Girls are leading classroom enrollment in Delhi, but what is causing boys to fall increasingly behind?

For years, the Indian education system has been framed around a single moral and policy imperative: bring girls into schools, keep them there, and close the gender gap. In Delhi, that story has not just reached its intended conclusion, it has taken an unexpected turn.

The Economic Survey of Delhi 2025–26 reveals a reality that would have seemed improbable not too long ago. Across every stage of schooling, girls are now enrolling in greater numbers than boys. It is not a blip or a statistical quirk. It is a pattern, clear and consistent. And like all structural shifts, it brings with it a more complicated question than the one it answers.

A clear lead, from early years to exit point

The data reads less like a fluctuation and more like a steady assertion of presence. At the primary level, the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for girls stands at 107.2, comfortably ahead of boys at 97.4. Move up to upper primary, and the gap widens, 122 for girls against 113.1 for boys.

By the time students reach secondary school, the pattern holds: 104.7 for girls, 98 for boys. At higher secondary, where participation typically begins to thin out, the difference becomes more telling, 87.2 for girls compared to 78.7 for boys.

The Net Enrollment Ratio (NER), which strips away over-age and under-age distortions, tells the same story with even sharper clarity. Girls in Delhi have effectively achieved universal enrolment at the primary level (100), while boys trail at 90.5. At higher secondary, the gap remains pronounced: 68.8 for girls, 58.8 for boys.

A Capital ahead of the curve, but not without fault lines

Delhi’s education system, on the whole, continues to outperform national averages by a significant margin. At the primary level, its combined GER stands at 101.8, compared to the national 90.9. At upper primary, the gap is even wider, 117.3 in Delhi versus 90.3 across India.

These are not incremental gains. They reflect a system that has expanded access with intent and consistency. But beneath this success lies an imbalance that is becoming harder to overlook. While Delhi has surged ahead as a whole, boys are not keeping pace within that progress.

The missing explanation and the uneasy implication

Strikingly, the survey does not credit any one policy or intervention for this reversal. There is no single scheme to point to, no definitive cause to isolate.

That absence is revealing. It suggests that the rise in girls’ enrollment is the cumulative result of years of policy nudges, social change, and perhaps a growing recognition of education’s value among families. But it also leaves a vacuum when it comes to understanding the other side of the equation.

If girls have moved ahead, why have boys slowed down? The data does not answer that. But it makes the question unavoidable.

Boys at the margins of a growing system

The gap is most visible and most concerning at the higher secondary level. A difference of nearly nine percentage points at this stage is not merely academic; it shapes who goes on to college, who enters the workforce early, and who slips through the cracks.

There are no definitive explanations offered in the survey, but the implications are difficult to dismiss. Are boys exiting school earlier? Are economic pressures pushing them towards work? Or is there a deeper disengagement with the schooling system itself?

For a city that has invested heavily in education, these are not peripheral concerns. They go to the heart of what access truly means.

Learning outcomes: A system that recovers, but slowly

The survey’s findings on learning levels add another layer to the story. In Class 3, Delhi’s students fall behind the national average in both language and mathematics, an early signal that foundational learning remains fragile.

Yet by Class 9, the same system produces results that surpass national benchmarks across subjects. It is a curious arc, one that suggests resilience, perhaps even course correction, but also hints at uneven learning experiences in the early years. The system, it appears, is capable of recovery, but not without a delayed start.

Attendance holds firm

One area where Delhi offers little cause for concern is attendance. Data from the 75th National Sample Survey shows that students in the capital attend school at higher rates than the national average across all levels.

This is not a system struggling to retain students. It is one that has largely succeeded in doing so. The challenge lies earlier, in who enters, and who continues.

The larger reckoning

What Delhi presents today is not a crisis, but a transition. The old problem of exclusion has, to a significant extent, been addressed, at least for girls. In its place, a more nuanced imbalance has emerged.

For policymakers, this is unfamiliar terrain. The instinct has long been to close a gap that disadvantaged girls. Now, the task is more delicate: to sustain those gains without allowing a reverse disparity to take root.

The numbers in the Economic Survey do not call for alarmism. But they do demand attention. Because in Delhi’s classrooms, the story is no longer about who is missing. It is about who is beginning to fall behind, and why.