New Delhi: The Union Education Ministry said that the total number of teachers in the country has crossed 10 million for the first time in any academic year, according to its Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report for 2024-2025. The number includes teachers in both government and private schools. This comes even as the academic year 2024-2025 also saw a rise in the representation of female teachers, with women now comprising 54.2 per cent of the total teaching workforce, compared to 46.9 per cent in 2014-2015.

According to the education ministry, a total of 5.14 million teachers have been recruited since 2014, of which 61 per cent are female. Officials indicated that the growing presence of female teachers has led to an uptick in girls' enrolment, with the figure being 48.3 per cent of all new enrolments in 2024-2025, compared to 48.1 per cent in the previous year.

The report, however, also shows a drop in the total number of enrolments from 251.79 million in 2022-2023 to 246.95 million in 2024-2025. Numbers suggest that this drop has come in conjunction with a fall in percentage share of admissions in the primary departments (Classes 1 to 5) from 48.7 per cent in 2022-2023 to 48 per cent in 2024-2025.