GER India 2024-25 — Gross Enrolment Ratio Explained

Q: What is India's Gross Enrolment Ratio in 2024-25?

Per UDISE+ 2024-25: primary GER 90.9%, upper-primary GER 90.3%, elementary GER 90.6%, secondary GER 78.7%, and higher-secondary GER 58.4%. The all-categories higher-secondary figure of 58.4% is the most policy-significant — only about 58 of every 100 children of Class 11–12 age are actually in school. Girls' GER now leads boys' at every level, and the higher-secondary gender parity index (GPI) is 1.1 — meaning more girls than boys at the senior-most school stage. Bihar at 38.1% higher-secondary GER and Madhya Pradesh at 45.0% are the worst-performing major states.

Q: Why can GER exceed 100%?

Because GER counts *all* enrolled students (including over-age and under-age children) in the numerator but only the *official-age* population in the denominator. A 12-year-old still in Class 5 is counted in primary GER but not in the primary age-group population. India's primary GER hovers around 90% nationally but several states (Karnataka 101% at secondary, HP 102%) exceed 100%. This is normal in countries with significant grade repetition or late starting. The complementary metric — Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) — counts only age-appropriate children and gives a stricter coverage figure (India's secondary NER is 47.5%).

Q: What is the difference between GER and NER?

GER counts *all* enrolled children regardless of age; NER counts only children in the official age band for that grade. India's 2024-25 secondary GER is 78.7% but secondary NER is just 47.5%. The 31-percentage-point gap is *over-age* enrolment — children who started late, repeated grades, or returned after dropping out. NER is the cleaner measure of *age-appropriate* schooling; GER is the cleaner measure of *system reach*. Both metrics matter for different policy questions; international comparisons typically use GER.

Q: Why is girls' GER higher than boys' now?

Three converging forces. First, dropout is lower for girls — UDISE+ 2024-25 secondary dropout is 9.6% for girls vs 13.3% for boys. Second, India's decade-long focus on girl-child schooling (Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, conditional cash transfers, free bicycles, separate toilets, scholarships) has been comprehensive while boys-targeted retention is essentially absent. Third, adolescent boys face economic pull into work — ages 14-17 is when male labour becomes valuable in MSMEs, agriculture, and construction. The gender parity index of 1.1 at higher-secondary is the cumulative result. Note: high female GER does *not* translate into proportionally higher female labour-force participation, which is a separate problem.

Q: Where can I find district-level GER data?

UDISE+ does *not* publish district-level GER directly because the denominator (district-age-population) is hard to estimate annually. The Ministry of Education has been working with NSO and Census 2011 (with projections) to back-fill district-age-populations; expect district GER to appear in UDISE+ 2025-26 onwards. Currently, district-level data is limited to enrolment counts (numerator only). For the most granular GER figures publicly available, see the State-wise Tables 6.2-6.8 in the UDISE+ 2024-25 PDF, available at udiseplus.gov.in. For school-level data, our index at getschoolsinfo.com covers every UDISE-registered school. ---

TL;DR

GER = (students enrolled at a school stage) / (population of that stage's official age) × 100. It can exceed 100% because over-age students are counted. India's 2024-25 GER per UDISE+: primary 90.9%, upper-primary 90.3%, secondary 78.7%, higher-secondary 58.4%. Girls now exceed boys at secondary (80.2% vs 77.3%) and higher-secondary (60.9% vs 56.2%). ST higher-secondary GER is the lowest at 51.9%. The 20-point drop between secondary and higher-secondary is the single biggest failure point in the Indian school system.

What GER actually is

The Gross Enrolment Ratio is the standard UNESCO metric for school-system coverage. The formula is:

GER = (Enrolment at a school stage / Population in the official age-group for that stage) × 100

For India's school stages, the official age groups are:

Stage	Classes	Official age band
Primary	1–5	6–10
Upper-primary	6–8	11–13
Elementary	1–8	6–13
Secondary	9–10	14–15
Higher-secondary	11–12	16–17

A GER above 100% means more children are enrolled than the population in the official age band — which sounds odd until you remember that over-age and under-age children are counted in the numerator but only the official-age population is in the denominator. A 9-year-old in Class 5 (over-age) and a 5-year-old in Class 1 (under-age) both inflate primary GER above 100%.

That is why GER is gross — it captures total system reach but not age-appropriate placement. The complementary metric is Net Enrolment Ratio (NER), which counts only children in the correct age band for their grade. UDISE+ 2024-25 secondary NER is 47.5% — vs GER 78.7%. The 31-point gap is over-age and under-age children together.

Worked example

Imagine a city of 100,000 people aged 14–15 (the secondary age band). The local schools have 80,000 students enrolled in Class 9–10. Of those, 65,000 are aged 14–15, 12,000 are 16+ (repeaters or late starters), and 3,000 are 13 (underage advancers).

GER = 80,000 / 100,000 = 80%
NER = 65,000 / 100,000 = 65%

The 80% GER is the standard policy figure. The 65% NER is the more honest measure of age-appropriate schooling. Both matter; GER is more cited because it is the universal international comparator.

India's GER by stage (UDISE+ 2024-25)

All categories

Stage	Boys	Girls	Total
Primary (6–10)	89.6%	92.3%	90.9%
Upper-primary (11–13)	88.3%	92.5%	90.3%
Elementary (6–13)	89.1%	92.4%	90.6%
Secondary (14–15)	77.3%	80.2%

The numbers tell three stories. First, girls' GER now exceeds boys' at every single level. This is a historical reversal — twenty years ago boys' GER was higher at every stage. The story since 2009 (RTE Act + Beti Bachao Beti Padhao + conditional cash transfers) is the single largest gender-equality win India has produced.

Second, India is roughly at universal enrolment at the elementary stage (90.6%) — not because every child is enrolled, but because over-age enrolment fills in for the unenrolled. NER at elementary is 82.8%, which is the truer figure.

Third, the cliff between secondary (78.7%) and higher-secondary (58.4%) is enormous. A 20-percentage-point drop in two years means roughly 1 in 4 children who finish Class 10 do not enter Class 11 — addressed in detail later.

UDISE+ publishes GER separately for SC, ST, and "all social groups". OBC GER is not reported separately.

Scheduled Castes (SC)

Stage	Boys	Girls	Total
Primary	91.2%	94.4%	92.7%
Upper-primary	93.4%	99.1%	96.1%
Elementary	92.0%	96.2%	94.0%
Secondary	79.5%	84.8%	82.0%

Scheduled Tribes (ST)

Stage	Boys	Girls	Total
Primary	98.4%	99.3%	98.8%
Upper-primary	97.9%	101.1%	99.5%
Elementary	98.2%	99.9%	99.0%
Secondary	78.9%	83.8%	81.3%

Both SC and ST GER exceed the all-categories average at primary and upper-primary. This is the lasting legacy of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (2001-2018) and the RTE Act (2009) — targeted SC/ST hostel programmes, free textbooks, and conditional cash transfers have produced over-100% GER in upper-primary for ST girls.

But at higher-secondary the gap reverses sharply: ST higher-secondary GER is just 51.9% — 6.5 percentage points below the national average. The reason is supply-side: tribal districts have far fewer Class 11–12 schools than mainstream districts, and Eklavya Model Residential Schools (the federal answer to this) cover only a fraction of need. Closing the ST higher-secondary gap is one of NEP 2020's explicit equity goals.

Gender Parity Index (GPI)

GPI is the ratio of girls' GER to boys' GER. A GPI > 1.0 means girls' enrolment exceeds boys'.

Stage	GPI (UDISE+ 2024-25)
Primary	1.0
Upper-primary	1.0
Elementary	1.0
Secondary	1.0
Higher-secondary	1.1

The GPI of 1.1 at higher-secondary means for every 100 boys in Class 11–12, there are 110 girls. This is unprecedented in Indian schooling history. It reflects three converging trends: girls' lower dropout, expanded girls' scholarships, and the well-documented economic-pull factor on adolescent boys (more than girls) into early labour.

The complementary point: closing the gender gap in school does not automatically translate to gender equality in the workforce. India's female labour-force participation has actually declined over the same decade that female GER has risen. GPI is measuring schooling, not life outcomes.

State-wise GER — the variance

UDISE+ 2024-25 publishes state GER for selected major states. The variance is enormous.

Secondary GER by state (selected)

State	Secondary GER
Karnataka	101.3%
Himachal Pradesh	102.6%
Delhi	101.1%
Telangana	99.9%
West Bengal	99.4%
Kerala	98.7%
Tamil Nadu	95.5%
Maharashtra	93.6%
Punjab	92.6%
Haryana

Bihar at 51.1% secondary GER is the most concerning state-level number in UDISE+ 2024-25. Half of Bihar's 14-15-year-olds are not in Class 9-10. Combined with a high secondary dropout rate, Bihar's school-completion pipeline is the weakest in any major Indian state.

By contrast, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh exceed 100% — driven by over-age enrolment in Class 9–10 plus a large flow of inter-state students.

Higher-secondary GER by state (selected)

State	Higher-Secondary GER
Kerala	89.5%
Himachal Pradesh	84.7%
Tamil Nadu	83.4%
Delhi	82.7%
Uttarakhand	80.9%
Punjab	79.5%
Haryana	71.7%
Maharashtra	70.8%
Andhra Pradesh	67.8%
Telangana

Bihar (38.1%), MP (45.0%), and Gujarat (47.3%) are the worst-performing major states at higher-secondary. Gujarat at 47.3% is again a surprise — a wealthy state with secondary GER of 74.7% but higher-secondary GER below 50% reflects deliberate vocational diversion (large numbers of Class 10-passed students enter ITI rather than Class 11).

Why higher-secondary GER drops so sharply

The 78.7% → 58.4% cliff between secondary and higher-secondary is a 20-point drop in two years. Five drivers:

Class 10 board exam failures. Roughly 8-10% of Class 10 students fail in any given year and a meaningful fraction of those don't re-enter the system.
Stream-and-school switch. Many Indian children must physically change schools at Class 11 to access a science/commerce stream — a known transition friction.
Vocational diversion. Children who pass Class 10 and want skill training often enter ITIs or polytechnics instead of Class 11, especially in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. ITI enrolment is not counted in higher-secondary GER.
Labour pull at age 16. This is the strongest driver. Sixteen is the legal minimum age for many low-skill industrial jobs; the opportunity cost of two more school years rises sharply.
Affordability. Class 11–12 has the highest per-student private cost in the school system — coaching for JEE/NEET/CUET is now near-universal in middle-income families and excludes lower-income ones.

NEP 2020 attempts to address this via the integrated 5+3+3+4 structure — the "+4" is the new senior-secondary stage (Classes 9-12) treated as a single multi-disciplinary block. The intent is to remove the Class 10 cliff. Implementation is in early stages; effects on GER will only show by the late 2020s.

How GER is used in policy

GER is the headline metric in NEP 2020's targets:

Universal access to school education by 2030 — i.e., 100% GER from pre-school to Class 12
Currently: pre-school GER is not separately tracked; primary 90.9%; upper-primary 90.3%; secondary 78.7%; higher-secondary 58.4%
The biggest gap-to-close is higher-secondary, requiring roughly 42 percentage points of GER expansion in 6 years

Three mechanisms are being deployed: composite school upgrades (so kids don't physically transfer), expanded PM SHRI (model schools with full Class 1–12 coverage), and the strengthening of NIOS + Open Schools as alternative pathways. Open Schooling enrolment is partly counted in GER, partly not — a measurement issue UDISE+ is currently sorting out.

Frequently asked questions

1. What is India's Gross Enrolment Ratio in 2024-25? Per UDISE+ 2024-25: primary GER 90.9%, upper-primary GER 90.3%, elementary GER 90.6%, secondary GER 78.7%, and higher-secondary GER 58.4%. The all-categories higher-secondary figure of 58.4% is the most policy-significant — only about 58 of every 100 children of Class 11–12 age are actually in school. Girls' GER now leads boys' at every level, and the higher-secondary gender parity index (GPI) is 1.1 — meaning more girls than boys at the senior-most school stage. Bihar at 38.1% higher-secondary GER and Madhya Pradesh at 45.0% are the worst-performing major states.

2. Why can GER exceed 100%? Because GER counts all enrolled students (including over-age and under-age children) in the numerator but only the official-age population in the denominator. A 12-year-old still in Class 5 is counted in primary GER but not in the primary age-group population. India's primary GER hovers around 90% nationally but several states (Karnataka 101% at secondary, HP 102%) exceed 100%. This is normal in countries with significant grade repetition or late starting. The complementary metric — Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) — counts only age-appropriate children and gives a stricter coverage figure (India's secondary NER is 47.5%).

3. What is the difference between GER and NER? GER counts all enrolled children regardless of age; NER counts only children in the official age band for that grade. India's 2024-25 secondary GER is 78.7% but secondary NER is just 47.5%. The 31-percentage-point gap is over-age enrolment — children who started late, repeated grades, or returned after dropping out. NER is the cleaner measure of age-appropriate schooling; GER is the cleaner measure of system reach. Both metrics matter for different policy questions; international comparisons typically use GER.

4. Why is girls' GER higher than boys' now? Three converging forces. First, dropout is lower for girls — UDISE+ 2024-25 secondary dropout is 9.6% for girls vs 13.3% for boys. Second, India's decade-long focus on girl-child schooling (Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, conditional cash transfers, free bicycles, separate toilets, scholarships) has been comprehensive while boys-targeted retention is essentially absent. Third, adolescent boys face economic pull into work — ages 14-17 is when male labour becomes valuable in MSMEs, agriculture, and construction. The gender parity index of 1.1 at higher-secondary is the cumulative result. Note: high female GER does not translate into proportionally higher female labour-force participation, which is a separate problem.

5. What is the GER for SC and ST children? SC GER is actually higher than the all-categories average at primary (92.7% vs 90.9%) and upper-primary (96.1% vs 90.3%). SC secondary GER is 82.0% (vs 78.7% all-categories). However, SC higher-secondary GER drops to 59.4% — close to but slightly above the national 58.4%. ST GER is even higher at the elementary stages — 99.0% — but drops most sharply at higher-secondary, to 51.9%, which is 6.5 percentage points below the national average. The ST higher-secondary gap is the most acute equity gap in current UDISE+ data; it reflects the absence of Class 11-12 schools in tribal districts.

6. Why does higher-secondary GER drop so much? The 78.7% → 58.4% drop between secondary and higher-secondary is a 20-percentage-point cliff. Five drivers: (1) Class 10 board failures — roughly 8-10% of children fail in any year; (2) physical school switching required because many secondary schools don't extend to Class 12; (3) vocational diversion to ITI/polytechnic, especially in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu; (4) economic pull at age 16 — adolescents become legally employable; (5) affordability — coaching costs for JEE/NEET/CUET have made Class 11-12 the most expensive school stage. NEP 2020's integrated senior-secondary stage (Classes 9-12) is the policy response but full effects are 5+ years out.

7. Which Indian state has the lowest GER? Bihar has the lowest GER at both secondary (51.1%) and higher-secondary (38.1%) levels in UDISE+ 2024-25. This is the worst-performing major state by a wide margin — the next-worst higher-secondary GERs are Madhya Pradesh (45.0%) and Gujarat (47.3%). Bihar's problem is two-sided: limited supply of secondary and higher-secondary schools, plus high opportunity cost (the state has high adolescent labour-migration rates to Punjab, Haryana, and Maharashtra). The state government's 2024-25 plan includes 8,000 new secondary-school upgrades, but absorption will take 3-5 years. Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi sit at the top end with 100%+ secondary GER.

8. What is the Gender Parity Index (GPI) of GER? GPI is the ratio of girls' GER to boys' GER. A GPI of 1.0 means equal enrolment; above 1.0 means girls outnumber boys. UDISE+ 2024-25 records GPI of 1.0 at primary, upper-primary, elementary, and secondary, and 1.1 at higher-secondary — meaning for every 100 boys in Class 11-12, there are 110 girls. This is the first sustained reading above 1.0 at higher-secondary in any UDISE-era cycle and reflects India's decade-long girl-child schooling push. Among ST children, the GPI at upper-primary is 1.03 (girls' GER 101.1% vs boys' 97.9%). India is now ahead of most G20 nations on schooling-stage gender parity.

9. How does India's GER compare internationally? India's secondary GER of 78.7% is in line with most middle-income countries — Brazil ~95%, Indonesia ~90%, China ~95%, South Africa ~110%. India lags behind all four. At higher-secondary (58.4%), India sits below Indonesia (~85%), Brazil (~97%), and China (~95%). The OECD average for upper-secondary GER is approximately 100%. India's elementary GER (~91%) is in line with global middle-income averages, but the country's lag at upper-secondary is among the widest of comparable economies. NEP 2020's 100% GER target by 2030 would close most of this gap.

10. Where can I find district-level GER data? UDISE+ does not publish district-level GER directly because the denominator (district-age-population) is hard to estimate annually. The Ministry of Education has been working with NSO and Census 2011 (with projections) to back-fill district-age-populations; expect district GER to appear in UDISE+ 2025-26 onwards. Currently, district-level data is limited to enrolment counts (numerator only). For the most granular GER figures publicly available, see the State-wise Tables 6.2-6.8 in the UDISE+ 2024-25 PDF, available at udiseplus.gov.in. For school-level data, our index at getschoolsinfo.com covers every UDISE-registered school.

India School Statistics 2024-25 — Schools, Students, Teachers (UDISE+ Data) — the master pillar
School Dropout Rate in India — By State, Class & Gender — the other side of the GER coin
Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) in India — State-Wise — classroom-side view
Indian School Infrastructure 2024-25 — infra-side view
School Boards in India — Complete Guide
CBSE Board India — Complete Guide

Source: UDISE+ Report 2024-25, Ministry of Education, Government of India. GER tables 6.2 (all categories), 6.3 (SC), 6.4 (ST), 6.7 (GPI) of the official report. Per-state GER from the by_state tables in the published dataset. NER and ANER from Tables 6.5-6.6.

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in India — Explained with Data (2024-25)