet the basic tests?

You may not agree with the Cockroach Janta Party’s politics; you may not like their leaders. But their focus on education has struck a chord across the nation. In just the past two weeks, we have seen several videos, made by young students, demanding basic facilities for their schools. 

But the videos have also triggered a very different response.

In Uttar Pradesh, youth activist Rajat Singh was booked after filming the condition of a government primary school in Deoria. Police accused him of entering the school without authorisation and spreading misinformation.

Similarly, in Noida, Pankaj Awana, the UP president of the AAP youth wing, was booked for similar reasons. And in Maharashtra, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and others were booked for a visit to a government school in Latur. The complaint alleged that they entered without permission, disrupted classes and threatened teachers.

Then, in Jaipur, things turned violent when CJP co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka and other CJP workers were confronted during a visit to a government school. CJP alleged that BJP workers attacked the team, pelted stones and damaged their vehicles. The other side disputed that account, and cross-FIRs were filed — including an FIR naming Ranka and 50–60 CJP workers under the SC/ST Act and other sections.

So this campaign is now raising a different question too: what happens when people try to document the condition of government schools themselves?

And that's the question behind CJP’s new campaign – #FixTheSchools, asking students, parents and citizens to conduct an audit of India’s government schools. The campaign focuses on five basic requirements: functioning toilets, electricity, clean drinking water, classroom benches, and the quality of midday meals.

Ground reality: Improvements vs persistent gaps

So, what does the data tell us about what has improved in the last decade, and what gaps remain?

Let’s start with midday meals. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme was started in 1995 to improve enrolment, attendance and retention. It was renamed PM POSHAN in 2021 and provides meals to students from Classes 1 to 8.

One report on the PM POSHAN dashboard tracks schools where meals have not been served for more than five days in a month. In August alone, 6,698 such schools were reported across the country. Maharashtra tops this list, followed by Meghalaya, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In 2024-25, PM POSHAN covered 10.36 lakh government and government-aided schools, serving around 11.2 crore children. So, against the total, the 6,600+ schools are only 0.6 percent of the schools under the scheme.

Now, let’s look at electricity. Electricity availability has grown nearly 1.6 times, from 55.96 percent in 2014 to 91.9 percent in 2024-25. But even today, 1.19 lakh schools lack functional electricity, according to a NITI Aayog report. That’s nearly 10 percent of the schools.

The same story holds for water and sanitation. The share of schools with drinking water rose from 96.5 percent in 2014 to 99 percent in 2024-25. But 14,505 schools still lack a functional water source, while nearly 60,000 lack hand-washing facilities.

And while the share of schools with functional toilets has increased from 85.17 percent to 94 percent, 98,592 schools still lack functional girls’ toilets, and 61,540 schools have no usable toilets at all.

So, the numbers show improvement. But when you are looking at more than 14 lakh schools, even a small percentage can mean tens of thousands of schools. And these are only the basics.

Big picture

But let’s now look at the school system through a macro lens. An important change has happened over the last decade.

India had 11.07 lakh government schools in 2014-15. Today, that number is 10.13 lakh. That is a decline of nearly 94,000 government schools. At the same time, the number of private unaided schools increased from 2.88 lakh to 3.39 lakh.

Now, NITI Aayog says this decline in government schools is largely because of school consolidation and mergers of under-enrolled schools, and should not automatically be interpreted as a decline in access.

Second, one of the biggest structural problems is the way schools are distributed across grades. India has around 7.3 lakh primary schools. But that falls to 4.34 lakh at the upper-primary level, and then to 1.42 lakh secondary schools and 1.64 lakh higher-secondary schools. So as children move up the grades, the availability of schools becomes thinner.

We see the same pattern in enrollment. At the primary stage, the Gross Enrolment Ratio is 90.9 percent, and it remains almost the same at upper primary, at 90.3 percent. But it falls to 78.7 percent at the secondary level, and further to 58.4 percent at higher secondary, according to UDISE 2024-25 data. This means that nearly four out of every ten children who enter the school system are unable to continue through to higher secondary education.

The grade coverage of schools helps explain this problem further. Out of 14.7 lakh schools, 7.3 lakh cover only the primary grades from class 1 to 5. Another 3.45 lakh schools cover classes 1 to 8. But only 73,379 cover class 1 to 10. And only 79,980 cover classes 1 to 12, which equals 5.4 percent of the total.

But it’s not just about the number of schools. It’s also about who is teaching them. Across the country, particularly in remote and sparsely populated regions, more than one lakh schools operate with just one teacher. That is more than 7 percent of all schools. In these schools, one teacher may have to teach multiple grades, handle administrative work, maintain records, deal with parents, and supervise the midday meal.

Policy vs execution

Now, this brings us to another question: what are children actually learning in these schools? Six years ago, the Modi government introduced the National Education Policy 2020, which promised to move education away from rote learning and towards critical thinking, scientific temper, problem-solving and vocational education. But implementation remains uneven.

For instance, only 51.7 percent of government secondary schools have science laboratories. And when it comes to vocational education, NITI Aayog’s latest skilling report says fewer than one in 12 secondary schools currently offer vocational subjects. So, while the policy talks about preparing students for the future, many schools are still struggling to provide the infrastructure and opportunities needed to do that.

Similarly, digital infrastructure has improved. Internet connectivity has increased eightfold, from 8.05 percent in 2014-15 to 63.5 percent today. Similarly, 64.7 percent of schools now have computers, compared with just 26.42 percent a decade ago. But again, this progress is not consistent. States such as West Bengal, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh remain below the national average for internet connectivity.

And finally, there is the teacher, the pillar NEP relies on the most.

Go to any government school and ask the teachers their biggest problem, and mostly they will tell you the same thing. They are made to do a lot of non-teaching work. From village census to election duties to surveys, even the latest SIR exercise is being done by government teachers, leaving them overburdened. According to the NITI Aayog report, nearly 14 percent of planned teaching days go unutilised because teachers are engaged in other duties.

And perhaps this is the larger problem with India's school system. We have spent the last decade expanding infrastructure, electricity, internet and other facilities, and there has been some progress. But a school is not just a building. It needs a functioning toilet. Clean water. A safe meal. A teacher. And, ultimately, a classroom where that teacher can actually teach.

That is what ‘School Thik Karo’ is asking for. And hopefully, this campaign doesn’t just draw attention to these problems, but pushes governments actually to fix them. Because for the 12 crore children studying in government schools, fixing these basics is not a political slogan.

Your support keeps news free. Get a 6-month subscription at Rs 1947. Or gift it to your friends or relatives.