Jaipur, Sept. 10 -- The number of schools in Rajasthan decreased by 1,455 in a year while the total enrolment rate also declined by over 3%, a recent report of the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) by the ministry of education for 2024-25 session said. In the 2024-25 session, the state reported a total 106,302 schools, of which 70,155 are government schools and 33,548 are private unrecognised schools, as per the UDISE data. These government schools include 32,136 primary schools, 18,152 middle schools, and 19,867 secondary schools. Meanwhile, the private schools comprise 2,534 primary schools, 15,395 middle schools, and 15,619 secondary schools. The corresponding figure was 107,757 in the 2023-24 session when there were 70,233 government schools including 32,598 primary schools, 18,285 middle schools, and 19,350 secondary schools. At least 34,729 private schools were also in Rajasthan during this session, according to the report, of which 2,839 were primary schools, 15,931 were middle schools, and 15,959 were secondary schools. The Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) plus is a data aggregation platform managed by the department of school education and literacy (DoSEL), MoE, designed to compile school education data from across the nation. It is one of the largest management information systems covering more than 1.472 million schools, 9.8 million teachers and 248 million children. Since 2022-23, the UDISE plus report follows a 5+3+3+4 schooling structure, as defined in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, according to which children spend five years in the foundational stage, three years in the preparatory stage, three years in the middle stage, and four years in the secondary stage. "With effect from UDISE+ 2022-23, data fields are completely aligned with the recommendations of NEP 2020," the education ministry stated in its UDISE plus 2023-24 report. A further classification of the UDISE data also showed that the total enrollment has dropped by about 3%. While the state recorded 16,364,187 enrolments in the 2024-25 session, the figure was 16,786,065 in the previous 2023-24 session. However, as many as 2,167 schools were found in Rajasthan with zero enrolments last year which dropped by only 215 in the 2024-25 session, showed the report. The teacher-student ratio in Rajasthan also dropped from 22 in 2023-24 to 21 in 2024-25. The infrastructures across the schools also showed a decline this year. The number of functional girls' toilets has declined from 93,540 in the 2023-24 session to 92,729 in 2024-25. Similarly, the number of functional boys' toilets also declined from 90,522 in 2023-24 to 89,515 in 2024-25, as per UDISE. Commenting on the development, a senior officer from the school education department, said, "The number has probably dropped as many schools have been merged due to poor infrastructure and low enrolment rate. However, the gap between the enrolment rate decline in the last few years has improved. We are working on it."...