Over 7,900 schools in India have no students
India's latest education data for 2024-25 reveals something surprising: 7,993 schools across the country don't have a single student enrolled right now.
Even so, these schools still employ over 20,000 teachers.
The good news? This is actually an improvement—last year there were nearly 13,000 such schools.
West Bengal tops the list
West Bengal tops the list with more than 3,800 empty schools (but almost 18,000 teachers still on staff), followed by Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.
Meanwhile, states like Maharashtra and Haryana report zero cases of empty schools.
To fix things, the Education Ministry suggests merging underused schools to make better use of resources.
Uttar Pradesh is even considering pulling recognition from any school that stays empty for three years in a row.