Dr Md Tabrez Alam
The debate over school closures is not about infrastructure alone. It is about deciding whose children deserve a neighbourhood school and whose education can be sacrificed in the name of efficiency and reform.
Abstract: Over the past decade, India has witnessed the closure or merger of more than 93,000 government schools—a transformation officially justified as administrative “rationalisation” and educational efficiency. Yet this process is unfolding unevenly, with its greatest consequences borne by Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, and poor Muslim children, who rely overwhelmingly on neighbourhood government schools. Drawing upon the latest NITI Aayog report, UDISE+ data, parliamentary records, constitutional provisions, and recent field reporting, this article argues that school consolidation is not merely a technical reform but a restructuring of educational access with profound implications for social justice. It contends that the shrinking of public schooling undermines the constitutional promise of equality and revives an older hierarchy in which quality education increasingly becomes the privilege of those who can afford it, while the marginalised are left to negotiate longer distances, greater exclusion, and diminished educational opportunity.
A Building Without a Bell
On 17 June 2026, officials in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district issued a routine administrative order directing the merger of Primary School Mirza Babu with another government school located several kilometres away. Similar directives soon appeared across Mathura and other districts, instructing authorities to identify schools with fewer than twenty students for consolidation.
Such notifications rarely attract national attention. They are framed as bureaucratic necessities intended to optimise resources and improve educational quality. Yet behind these seemingly ordinary administrative decisions lies one of the most significant transformations of India’s public education system since Independence.
According to information placed before Parliament, the number of government schools declined from 11.07 lakh in 2014–15 to nearly 10.13 lakh in 2024–25, representing a loss of more than 93,000 schools over a decade. The scale is staggering: approximately twenty-five government schools disappeared every day for ten consecutive years. Simultaneously, the share of children studying in government schools has steadily declined while enrolment in private institutions has continued to expand. These trends are documented not only in parliamentary records but also in the NITI Aayog’s 2026 report, School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement, which presents perhaps the most comprehensive recent assessment of India’s schooling landscape.
The closure of a school, however, cannot be understood merely as the disappearance of a building. For millions of children belonging to Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, and economically disadvantaged Muslim communities, the neighbourhood government school represents the first—and often the only—meaningful encounter with the Indian state. It is where constitutional promises of equality, citizenship, and social mobility become tangible. When such institutions disappear, the burden does not fall equally across society. Middle-class families frequently possess alternatives: private schools, transport, digital learning resources, and supplementary coaching. Marginalised households often possess none of these. Consequently, what appears as administrative efficiency in policy documents frequently translates into educational exclusion on the ground.
This article argues that the ongoing wave of government school mergers represents far more than an exercise in administrative rationalisation. It reflects a broader restructuring of India’s public education system that disproportionately disadvantages historically marginalised communities. By analysing recent evidence from UDISE+, the NITI Aayog report, parliamentary debates, and constitutional provisions, the article asks a fundamental question: Who pays the social cost of educational rationalisation? It contends that the answer lies at the intersection of caste, class, geography, and state responsibility.
Public Education and the Unfinished Democratic Project
The contemporary debate on school closures is not an isolated administrative question; it belongs to a much longer history of educational inequality in India. More than a century before the Right to Education became a constitutional guarantee, Jyotirao Phule warned the colonial administration that neglecting universal primary education would reinforce existing systems of caste domination. Appearing before the Hunter Commission in 1882, Phule criticised a model of public expenditure that privileged higher education for socially dominant groups while leaving the education of Shudras, Ati-Shudras, and other oppressed communities neglected. Education, he argued, was not merely a means of acquiring literacy but the foundation of social emancipation.
This vision profoundly influenced later struggles for educational justice. Savitribai Phule’s pioneering work in girls’ education demonstrated that access to schooling was inseparable from struggles against caste and patriarchy. Dr B.R. Ambedkar similarly regarded education as the principal instrument through which historically oppressed communities could challenge inherited hierarchies. His famous exhortation—”Educate, Agitate, Organise”—was not simply a political slogan but a programme for democratic transformation. Education was conceived as a public good capable of redistributing power rather than merely producing skilled labour.
The failure of Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s Compulsory Primary Education Bill of 1911 symbolised the reluctance of the colonial state to universalise elementary education. Several contemporary scholars, notably Anil Sadgopal, argue that many structural features of that unequal educational order continue to shape independent India’s schooling system. Public investment remains uneven, neighbourhood schools often lack adequate infrastructure, and quality education continues to correlate strongly with class and social location.
The Constitution sought to reverse this historical trajectory. Through the 86th Constitutional Amendment, Article 21A established free and compulsory education for children between six and fourteen years of age as a Fundamental Right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, operationalised this guarantee by requiring neighbourhood schools accessible to every child.
However, the constitutional commitment to education extends beyond Article 21A. Article 14 guarantees equality before law, Article 15 prohibits discrimination, while Article 46 directs the State to promote the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other weaker sections. Together, these provisions establish education not merely as a developmental objective but as an instrument of substantive equality. It is against this constitutional framework that current school closures must be evaluated. The question is not whether governments may reorganise educational infrastructure. Rather, it is whether such reorganisation advances—or undermines—the constitutional obligation to expand equitable educational access.
Rationalisation or Retreat?
Governments across several states justify school mergers through the language of efficiency. Schools with declining enrolment, officials argue, cannot provide quality education because they often function with limited infrastructure, multigrade classrooms, and severe teacher shortages. Consolidating these institutions into larger campuses is presented as a strategy to improve learning outcomes by pooling resources, increasing teacher availability, and strengthening infrastructure.
At first glance, this argument appears persuasive. Indeed, the NITI Aayog report acknowledges significant structural weaknesses in India’s school system. It identifies an educational network dominated by thousands of small standalone primary schools while secondary and higher secondary institutions remain comparatively scarce. The report argues that a more integrated schooling structure could improve continuity of education and optimise public investment.
Yet this diagnosis tells only part of the story. The report simultaneously reveals deep systemic deficits that cannot be solved merely through consolidation. More than one lakh government schools continue to function with only a single teacher, while teacher vacancies remain exceptionally high in several states. Large numbers of instructional days are lost because teachers are routinely assigned non-academic administrative duties. These shortages are symptoms of prolonged underinvestment rather than evidence that neighbourhood schools themselves have become obsolete.
More importantly, educational planning cannot be reduced to numerical efficiency. A school serves functions extending far beyond classroom instruction. It provides nutritional support through the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, enables early childhood socialisation, strengthens community participation through School Management Committees, and, especially for girls, offers a safe and locally accessible learning environment. Measuring schools solely by enrolment numbers risks ignoring these broader social functions. For children living in tribal settlements, remote villages, and socio-economically disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods, distance remains one of the strongest predictors of educational participation. A merger that requires a child to travel an additional four or five kilometres each day may appear insignificant in administrative calculations, yet it can determine whether that child continues attending school at all.
Who Bears the Cost? The Social Geography of School Closures
Official narratives describe school mergers as technically neutral exercises in “resource optimisation.” Yet education in India has never been socially neutral. Government schools disproportionately serve children from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, poor Muslims, and economically weaker households. Consequently, any reduction in the public schooling network inevitably affects these communities far more than privileged groups with access to private alternatives.
Recent UDISE+ data reveal a troubling pattern. Between 2022–23 and 2025–26, enrolment declined across foundational stages of schooling despite policy commitments to universal education. Primary enrolment recorded one of the sharpest declines, while Gross Enrolment Ratios at the foundational stage remained well below universal levels. These trends cannot be dismissed merely as demographic change; they indicate that India’s educational pipeline is narrowing at its very base.[^1] The decline is particularly worrying because educational exclusion rarely occurs suddenly. Children seldom disappear from the system overnight. Instead, exclusion begins with irregular attendance, longer travel distances, seasonal migration, household labour, or the absence of nearby schools. Administrative consolidation can accelerate these vulnerabilities.
Parliamentary data demonstrate that school closures have been concentrated in states with large rural populations and significant concentrations of socially disadvantaged communities. Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh together account for tens of thousands of government school closures over the past decade.[^2] Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed extensive school rationalisation alongside persistent teacher vacancies. Similar concerns have emerged from tribal regions of central India where dispersed settlements make neighbourhood schools indispensable rather than redundant.
For policymakers examining aggregated statistics, merging two schools separated by four kilometres may appear administratively reasonable. For a seven-year-old child in a tribal hamlet, however, that additional distance may determine whether school remains accessible at all.
The consequences are particularly severe for girls. Numerous studies have demonstrated that increased travel distance disproportionately reduces girls’ attendance because of safety concerns, domestic responsibilities, and prevailing gender norms. The educational trajectory of a Dalit or Adivasi girl living in a remote village cannot be analysed independently of these intersecting structural barriers. School closures therefore reproduce existing inequalities rather than merely reorganising infrastructure. The same logic applies to economically disadvantaged Muslim communities, particularly in urban informal settlements and rural regions where government schools remain the principal providers of affordable education. Rationalisation may appear socially neutral in administrative documents, but its effects follow the familiar contours of caste, class, religion, and geography.
Beyond Numbers: A Constitutional Question
The debate surrounding school mergers is often framed as one of administrative efficiency versus educational quality. This framing is incomplete because it overlooks the constitutional character of public education. The Right to Education Act was enacted not simply to increase enrolment but to ensure that every child has access to a neighbourhood school. Accessibility is therefore not an incidental feature of educational policy; it is central to the legal architecture of educational rights.
Article 21A guarantees free and compulsory education, but its effectiveness depends upon the State’s ability to make schools physically accessible. When neighbourhood schools disappear without adequate transport, safety measures, or meaningful community consultation, the practical enjoyment of that constitutional right is diminished. Equally important is Article 46, which directs the State to promote the educational interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other weaker sections while protecting them from social injustice. This constitutional obligation requires governments to evaluate educational reforms not only through fiscal efficiency but also through distributive justice. A policy that disproportionately disadvantages historically marginalised communities cannot be assessed solely through enrolment statistics or infrastructure indicators.
The Constitution therefore demands a broader question: Does school consolidation expand educational equality, or does it deepen existing inequalities? This question becomes even more significant in the context of the National Education Policy 2020. The NEP envisions universal access, foundational literacy, and a Gross Enrolment Ratio of 100 per cent at the secondary level by 2030. These ambitions cannot be realised if foundational schooling continues to contract. The contradiction is striking. On one hand, policy seeks universal education. On the other, neighbourhood educational infrastructure is shrinking. Unless this contradiction is addressed, India’s educational reforms risk becoming administratively efficient while socially exclusionary.
Child Protection: The Invisible Cost Beyond the Closure
The protection of children from exploitation, abuse, and neglect is inseparable from the right to education. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, positions schools themselves as protective institutions: it prescribes safe infrastructure, prohibits corporal punishment, and empowers School Management Committees as welfare-oversight bodies expected to monitor children’s well-being. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012; the Child Labour Amendment Act, 2016; and the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, similarly expect the school to function as the State’s principal point of contact through which at-risk children are identified, supervised, and referred for intervention.
When a neighbourhood government school closes, these protective functions close alongside it. Madhya Pradesh’s December 2025 audit documenting 7.37 lakh children with no school records is, on this reading, not merely an enrolment statistic but a child-protection emergency. Outside the schooling system, these tribal-majority children are simultaneously invisible to the institutional radar designed to keep them out of child labour, child marriage, and exploitative work. For Dalit, Adivasi, and poor Muslim children—who already face heightened exposure to such harms because of structural discrimination—the disappearance of the only accessible school narrows the safety net in ways no efficiency ledger adequately captures. Rationalisation, in short, is not a neutral restructuring; it is a quiet withdrawal of the State from one of its most fundamental guardianship duties.
Lessons from History and International Experience
Educational inequality has never been overcome through market expansion alone. Countries that have achieved equitable schooling have invested consistently in strong public education systems. Finland, frequently cited as a model in educational policy discussions, has undertaken school consolidation only alongside guaranteed transport, comprehensive welfare support, and universal public investment. Consolidation was designed to preserve accessibility rather than reduce public responsibility. Brazil similarly expanded educational participation through conditional cash transfers and sustained investment in municipal schooling, particularly for historically marginalised communities.[^3] Bangladesh’s remarkable improvements in girls’ education were achieved not through reducing educational infrastructure but through expanding rural schooling, targeted stipends, and community-based interventions.
India’s own educational history points in the same direction. The Kothari Commission (1964–66) argued that a Common School System was essential to reducing educational inequality.[^3] It recognised that segregated schooling inevitably reproduces wider social hierarchies. Later, scholars such as Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen demonstrated that public education is not merely a social sector expenditure but an investment in human capability, democratic participation, and inclusive development. These lessons resonate strongly with the writings of Ambedkar and Phule. For both thinkers, education represented the most powerful instrument for dismantling caste hierarchy and enabling substantive citizenship. A shrinking public education system therefore raises questions extending beyond educational administration. It concerns the future of India’s democratic project itself.
Towards an Equitable Public Education Policy
Improving educational quality is undoubtedly necessary. Many government schools suffer from inadequate infrastructure, multigrade teaching, teacher shortages, and declining enrolment. However, closing neighbourhood schools should be the last—not the first—policy response. A more equitable reform agenda would include several priorities:
First, governments should undertake independent social impact assessments before approving any school merger, particularly in Scheduled Areas and districts with high concentrations of SC, ST, OBC, and minority populations.
Second, school consolidation should never proceed without guaranteed transportation, safe access routes, community consultation, and child-protection safeguards such as functioning POCSO mechanisms, anti-child-labour vigilance, and continuity of Mid-Day Meal entitlements. Educational accessibility and child welfare must remain central to planning.
Third, addressing India’s teacher deficit requires urgent recruitment rather than institutional contraction. More than one lakh single-teacher schools cannot deliver quality education regardless of administrative restructuring.
Fourth, School Management Committees should be strengthened as genuine institutions of community participation—and of child protection—rather than remaining procedural formalities. Democratic accountability is essential for ensuring that educational reforms reflect local realities.
Finally, educational planning should adopt equity indicators alongside efficiency indicators. Every proposal for school merger should publicly assess its likely effects on girls, children with disabilities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minority communities, and children outside the protective reach of the State. Only then can rationalisation become genuinely educational rather than merely administrative.
Conclusion: The Republic After the Neighbourhood School
Every government school represents more than a physical structure. It embodies the constitutional promise that birth should not determine educational opportunity—and the protective promise that no child should fall outside the State’s guardianship. The disappearance of over 93,000 government schools during the past decade therefore demands more than administrative explanation. It requires democratic scrutiny. While improving educational quality remains an urgent priority, quality cannot be achieved by reducing access—or protection—for those who depend most upon public education.
The burden of educational restructuring is not equally distributed. It falls disproportionately upon Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, and poor Muslim children living in villages, tribal settlements, and economically marginalised neighbourhoods—communities for whom the neighbourhood government school continues to represent the most accessible pathway to dignity, citizenship, social mobility, and protection from exploitation.
More than a century ago, Jyotirao Phule argued that a society denying education to its most oppressed communities could never claim to be just. Ambedkar later transformed that insight into a democratic vision in which education became the foundation of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Independent India embedded that vision within its Constitution through the promise of universal education,[^4] and reinforced it through the protective architecture of POCSO, the Child Labour Act, and the Juvenile Justice Act.
The contemporary challenge is therefore not simply whether governments should merge schools. It is whether educational policy will continue to uphold the constitutional commitment to social justice, or gradually retreat from it; and whether the State will continue to honour its guardianship of the child, or quietly withdraw from it. If the neighbourhood government school quietly disappears, India risks losing far more than educational infrastructure. It risks weakening one of the Republic’s most important institutions for equal citizenship and child protection.
The question before policymakers is not merely how many schools can be rationalised, but whether the constitutional promise of education—and the protective promise it carries with it—will remain within walking distance of every child.
References
Dubey, M. (2020). Report of the Common School System Commission, Bihar. Government of Bihar.
Government of India. (2009). The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Ministry of Education. https://www.education.gov.in/
Government of India. (2012). The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Ministry of Women and Child Development. https://wcd.gov.in/
Government of India. (2015). The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. Ministry of Women and Child Development. https://wcd.gov.in/
Government of India. (2016). The Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016. Ministry of Labour and Employment. https://labour.gov.in/
Government of India. (2020). National Education Policy 2020. Ministry of Education. https://www.education.gov.in/
India Today Education Desk. (2026, July 28). Akhilesh Yadav raises school closures issue; Centre says States decide school mergers. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/akhilesh-yadav-school-closures-claim-centre-says-states-decide-school-mergers-2958031-2026-07-28
India Today Education Desk. (2026, July 9). Government schools in India: 94,000 shut in 10 years as enrolment falls by 2.26 crore. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/news/story/government-schools-india-94000-shut-10-years-enrolment-falls-2-26-crore-2944178-2026-07-09
Ministry of Education. (2025). Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2024–25. Government of India. https://udiseplus.gov.in/
NITI Aayog. (2026). School education system in India: Temporal analysis and policy roadmap for quality enhancement. Government of India. https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-05/School-Education-System-in-India.pdf
Rajalakshmi, T. K. (2026, July 22). India’s school education crisis: What UDISE+ data reveals. Frontline. https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/udise-report-india-eeducation-enrolment-government-schools-crisis/article71253359.ece
Ramakrishnan, G. (2026, July 27). Government school closures hit poor students hardest. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/government-school-closures-hit-poor-students-hardest/article71272645.ece
The Telegraph. (2026, July 10). NITI Aayog report flags closure of one lakh government schools in 10 years. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/niti-aayog-report-flags-closure-of-one-lakh-government-schools-in-10-years-prnt/cid/2161048
Times Now Digital. (2026, July 24). Government schools in India decline by over 17,000 in five years, Centre informs Lok Sabha. Times Now. https://www.timesnownews.com/education/government-schools-in-india-decline-by-over-17000-in-five-years-centre-informs-lok-sabha-article-155190423
Footnotes
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Dr Md Tabrez Alam is a Technical Consultant-Knowledge Management at the Centre for Child Rights at the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi. He holds a PhD in Social Work from IGNTU-IIDS, New Delhi; an MPhil in Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy from MANUU, Hyderabad; and a Master’s in Social Work from the Central University of Rajasthan.
