Schools down, math doesn’t add up
A report claims 1,969 ‘government schools’ vanished in 2025–26. The UDISE+ totals don’t back that arithmetic — and Telangana’s own pages list three different totals. If Delhi wants to run the numbers, it can start by publishing the table.
Conflicting school totals have raised questions about how the UDISE+ figures were counted.
A report this week said Telangana had 1,969 fewer government schools in 2025–26 than the previous year, citing UDISE+. It also put the decade total at 41,762 schools and claimed government enrolment fell 8%. None of that came with a table, a category definition, or a named official. According to the UDISE+-linked figure echoed elsewhere, Telangana’s 2025–26 school count is 41,762. Do the decade math the report itself gives — 43,134 to 41,762 — and the drop is 1,372, not 1,969. If 1,969 is year-on-year, last year would have to be 43,731. The report does not show that baseline or what it means by “government schools”.
The Ministry of Education’s UDISE+ describes itself as the national school-data system. Its 2025–26 booklet exists on the dashboard, but the relevant Telangana tables are not cited in the report. Telangana’s own pages add their own fog: one says 41,648 schools statewide, another UDISE page lists 40,106 by management — Government, Local Body, Model, KGBV, Social Welfare, Tribal Welfare, TREIS, Aided, Private — which is exactly why “government schools” needs a definition before anyone declares closures.
Another published report using UDISE+ says enrolment actually rose 2.9% in 2025–26, from 74.58 lakh to 76.76 lakh, and average enrolment per school went from 173 to 184. That directly contradicts the claimed 8% fall unless the bases differ. The district education office notes that 2025–26 UDISE collection included changes to directories and the addition of new schools, with infrastructure and teacher details in finalisation — more reason not to mistake a database delta for a padlock on a gate.
Telangana families deserve the real picture: the exact UDISE+ table for schools by management and year, the categories added into “government”, and whether entries were closed, merged, reclassified or just late. The BJP-led Centre runs UDISE+. If it wants headlines about Telangana’s schools, it can start by putting the Telangana tables in the headline, not in a black box.