A recent report highlights a significant challenge in India’s education system: over 3.3 million students are currently being taught in more than one lakh (100,000) schools staffed by just a single teacher. This widespread issue underscores the ongoing struggle to meet the mandated student-teacher ratios, as revealed by official data and PTI reports.
Specifically, Andhra Pradesh has the highest count of these single-teacher schools, while Uttar Pradesh leads in the sheer number of students enrolled in them. The Ministry of Education’s statistics for the 2024-25 academic year show 104,125 such schools serving 3,376,769 students, averaging about 34 students per school. This figure falls short of the benchmarks established by the Right To Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which ideally requires a 30:1 ratio for primary levels and 35:1 for upper primary education.
State-by-State Breakdown of Single-Teacher Schools
The concentration of single-teacher schools varies significantly across India. Andhra Pradesh leads with 12,912 such institutions, followed by Uttar Pradesh (9,508), Jharkhand (9,172), Maharashtra (8,152), Karnataka (7,349), and Lakshadweep (7,217). Other states with notable numbers include Madhya Pradesh (7,217), West Bengal (6,482), Rajasthan (6,117), Chhattisgarh (5,973), and Telangana (5,001). Delhi has nine single-teacher schools, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have only four. Interestingly, several Union Territories, including Puducherry, Ladakh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Chandigarh, report no such schools.
When looking at student enrollment, Uttar Pradesh records the highest number of students in these schools with 624,327, followed by Jharkhand (436,480), West Bengal (235,494), Madhya Pradesh (229,095), Karnataka (223,142), Andhra Pradesh (197,113), and Rajasthan (172,071).
The average student enrollment per school also shows stark contrasts. Chandigarh and Delhi exhibit the highest density, with an average of 1,222 and 808 students per school, respectively. Conversely, regions like Ladakh (59), Mizoram (70), Meghalaya (73), and Himachal Pradesh (82) have significantly lower average student counts per single-teacher school.
Positive Trends and Government Initiatives
Encouragingly, the overall number of single-teacher schools has been declining, dropping by 6% from 118,190 in 2022-23 to 110,971 in 2023-24.
A senior official, as reported by PTI, stated, “The government is actively working to enhance learning outcomes and ensure the most effective use of existing resources through school mergers and consolidation, a process often referred to as ‘rationalisation of schools’.”
The official also emphasized the detrimental impact of single-teacher schools on the teaching-learning process. Consequently, efforts are underway to reassign teachers from schools with no students to these single-teacher institutions, aiming to guarantee adequate teacher availability. Furthermore, the official explained that while schools with high enrollments effectively utilize their infrastructure, those with low enrollments are being merged to optimize resources and streamline teacher deployment across the board, according to PTI.
Broader Implications for Indian Education
Despite the positive trend of declining numbers, the continued existence of over one lakh single-teacher schools highlights a fundamental structural issue within India’s primary and upper-primary education framework. This situation urgently calls for policymakers to prioritize teacher recruitment, strategic redeployment, and careful school consolidation to meet the student-teacher ratios outlined in the RTE Act.
The collected data further exposes significant regional inequalities. From Andhra Pradesh’s high prevalence of single-teacher schools to Chandigarh’s remarkably dense student populations per school, it’s clear that educational infrastructure and resources are unevenly distributed across the nation.
As India addresses the intertwined challenges of ensuring both access to education and high-quality learning, the government’s rationalization strategy, combined with focused teacher redistribution efforts, will be crucial in closing these persistent gaps. (Statements attributed to government officials were sourced from PTI reports.)