It has more illiterate people–by proportion–of any Indian state, and although literacy rose 14.8 percentage points over a decade to 2011, there is a crisis in Bihar’s primary education system: Its classrooms are India’s most crowded and have the fewest teachers, yet India’s sixth poorest state spends the least money per student, according to an analysis of various government data.
Bihar has 37.3% fewer teachers than it needs in elementary school (grades I to VIII), and is short of 278,602 teachers, according to our analysis based on Right to Education (RTE) Act criteria, which stipulates a pupil teacher ratio (PTR)–the number of pupils per teacher–of 30:1 in primary schools (grades I to V) and 35:1 in upper primary school (grades VI to VIII).
