Over 1,500 Government Schools in West Bengal Have Zero Students, Parliament Data Reveals

More than 5,000 governmental schools are lying vacant because they have no students whatsoever, and it is reported that 70 percent of these are located. Also, more than 70 per cent of empty government schools in the 2024-25 academic year are in Telangana and West Bengal.

"With less than 10 or zero enrollment" is another category of schools that has witnessed a sudden spike, as shown in the latest data released in Parliament by the education ministry.

The number of such government schools has registered a 24% increase over the past two years, rising from 52,309 schools in 2022-23 to 65,054 in 2024-25. The government, replying to a question posed by MPs Karti P Chidambaram and Amrinder Singh Raja Warring in Lok Sabha, further stated that such government schools currently constitute 6.42% of all government schools in the country.

Though there are around 2,081 zero enrolment schools in Telangana, in West Bengal, there are 1,571 such

A total of 315 empty schools are found in the Nalgonda district of Telangana; this is the highest number in the state and indeed in the whole of India. Maharashtra’s Mahabubabad and Warangal stand as the second and third highest with 167 and 135 empty institutions respectively, as per the information gathered from the Unified District Information System for Education Plus.

In West Bengal, the state capital Kolkata has 211 government schools with Zero enrolment – the second highest in the state. Purba Medinipur with 177 and Dakshin Dinajpur with 147 stand next in the state with highest number of Zero enrolment in government schools.

Even in these organizations that lack students, a considerably large workforce is employed.

There are 1.44 lakh teachers in Indian government schools with less than 10 students or no school at all as compared to 1.26 lakh in 2022-23.

In West Bengal, a total of 27,348 teachers are allocated to 6,703 governmental schools in the low enrollment category. This makes it an average of four teachers in a school, according to official reports.

Likewise, Bihar has earmarked 3,600 teachers to handle just 730 schools, which averages close to five teachers for each school. This surpasses the national average of 2.2 teachers.

According to the ministry, recruitment and rational deployment of teachers come within the domain of state governments. According to the data, there has been a decrease in the cases of government schools as well since 2019-20 from 10.32 lakh to 10.13 lakh in 2024-25.