YSRCP chief and former Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has expressed concern over the sharp decline in student enrollment in government schools after the coalition government came to power in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Citing official statistics from the central government’s UDISE+, he criticized the coalition government’s policies on Twitter, saying that the government’s education sector is being badly affected. He lamented that the government’s decisions have stopped strengthening government educational institutions and have given a boost to private educational institutions.
Falling enrollment in government schools.. Students’ inclination towards private schools
According to the details of the UDISE+ report, there were 40,50,116 students in government schools in the 2023-24 academic year, but by 2025-26, that number had fallen to 34,93,450. This means that there has been a sudden decrease of 5,56,666 students, the statistics show. He also said that the number of government schools in the state has fallen from 45,000 to 44,222 and aided schools from 991 to 797, which is worrying. On the other hand, the number of students in private schools has increased from 45,53,380 in 2023-24 to 48,40,296 by 2025-26. He clarified that the coalition government’s propaganda that the number of students in government schools has increased has no connection with the official UDICE report.
Jagan alleged that the coalition government is implementing such policies to benefit corporate educational institutions like Narayana, Sri Chaitanya, Bhashyam, Vigyan and Geetam. He expressed his concern that due to the deliberate weakening of government institutions, poor, SC, ST, BC and minority students who cannot afford the cost of education available in private educational institutions have been completely deprived of quality education.
Revolutionary changes brought in the education sector during the previous government’s tenure
Jagan reminded that during his previous government’s tenure (2019-24), many reforms were brought in to make the government education sector competitive with the private sector. He said that through ‘Mana Badi – Nadu Nedu’, basic facilities like drinking water, sanitation, and furniture were improved in a total of 56,703 institutions including government schools, welfare hostels, and junior colleges. As part of digital education, free tabs with BYJU’S content were distributed to 8th grade students and teachers, and 62 thousand IFP digital boards were installed for classes 6 and above, and 45 thousand smart TVs were installed in primary schools. They explained that they have provided English medium, bilingual textbooks, and Oxford dictionaries from the primary level, as well as TOEFL training from the 3rd grade, and provided special training to officials and teachers to implement the IB education system. They said that their goal is to provide free quality education to the poor, and they demanded that the coalition government protect the school education system at least for now.
