Over 10,000 unrecognised school are operational in Jharkhand and Bihar, with over 1.6 million students enrolled in those schools, in violation of the Right to Education Act, data from the minutes of a recent Project Approval Board (PAB) meeting of the education ministry has shown.
With 5,879 such schools, Jharkhand has the highest number of unrecognised schools in the country with an enrolment of 837,897 students and 46,421 teachers, the data showed, while Bihar has 4,915 such schools with an enrolment of 775,704 students and 42,377 teachers.
The observation came during PAB meetings for the approval of budget and plans under Samagra Shiksha scheme for 2025-26 with officials from all states between March and April 2025.
During the meeting, the ministry flagged that unrecognised schools violate section 19 of the RTE Act, 2009, which mandates pre-existing schools to meet prescribed norms within three years of the Act’s commencement. Unrecognised schools are private, unaided institutions operating without formal government recognition and regulatory frameworks.
“The Act also mandates that if such schools fail to fulfil the norms, the recognition shall be withdrawn, and the school shall cease to function,” the minutes of the meetings uploaded on ministry’s website recently said.
Further, the ministry has both states to “take action and issue suitable instructions to the concerned authorities to recognise these unrecognised schools or to take appropriate action as deemed fit at the earliest.”
While the ministry used data from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE)+ 2023-24 report, these records are not publicly available in the report which was released in January this year.
While officials in the education ministry did not respond to HT’s request for comment, an official in Jharkhand said that directions for appropriate action have already been issued to the schools.
“These [Unrecognised] schools started functioning before the implementation of RTE Act 2009. The state government has already issued directions for recognition of such schools. We have formed district-level recognition committees for recognition of such schools,” Sachidanand Diyendu Tigga, administrative officer at Jharkhand education project council, said.
According to the minutes of the PAB meetings, the ministry has also flagged “large variation” in reporting of data about out-of-school children (OoSC) by Bihar and Jharkhand on the education ministry’s Project Appraisal, Budgeting, Achievements and Data Handling System (PRABANDH) portal and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey.
The ministry advised both the states to “monitor the data uploaded on the portal by responsible officer under the supervision of the State Project Director (SPD).”
“We will look into discrepancies in the number of OoSCs. We are running the campaign ‘back to school’ to enroll those students who are not going to the schools,” Tigga said.
HT reached out to officials from the Bihar Education Project Council, but was yet to receive any response.