Private schools are seeing a drop in enrolment. Where did the kids go?

Daybreak

Private schools across the country are going through quite a crisis right now.

Just last month, The Ken reporter Atul Krishna saw this play out first hand at a budget private school called Blossoms in Bangalore. During a visit to its campus, he learnt that its once packed classrooms are now thinning down year after year. From 1,5000 students about five years ago, the count is less than half od that now. And unfortunately, the school’s principal Shashi Kumar predicts that that number will only drop further.

Blossom’s is just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle.

Between 2023 and 2024 alone, overall school enrolments across the country registered its steepest drop in five years. The enrolment numbers dropped by…wait for it…10 million. And funnily enough, private schools, which make up less than one third of all schools in the country, saw a drop of over 2.2 million student enrolments.

That begs a rather obvious question – Where have all the children gone?

Tune in.

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