West Bengal’s school education system is facing a sharp imbalance in teacher deployment, with 4,133 schools reporting zero student enrolment but having 19,502 teachers posted there, according to the Union government’s UDISE+ 2025-26 data. The figure accounts for nearly 73% of the 5,663 zero-enrolment schools recorded across India. At the same time, 6,769 schools in the state have only one teacher for a combined 2,29,569 students.
The data, released in July and uploaded on the Union Education Ministry’s website in August, has prompted the state government to begin teacher rationalisation. School Education Minister Dipak Barman said some of the zero-enrolment figures may be linked to private schools failing to upload student data correctly, while the government is working to move teachers from schools with excess staff to those facing shortages.
A Stark Teacher Gap
The UDISE+ figures reveal two contrasting realities within West Bengal’s school network: schools where teachers are posted despite no students being recorded, and schools where a single teacher is responsible for large numbers of children. The state’s pupil-teacher ratio stands at 1:30, making it the second-worst among states, according to the report. Of West Bengal’s 93,147 schools, around 8% have 10 or fewer students, while 8.5% have more than 500 students.
Barman has attributed at least part of the apparent mismatch to gaps in data submission by private schools. He said some institutions uploaded teacher details but did not update student enrolment information, causing them to appear as schools with teachers but no students.
The minister said schools have been asked to correct their records and that a mechanism is being developed to address such discrepancies. He also said teacher rationalisation has begun, with personnel being moved from schools with surplus staff to those with no teachers or only one teacher.
Audit Flags Wider Gaps
The latest UDISE+ findings come shortly after a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) performance audit of the implementation of Samagra Shiksha in West Bengal between 2019-20 and 2023-24. The audit found 520 schools with 8,596 students but no teachers at all.
Another 5,152 schools, serving 1,76,491 students, were functioning with only one teacher. It also found that 29% of primary schools and 30% of upper-primary schools did not meet prescribed pupil-teacher ratios because of teacher shortages. At the higher-secondary level, 79% of schools exceeded the prescribed ratio, pointing to uneven deployment rather than a shortage that affects every institution equally.
The CAG also highlighted significant transition losses between upper-primary and higher-secondary education, ranging from 28% to 42%. Among surveyed students who had dropped out, 53% of parents cited financial hardship, while other reasons included unwillingness to continue education, migration for work and early marriage. The audit therefore points to a challenge that extends beyond teacher numbers, involving affordability, retention, classroom capacity and access to education.
The teacher deployment issue also comes against the backdrop of the long-running recruitment controversy in the state. In April 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the cancellation of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching appointments made through the 2016 West Bengal School Service Commission recruitment process, finding the selection process to have been affected by manipulation and fraud.
The Court directed that a fresh recruitment process be undertaken. It later allowed eligible, “untainted” assistant teachers to continue until December 31, 2025, to prevent disruption to students while fresh recruitment was carried out.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
The figures from UDISE+ and the CAG audit underline why teacher availability cannot be assessed simply by looking at the total number of teachers in a state. What matters equally is whether teachers are reaching the classrooms where children need them most. At the same time, discrepancies in UDISE+ records should be verified and corrected before conclusions are drawn about individual schools or institutions. The state government’s ongoing rationalisation exercise could be an important step if it is implemented transparently, with accurate school-level data and attention to local needs.
Equally, ensuring reliable recruitment processes and addressing the financial and social reasons that push children out of school are essential for strengthening public education. Rather than turning the issue into a political contest, the focus should remain on making sure every child has access to a teacher, a functioning classroom and a fair opportunity to learn. How can governments, educators and communities work together to ensure that teachers are deployed where students need them most?
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