Odisha cuts secondary school dropout rate from 49% in 2015 to 15% in 2025: Niti

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has recorded one of the sharpest declines in secondary school dropout rates in the country over the last decade, bringing it down from 49.47% in 2014-15 to 15% in 2024-25, according to a decadal analysis of India’s school education system by the government think-tank Niti Aayog.The recently released report, titled ‘School Education System in India – Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement’, highlights Odisha as a major success story in improving student retention at the secondary level.The report noted that Odisha achieved a reduction of over 34.47 percentage points in dropout rate within 10 years, placing it among the best-performing states in terms of improvement. The remarkable progress, notwithstanding, the state’s dropout rate still remains above the national average of 11.5%, which indicates that challenges persist at the secondary level.At the primary level, dropout rates declined sharply from 2.93% to 0.7% over the 10-year period. A minor blip was the situation in the upper primary level, where the dropout rate slid from 2.8% in 2014-15 to 3.2% in 2024-25, but remained below the national average of 3.5%.The report also lauded Odisha for achieving near-universal access to schooling at the primary, elementary and secondary levels while steadily improving student transition rates across grades. Odisha, which had one of the country’s lowest transition rates at just 2.25% in 2014-15 against the national average of 67.7%, improved dramatically to 71.9% in 2024-25. The national average during the same period stood at 75.1%.“The findings reflect not just policy decisions on paper, but a decade-long push by the Odisha govt to make schools more accessible, attractive and functional for students, especially in rural and tribal regions,” said education expert Laxmidhar Panda.The report stated that attrition often begins to set in at the upper-primary level, where transition pressures, household responsibilities and limited school continuity contribute to early exits from the education system. And secondary education records the highest dropout rate among all stages of schooling, a trend particularly evident in Odisha.“From 13.1% schools having computers in 2014, 76.7% schools now have them, which is way above the national average of 64.7%. Similarly, the past decade has witnessed a sharp expansion in internet connectivity, with Odisha showing a sharp gain from 1.8% to 83.8%,” the report said.The report highlights that according to UDISE+ 2024-25, 1.19 lakh schools across the country lack access to functional electricity, which is a foundational enabler of school functionality. A decade back, roughly 28% govt schools had electricity, but with sustained policy push and investment in school infrastructure, electricity has reached 96.9% schools now. Similarly, access to water and hygiene facilities has also improved consistently.