Literacy rate rose 13.45 percentage points in UP over a decade from 2001, but there are wide regional disparities: In the north-eastern district of Shrawasti, the literacy rate is 49%, while in the best performing district, Ghaziabad (in north-western UP), it is 85%, according to this report.
India’s largest state by population has the worst pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) in India, with a teacher for every 39 students at the primary level, according to the Unified-District Information System for Education (U-DISE) Flash Statistics 2015-16. The all India average is 23:1.
UP recorded an enrolment of 25.3 million primary students (including both private and government schools) in 2015-16, taught by 665,779 teachers (even including schools where primary, upper primary and secondary co-existed), according to government education data.
At 30 students per teacher–as prescribed by the Right to Education Act (RTE)–at the primary level, the state should have 840,000 teachers but is short by 21%, or 176,000, according to our analysis.
