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School Dropout Rate in India — By State, Class & Gender (UDISE+ 2024-25)

Q: Why do boys drop out more than girls now?

Three structural reasons. First, the economic pull for adolescent male labour in MSMEs, construction, agriculture, and gig work is large — UDISE+ 2024-25 records a secondary boys' dropout of 13.3% vs 9.6% for girls. Second, girls' targeted interventions (Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, conditional cash transfers, free bicycles, scholarships, separate toilets) have been comprehensive since 2014, while boy-targeted retention programmes are essentially absent. Third, academic stress and Class 10 board failure disproportionately affect boys — repetition rate at secondary is 5.0% for boys vs 4.1% for girls, and a repeated grade is a strong dropout predictor.

Q: Which Indian state has the worst dropout problem?

West Bengal at 20.0% secondary dropout is the clear outlier in UDISE+ 2024-25 — twice the national average and 5.7× Jharkhand's 3.5%. The puzzle is that West Bengal's secondary GER is healthy at 99.4%, so children *are* enrolling — they just leave before Class 10. State-government analyses point to two factors: a large madrasa parallel system whose transitions are imperfectly tracked, and the post-COVID labour-market migration to nearby Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gulf-bound recruitment pipelines that pull adolescents out of senior secondary. Karnataka (18.3%), Assam (17.5%), and Mizoram/Meghalaya (both 17.4%) round out the bottom five.

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TL;DR

India's national secondary (Class 9–10) dropout rate stood at 11.5% in UDISE+ 2024-25 — meaning roughly 1 in 9 children entering secondary school exits without finishing Class 10. Primary dropout is 0.3%, upper-primary 3.5%. By state, West Bengal (20.0%) has the highest secondary dropout; Jharkhand (3.5%) the lowest. Boys drop out more than girls at every level (secondary: 13.3% boys vs 9.6% girls). NEP 2020 targets near-zero dropout by 2030 — current trajectory makes that ambitious.

What "dropout rate" actually measures

UDISE+ defines the annual dropout rate as the percentage of children enrolled in a given grade-level who do not re-enrol in the next grade in the following academic year (and are not recorded elsewhere). It is calculated separately for three school stages:

Primary — Class 1 to 5
Upper-primary — Class 6 to 8
Secondary — Class 9 to 10

This is not the same as the cumulative loss from Class 1 to Class 10 — that metric is the retention rate, which we cover later. A 0.3% primary dropout rate does not mean only 0.3% of children fail to reach Class 5; it means only 0.3% leave between any two consecutive primary grades in a single year.

For policy purposes, the secondary dropout rate is the headline figure. It is the inflexion point where India still leaks the most students.

The national headline (UDISE+ 2024-25)

Stage	Boys	Girls	Total
Primary (1–5)	0.8%	0.0%	0.3%
Upper-primary (6–8)	4.1%	2.9%	3.5%
Secondary (9–10)	13.3%	9.6%	11.5%

Two things stand out. First, the secondary stage is where India loses children at scale — the rate is over 30× the primary rate. Second, boys drop out more than girls at every level, reversing the popular assumption that girls are the at-risk cohort. (Girls' enrolment now leads boys' at secondary GER too — see our companion piece on GER explained.)

The complementary metric — transition rate — paints the same picture from the other direction:

Transition	Boys	Girls	Total
Primary → Upper-primary	91.5%	93.0%	92.2%
Upper-primary → Secondary	85.9%	87.3%	86.6%
Secondary → Higher-secondary	72.4%	77.9%	75.1%

Roughly one in four students who finish Class 10 does not enter Class 11 — and that gap, again, is wider for boys (27.6% leave) than for girls (22.1%).

Why secondary dropout spikes

Five well-documented drivers, in approximate order of weight:

Labour-market pull (boys). Class 9–10 is the age (14–16) when male children become economically valuable in farming, construction, and informal trades. UDISE+ gender data corroborates this: the boys-girls dropout gap widens from 0.8 percentage points at primary to 3.7 points at secondary.
Marriage-related drop (girls, declining). Historically the dominant girl-dropout driver, this has weakened since the 2009 RTE Act and the 2018 Beti Bachao Beti Padhao expansion. UDISE+ 2024-25 shows girls' GPI > 1.0 across every level, including 1.1 at higher-secondary — meaning more girls than boys are now enrolled at the senior stage.
Academic failure / repetition. UDISE+ records a secondary repetition rate of 4.6% (vs 2.9% at primary). A child held back at Class 9 is statistically much more likely to disengage by Class 10.
Distance to a secondary school. India has 4.34 lakh upper-primary schools but only 1.42 lakh secondary schools. The supply ratio drops sharply at Class 9 — particularly in tribal and hilly districts.
Affordability of senior years. Free textbooks and mid-day meals end at Class 8 under Samagra Shiksha. Out-of-pocket costs (uniforms, exam fees, private tuition) rise just as the student becomes employable.

State-by-state secondary dropout — the leaderboard

Here are all 27 states (and J&K) for which UDISE+ 2024-25 publishes a secondary-stage dropout rate, ranked best to worst. The national figure is 11.5%.

Rank	State	Secondary Dropout Rate	Verdict vs national
1	Jharkhand	3.5%	-8.0 pp
2	Uttarakhand	4.6%	-6.9 pp
3	Kerala	4.8%	-6.7 pp
4	Himachal Pradesh	6.2%	-5.3 pp
4	Punjab

Some surprises: Bihar (6.9%) and UP (7.0%) sit in the better half despite their reputation, while Karnataka (18.3%) and Gujarat (16.9%) — both wealthier, industrially dense states — sit in the bottom quartile. The Karnataka/Gujarat outcome is plausibly explained by labour-market pull: dense MSME clusters create high opportunity cost for staying in school. West Bengal's 20.0% is the single most concerning national figure, especially because the state's secondary GER is otherwise healthy at 99.4% — a sign that enrolment is fine, retention is not.

Retention: the long view

The dropout rate is a single-year snapshot. The retention rate measures the share of a Class 1 cohort that survives to the end of each subsequent stage:

Cohort survives to	Boys	Girls	Total
End of Class 5 (primary)	91.5%	93.4%	92.4%
End of Class 8 (elementary)	81.5%	84.2%	82.8%
End of Class 10 (secondary)	61.7%	64.2%	62.9%
End of Class 12 (higher-secondary)	45.0%	49.6%

Read this row by row: of every 100 children who enter Class 1 in India, only 63 reach Class 10 and only 47 reach Class 12. That is the actual long-run leakage — the headline 11.5% secondary dropout rate undersells it because it excludes children who left before Class 9.

What NEP 2020 + Samagra Shiksha are doing

The National Education Policy 2020 sets a 100% Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at school level by 2030, which arithmetically requires bringing dropout to near zero. Three operational levers are being deployed via Samagra Shiksha:

Composite school upgrades. State governments are merging stand-alone primary schools with co-located upper-primary and secondary sections so that a child does not have to physically transfer schools at Class 6 or Class 9 — friction that historically drove dropout. The UDISE+ 2024-25 schools-by-management table shows 3.46 lakh "Primary with Upper-Primary (1–8)" and 79,980 "Secondary with Higher-Secondary 1–12" composite schools.
PM POSHAN extension. The mid-day meal scheme, now PM POSHAN, was extended to upper-primary in 2021. Extension to secondary is under discussion but not yet funded.
Bal Vatika + foundational stage. NEP's 5+3+3+4 structure brings pre-school (3 years) into the formal system — the theory being that early-childhood-care kids are more likely to complete schooling. Effects will only show in dropout numbers around 2030.

Three things NEP/Samagra Shiksha do not directly address: secondary-school density (especially in tribal districts), the opportunity cost of staying in school for adolescent boys, and language-of-instruction switches between primary and secondary that cause silent disengagement in tribal and minority areas.

Frequently asked questions

1. Is India's dropout rate getting better or worse? Better — gradually. Comparable UDISE+ data shows the secondary dropout rate fell from roughly 17% in 2018-19 to 11.5% in 2024-25, a near-third reduction in six years. Primary dropout has effectively flatlined near zero (0.3% in 2024-25). The remaining work is concentrated at secondary, where roughly 35 lakh adolescents leave the formal system each year. NEP 2020's aspirational target of zero dropout by 2030 will require accelerating the current rate of decline by approximately 2× — possible but historically uncommon for any country at India's scale.

2. Why do boys drop out more than girls now? Three structural reasons. First, the economic pull for adolescent male labour in MSMEs, construction, agriculture, and gig work is large — UDISE+ 2024-25 records a secondary boys' dropout of 13.3% vs 9.6% for girls. Second, girls' targeted interventions (Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, conditional cash transfers, free bicycles, scholarships, separate toilets) have been comprehensive since 2014, while boy-targeted retention programmes are essentially absent. Third, academic stress and Class 10 board failure disproportionately affect boys — repetition rate at secondary is 5.0% for boys vs 4.1% for girls, and a repeated grade is a strong dropout predictor.

3. Which Indian state has the worst dropout problem? West Bengal at 20.0% secondary dropout is the clear outlier in UDISE+ 2024-25 — twice the national average and 5.7× Jharkhand's 3.5%. The puzzle is that West Bengal's secondary GER is healthy at 99.4%, so children are enrolling — they just leave before Class 10. State-government analyses point to two factors: a large madrasa parallel system whose transitions are imperfectly tracked, and the post-COVID labour-market migration to nearby Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gulf-bound recruitment pipelines that pull adolescents out of senior secondary. Karnataka (18.3%), Assam (17.5%), and Mizoram/Meghalaya (both 17.4%) round out the bottom five.

4. What is the difference between "dropout rate" and "retention rate"? Dropout rate is annual — it measures children who left between one school year and the next, in a single grade-band. Retention rate is cumulative — it tracks what fraction of a Class 1 cohort survives to the end of Class 5, 8, 10, and 12. For India 2024-25, dropout at secondary is 11.5% but retention to Class 10 is 62.9% — meaning 37 of every 100 Class 1 entrants do not reach Class 10. Retention is the truer measure of system efficiency; dropout is more useful for year-on-year tracking.

5. Does the dropout figure include students who transfer to private schools or madrasas? No, and this is a known measurement issue. UDISE+ uses school-reported enrolment data; if a student leaves a government school for an unrecognised madrasa or moves to an open-schooling system (NIOS) and the originating school does not record the transfer, that child is counted as dropped out. Recognised madrasas (1.97 lakh nationally per UDISE+) and NIOS enrolments are captured. The Ministry has been tightening transfer-tracking via the unique Pen (PEN — Permanent Education Number) issued to every UDISE-registered child, which should reduce phantom dropout in the next 2–3 cycles.

6. What does the gender parity index (GPI) tell us about dropout? GPI is the ratio of girls' to boys' enrolment. A GPI above 1.0 means more girls than boys are enrolled. UDISE+ 2024-25 records GPI of 1.0 at primary, upper-primary, secondary and 1.1 at higher-secondary — meaning at the senior-most level, girls now outnumber boys. Combined with lower girl dropout, this suggests India's schooling system has effectively closed the historical gender enrolment gap. The remaining gender gap is at the post-school stage: women's labour force participation does not follow education attainment proportionally — that's an economy problem, not a schooling one.

7. How does dropout differ between SC, ST, and other categories? UDISE+ 2024-25 publishes GER (not dropout) separately by social group. SC GER at secondary is 82.0% (vs 78.7% all-categories); ST GER at secondary is 81.3%. Both groups outperform the national average for enrolment — partly because they are concentrated in states (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bihar) where targeted Samagra Shiksha funding has expanded school access. However, ST GER drops sharply at higher-secondary (51.9% vs 58.4% national), suggesting senior-secondary access is the next ST policy frontier. Disaggregated state-and-social-group dropout data is not in the public UDISE+ summary.

8. What is being done about dropout in West Bengal specifically? The West Bengal government runs the Kanyashree Prakalpa (conditional cash transfer for unmarried girls in Class 8–12), Sabuj Sathi (free bicycles), and Aikyashree minority scholarships — all girl-focused. The state's 2024-25 dropout figure of 20.0% suggests the limit of girl-only interventions: residual dropout is now boy-heavy and labour-driven. The Centre's expectation, communicated through Samagra Shiksha PAB meetings, is that West Bengal expand school-density in border and tea-garden districts and accelerate the 9–12 composite school programme. Comparable peer-state Tamil Nadu (8.5% dropout) achieved its low rate via a similar density push in the 2010s.

9. Does dropout data include private school students? Yes. UDISE+ covers all four management types — Government, Government-Aided, Private Unaided Recognised, and Others (including 19,690 recognised madrasas). The 11.5% secondary dropout rate is across all 14.71 lakh schools in the system, not just government schools. Private-unaided enrolment is 9.59 crore students — too large to ignore. UDISE+ does not cover unrecognised private schools (estimates put these at an additional 1–3 lakh), which is a known gap; a child leaving a government school for an unrecognised private school is counted as a dropout in current data.

10. Where can I get district-level dropout numbers? The UDISE+ portal at udiseplus.gov.in publishes district-level dropout data via the "Reports" → "Performance Indicators" dashboard, but the granularity is uneven across states. State School Education Department websites — particularly Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra — publish their own district dashboards with finer breakdowns. Researchers needing student-level data can apply for access via the Educational Statistics Division of the Ministry of Education; that route requires an institutional affiliation and ethics clearance. For school-level lookup, our index at getschoolsinfo.com covers every UDISE-registered school in India.

India School Statistics 2024-25 — Schools, Students, Teachers (UDISE+ Data) — the master pillar with all UDISE+ headline figures
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in India — Explained with Data (2024-25) — companion piece on the enrolment side
Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) in India — State-Wise (UDISE+ 2024-25) — the other big school-quality indicator
School Boards in India — Complete Guide — for context on board-wise enrolment and recognition
CBSE Board India — Complete Guide

Source: UDISE+ Report 2024-25, Ministry of Education, Government of India. All percentage and absolute numbers in this article are direct extracts from the official UDISE+ 2024-25 publication; transitions, retention, and dropout rates are reproduced from Tables 6.10–6.16 of the report.