Explainer: What Chandigarh’s excellence in education means for lakhs of schoolgoers

The Union Ministry of Education on Tuesday released the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE ) 2025-26 report, the annual national stock-take of India’s school education system built from data uploaded by schools across the country.

The report highlighted improvements in teacher strength, student retention, digital infrastructure and school facilities, while dropout rates continued to decline across key stages of school education.

Why it matters to Chandigarh residents

UDISE isn’t just a statistical exercise—it’s the data backbone that decides which schools get teachers, grants, infrastructure funds and welfare scheme benefits. The data also feeds into the Performance Grading Index (PGI), in which Chandigarh has topped the country for four straight years.

Every parent, teacher and student in the UT’s government and private schools is, in effect, a data point in this report, and the trends it captures, teacher availability, dropout rates, digital access, shape the classroom experience for lakhs of children across the city.

Who prepares the report

The report is prepared by the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education using data uploaded by schools through their UDISE codes. Introduced in 2018-19, the online system replaced manual data collection to improve accuracy and enable real-time reporting.

In Chandigarh, the Education Secretary and the office of the Director School Education (DSE) are responsible for ensuring local schools file accurate, timely data into the portal.

How numbers stack up nationally

• The number of teachers increased to 1,02,73,020 in 2025-26 from 94,83,294 in 2022-23, an increase of 8.3 per cent.
• The pupil-teacher ratio improved to 10 at the foundational level, 12 at the preparatory level, 17 at the middle level and 21 at the secondary level, all better than the National Education Policy’s recommended ratio of 30:1.
• Dropout rates fell from 2.3 per cent to 1.8 per cent at the preparatory level and from 8.2 per cent to 7 per cent at the secondary level.
• Retention rates rose to 83.7 per cent at the middle stage and 51.9 per cent at the secondary stage, which the ministry credited to expansion of secondary-level schools.
• The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at the secondary level increased from 68.5 per cent in 2024-25 to 71.7 per cent in 2025-26.
• Single-teacher schools declined to 1,00,843, about 3 per cent lower than the previous year, while zero-enrolment schools dropped by around 29 per cent to 5,663.
• Women now make up 54.9 per cent of the teaching workforce, up from 54.2 per cent, while girls’ enrolment edged up to 48.4 per cent.

Where Chandigarh stood last time round (2024-25 data)

While this year’s UT-wise figures aren’t out yet, last year’s UDISE report gave a sense of where Chandigarh already stands relative to the rest of the country: the UT had a secondary-level Gross Enrolment Ratio of 110.1 per cent, among the highest nationally, well ahead of states like Bihar (51.1 per cent), and near-universal digital infrastructure in schools, on par with Delhi and Goa. Chandigarh also had one of the highest rates of Aadhaar-seeding for students, at 98.5 per cent, aiding accurate tracking and benefit delivery.

What next

The Ministry typically follows the topline national release with a detailed report carrying state and UT-wise break-ups, schools, enrolment, teachers, infrastructure indicators district-by-district. That’s the data to watch for to know exactly how Chandigarh has moved this year on PTR, dropout, GER and digital access, and whether the UT has held onto or improved its standing.

What needs to be done

Officials and analysts tracking UDISE trends have flagged persistent national concerns, declining overall enrolment numbers, a fall in the number of schools, and structural imbalances between primary and secondary school availability in several states that call for closer monitoring even as headline indicators improve. For a small, dense UT like Chandigarh, the more relevant local task is ensuring the momentum behind its PGI-topping performance, in teacher recruitment, ICT labs, vocational training and inclusive education, continues to translate into the granular data this report captures.

How residents can check data themselves

Reports and dashboards are available at udiseplus.gov.in and dashboard.udiseplus.gov.in

The detailed report, once released, is typically hosted on education.gov.in

Parents and school administrators can check individual school-level data (enrolment, facilities, teacher count) through the UDISE portal using the school’s UDISE code

What it means, in short

For Chandigarh’s residents, this report is less about a single number and more about a direction of travel: fewer dropouts, better teacher ratios, and rising digital access nationally, against which Chandigarh has consistently positioned itself as a national leader through its PGI record. The 2025-26 UT-specific figures, once out, will show whether that lead has widened or needs shoring up.