The Unified District Information on School Education (U-DISE) report for 2019-20 reported that female teachers in schools have outnumbered their male colleagues for the first time in India. The country is now home to 49.2 lakh female teachers and 47.7 lakh male teachers, up from 35.8 lakh female teachers and 42.4 lakh male teachers in 2012-13.
The U-DISE report, which is released annually by the department of school education and literacy under the Union ministry of education, said the number of women teachers are higher in private, unaided schools. The number of male teachers is more elevated in government and aided schools. The report also suggested that Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) has also improved at all levels of school education.
However, most of the women teachers are concentrated in pre-primary level as the report also shows that male teachers are more prevalent from upper primary level onwards. More than 1 lakh women teachers work at the pre-primary level, compared with around 27,000 men. In the primary grades, 19.6 lakh are women while 15.7 lakh are male. There are 11.5 lakh male and 10.6 lakh women teachers in the upper introductory classes, 6.3 lakh men and 5.2 lakh women teachers in the secondary schools, while in higher secondary, it's 3.7 lakh men to 2.8 lakh women.
While primary grade level has the most balanced gender ratio of teachers with 19.6 lakh women and 15.7 lakh male teachers, few states have women outnumbering male teachers even in the higher grades as well. According to the report, Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of female teachers of 6.42 lakh, followed by Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra with 4.22 lakh and 3.75 lakh women teachers. Except for Kerala, Delhi, Meghalaya, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, male teachers outnumber women in higher grades in all big states. In these five states, the number of women teaching is more heightened than men, even in secondary and higher secondary classes.
These teachers cater to nearly 26.5 crore students of pre-primary to higher secondary level from different socio-economic backgrounds in more than 15 lakh schools across India, making the Indian school education system one of the largest in the world. Projecting the total enrolment of students in 2019-20, the report states 13.01 crore boys and 12.08 crore girls got into primary to higher secondary levels of school education.
Further, the report notes that the Gender Parity Index (GPI) has been favourable to the girls at all levels of school education, with improvements most pronounced at the higher secondary level.