J&K has 24,000 schools and 1.67 lakh teachers on paper. On the ground, over 1,300 run on a single teacher, more than a hundred run on none at all, and roughly 1,300 still have nowhere for a girl to go.
Jammu and Kashmir does not have an education crisis of scale. It has one of arrangement.
The Union Territory’s ledgers look healthy enough: more than 24,000 schools, roughly 26.5 lakh students, close to 1.67 lakh teachers. Yet the same UDISE+ returns and legislative disclosures that produce those totals also record what the totals conceal — that between 1,330 and 1,371 government schools are run by a single teacher for over 31,000 children, while 119 to 146 schools keep teachers posted with no students at all. More than 3,000 schools have recently reported fewer than ten students, or none.
Read together, those figures are an indictment. Teachers are not scarce in J&K; they are misplaced. A teacher marking attendance in an empty room in an accessible town while a colleague in a hill village handles five grades at once is not a shortage. It is an administrative failure allowed to harden into routine — and it has consequences. Parents who can afford to leave, leave. The drift to private schools is not a preference. It is a verdict.
The physical plant tells the same story. Departmental reviews in mid-2025 found roughly 1,900 government schools without a separate toilet for girls; by early 2026 the figure had fallen to about 1,321 — progress, but progress measured against a standard that should never have gone unmet. Over 2,000 lack the same for boys. Coverage stands near 91 per cent for girls and 89 for boys, both under the national mark. Some 8.5 per cent of schools have no electricity. Nearly 5 per cent of primary and over 15 per cent of secondary buildings are classified dilapidated; others operate from rented rooms. Desks are available in about half the schools reviewed. Computers reach 43 per cent, the internet fewer than half.
None of this falls evenly. An adolescent girl without a functional washroom does not debate policy; she stops coming. A child in a tribal hamlet taught by one exhausted teacher across five syllabi does not fail an examination years later by accident. A dilapidated roof in a region of hard winters is not a statistic but a risk carried daily.
Samagra Shiksha funds exist. Deadlines for girls’ toilets have been issued. Rationalisation has been ordered. Intent is not the missing ingredient — follow-through is. What is needed is a published, school-by-school rationalisation with postings made public; a construction calendar with dates attached to named buildings; a standing maintenance head in the budget rather than one-time grants; and school management committees with the standing to report and be answered.
Enrolment is a number. A school is a promise. J&K is keeping the first and breaking the second.
