Locked out of education in UP

July usually marks the excitement of school reopening. But this year, the mood was different in Bharui village, located barely 30 km from Lucknow. When the children arrived at their school, they found it locked. It had been merged with another school in Bhondri, 3 km away. For many parents in Bharui, sending their young children that far is not an option. With no school to go to, most children in the village are now spending their days aimlessly wandering around.

This isn’t an isolated incident — it’s happening across Uttar Pradesh. On 16 June, Deepak Kumar, the state’s additional chief secretary for basic education, issued an order to merge 10,000 schools as part of a larger restructuring plan. The goal is to consolidate schools that have a low student enrolment with those that have higher numbers. Under the new policy, any school with fewer than 50 students is eligible for merger.

According to government data, there are 27,764 such schools in the state. While all of them are expected to be merged eventually, the first phase involves the immediate merger of 10,000 schools, resulting in the closure of nearly 5,000. Each district and tehsil is affected. For instance, 300 schools are shutting down in Lucknow alone, 233 in Prayagraj and 251 in Deoria.

According to data presented in the Lok Sabha in the current session of Parliament, over 25,500 schools were shut down in Uttar Pradesh during the Covid pandemic. It was hoped that these schools would reopen once the situation normalised. That never happened. Instead, the government is now moving ahead with plans to shut down even more schools.

The government claims that merging schools will lead to better education outcomes. With fewer schools, it argues, facilities can be improved and each class can have a dedicated teacher. Consolidating infrastructure and teaching staff is also part of the stated goal. But while these promises remain on paper, ground reports tell a different story.

In areas where schools have been closed, parents — especially those with very young children — have stopped sending them to the new, more distant schools. The dropout rate is noticeably higher in places where the relocated school is more than 2 km away.

Another serious concern is also being raised: many of the schools being shut down are located in Dalit or so-called lower-caste villages. While no official survey or data supports this claim yet, some examples point in that direction. One such case is Chakri Kheda village in Kakori tehsil, Lucknow, where the local school now stands locked. The premises still display statues of B.R. Ambedkar, Maharishi Valmiki and Gautam Buddha — but the children have been told to attend a school in Badakheda instead.

Bureaucratic decision-making has added another layer of confusion. The Badakheda school, where Chakri Kheda students were directed, is now being merged with the school in Bahru. Of the 31 students who were enrolled in Chakri Kheda, only eight are currently attending the new school in Bahru.

This pattern of student dropouts is becoming widespread, and if it continues unchecked, it could derail the objectives of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Moreover, shutting down schools in this manner directly violates the Right to Education (RTE) Act. According to Section 6 of the Act, schools for students in Classes 1 to 5 must be located within 1 km of their homes, and for those in Classes 6 to 8, within 3 km.

Congress general-secretary and MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has strongly criticised the move. She pointed out, “The UPA government had implemented the Right to Education Act to ensure that schools were opened in every village, making education accessible to children from poor families. If schools are located several kilometres away, how can small children, especially girls, be expected to walk such distances every day?”

It is for these reasons that the school merger policy is being legally challenged across courts — from high courts to the Supreme Court. However, by the time any concrete legal verdict is delivered, many schools may already have been permanently shut down. In the meantime, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has issued a stay on the proposed merger of schools in Sitapur district.

Opposition parties and teachers’ organisations across the state have also raised strong objections. Teachers’ unions have staged several protests, expressing concerns that the move will not only reduce new recruitment opportunities but may also lead to job losses. Sunil Kumar Pandey of the Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association noted, “Schools are being merged, but there is no clarity on how the teachers themselves will be adjusted in this process.”

This trend of school closures isn’t limited to Uttar Pradesh. Similar reports are emerging from other states, including Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. In Madhya Pradesh, the number of government schools reduced by 24.1 per cent between 2014–15 and 2023–24. Uttarakhand saw the closure of 1,552 schools during the same period. In Chhattisgarh, 3,526 schools were shut; in Assam, around 3,000; in Gujarat, nearly 2,000; and in Goa, approximately 1,500.

Even in Punjab, where the Aam Aadmi Party has often touted an ‘education revolution’, the state government has decided to merge 450 middle schools. The justification remains the same: low enrollment and the promise of better resource utilisation.

At the heart of this wave of school closures across states lies a key recommendation from Niti Aayog. In 2016, the Aayog constituted a Group of Secretaries to suggest reforms in the education sector. One of their major recommendations was to merge schools with low student numbers into nearby institutions — a process labelled ‘rationalisation’.

Following this, the ministry of human resource development (now ministry of education) began actively promoting this policy to state governments. Though education is a state subject, the Central government funds a significant portion of school education, making this an attractive cost-saving measure for both the Centre and the states.

The impact of this policy has been staggering. Between 2017–18 and 2021–22, over 70,000 schools were shut down across the country. Its effect is also reflected in national dropout data. According to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), the dropout rate for students in Classes 1 to 5, which was just 0.8 per cent in 2020–21, rose to 1.45 per cent in 2021–22, and then shot up to a worrying 7.8 per cent the following year.

If this trend of forced mergers continues, the dropout rate is bound to rise further. Simultaneously, the goal of achieving 100 per cent enrolment is becoming increasingly elusive.

Although the merger and closure of schools has emerged as a nationwide phenomenon, the scale and suddenness with which Uttar Pradesh is implementing this policy is particularly alarming. For the poor and marginalised communities, especially in rural areas, this abrupt shift has disrupted children’s access to education — often their only ladder out of poverty.