Dr Rizwan Rumi
For generations, education in Kashmir was more than a route to a degree. It was a social contract. Families that could barely afford it invested their savings in tuition, books, coaching and university fees because education promised something larger than employment: dignity, mobility and the possibility of a more secure future. A government job, a professional qualification or even a respectable white-collar career was seen as the reward at the end of a long academic journey. That promise is now under strain. The latest assessment of school education presents a troubling picture. Jammu and Kashmir recorded a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 113.7 per cent at the primary level in 2024-25, but the figure falls to 77.3 per cent at upper-primary, 66.1 per cent at secondary and just 44.8 per cent at higher-secondary level. NITI Aayog’s assessment, based on UDISE+ data, places Jammu and Kashmir among the regions with the lowest higher-secondary GER in the country. The numbers do not, by themselves, prove that young Kashmiris have consciously rejected education. But they reveal a serious problem in the education pipeline: the system is increasingly struggling to carry students from the classroom of childhood to the classroom of opportunity. And that is where the real crisis begins.
A Ladder That Narrows As Students Climb: The most striking feature of the data is not the strength of primary enrolment but the attrition that follows.
At primary level, the GER is above 100 per cent. By higher secondary, it is less than half of that. The transition rate from secondary to higher secondary is reported at 72.9 per cent, while the retention rate at higher secondary is only 38.2 per cent in the J&K government’s 2024-25 monitoring data. This means that the question facing Kashmir is no longer simply whether children enter school. It is whether they remain in the system long enough to acquire the qualifications that can meaningfully alter their economic prospects. A child entering Class 1 is still part of the education story. A teenager leaving the system after Class 10 is a different story altogether. The broken part of the ladder lies somewhere between the two.
When A Degree Stops Looking Like A Destination: Education cannot be separated from the economy surrounding it. In Kashmir, government employment has historically carried disproportionate importance because the private sector has not generated opportunities on a scale sufficient to absorb the educated workforce. For many families, the logic of education therefore became straightforward: study hard, obtain a degree, prepare for competitive examinations and secure a stable job. But what happens when the final step becomes increasingly uncertain? Recruitment delays, litigation, changing eligibility requirements, examination controversies and the sheer competition for a limited number of government positions have created a sense of uncertainty among aspirants. At the same time, private-sector employment often fails to offer salaries and stability commensurate with years of education. The result is a dangerous psychological calculation. A young person begins asking whether another degree will actually change his or her economic circumstances.
When an educated graduate remains unemployed or underemployed for years, while informal work provides an immediate—if modest—income, the opportunity cost of education becomes visible. The student does not necessarily reject learning. The student begins to question the economic bargain attached to learning. That distinction matters. The problem may not be an anti-education generation. It may be a generation that no longer believes the education system guarantees a meaningful return on its investment.
A School System Of Striking Contradictions: The infrastructure data makes the problem even more difficult to ignore. According to the latest NITI Aayog assessment, 146 government schools in Jammu and Kashmir have zero student enrolment, yet 61 teachers remain posted in them. At the other end of the spectrum, 1,371 schools are operating with a single teacher, serving more than 32,000 students. The contradiction is stark. In one part of the system, public resources are tied to schools where there are no students. In another, a single teacher is expected to carry the responsibility of an entire school. This is not simply an issue of expenditure. It is an issue of educational planning.
A school may exist on a government map, but its physical existence does not automatically make it an effective educational institution. Similarly, appointing teachers somewhere in the system does not mean that students everywhere have adequate access to teachers. The question should therefore shift from How many schools do we have? to How effectively are those schools serving children?
The Dropout Warning: The problem becomes even clearer at the secondary level. UDISE+ data for 2024-25 puts Jammu and Kashmir’s secondary-school dropout rate at 12.9 per cent, compared with 11.5 per cent nationally. The gender breakdown is also revealing: the dropout rate was 13.6 per cent for boys and 12.2 per cent for girls. A 12.9 per cent dropout rate may appear like a statistic buried in a government table. It is not. Behind every percentage point are thousands of individual decisions, family circumstances and lost opportunities. Some students leave because of economic pressure. Others struggle with academic performance, inadequate counseling, transportation, family responsibilities or the perceived futility of continuing. In remote areas, the physical distance from institutions can also become a decisive factor. This is why dropout should never be treated merely as an administrative indicator. It is a measure of how successfully society is convincing its young people that staying in education is worth their time.
“The true metric of an education system lies in guiding students toward meaningful futures rather than mere enrollment. If youth in Kashmir lose faith in education as a viable path to opportunity, the resulting disillusionment will escalate from an academic issue into a broader societal and economic crisis.”
The Reservation Debate Needs Facts, Not Slogans: There is another issue that cannot simply be ignored: the growing debate around reservation and open merit. For many open-merit aspirants, the expansion and restructuring of reservation categories has generated anxiety about the number of opportunities available to them. That perception has become an important part of the wider conversation around competitive examinations, university admissions and government employment. But the figures need to be presented accurately. Under the current J&K framework, the government has stated that vertical reservation in government jobs and professional and academic admissions is 50 per cent, excluding the separate 10 per cent EWS provision, along with applicable horizontal reservations. The framework includes quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Residents of Backward Areas and residents of areas adjoining the ALC/International Border.
Therefore, it would be misleading to simply state that “more than 60 per cent of seats and government vacancies are reserved” and conclude that less than 40 per cent is available to open merit. The structure is more complicated, and some categories operate differently from conventional vertical reservations. That clarification does not make the issue irrelevant. It makes it more important. A reservation system must pursue social justice without allowing a large section of young people to develop the belief that merit, effort and competition have become meaningless. At the same time, any discussion of merit must recognise the historical and structural disadvantages that reservation seeks to address. The real policy challenge is not choosing between equity and merit as though one must destroy the other. It is designing a system in which both can coexist credibly.
The Bigger Danger Is Educational Cynicism: The most serious consequence of declining educational participation may not appear in next year’s statistics. It may appear a decade later. When a generation loses confidence in education, the damage travels beyond classrooms. It affects productivity, entrepreneurship, social mobility, innovation and the quality of the future workforce. A young person who leaves education because of poverty is a different policy problem from a young person who leaves because education appears economically pointless. The first requires financial and social support. The second requires rebuilding the connection between qualifications and opportunity. Kashmir needs both. Schools must become places where students acquire more than certificates. They need communication skills, digital literacy, problem-solving abilities, vocational exposure, career counseling and familiarity with emerging sectors of employment. Higher education, meanwhile, cannot remain disconnected from the economy. Universities and colleges must ask uncomfortable questions: How many graduates are entering employments? How many are becoming entrepreneurs? How many possess industry-relevant skills? How many are preparing for careers that barely existed a decade ago?
The answer cannot always be another degree. Sometimes the answer is a better skill.
From Counting Schools To Rebuilding Confidence: The first reform must be administrative. Teacher deployment needs rationalisation. A school with zero students cannot continue to absorb resources indefinitely while another school struggles with a single teacher. Staffing must follow students, geography and actual educational need. The second reform must be technological and infrastructural. Digital classrooms should not become another box to tick in government reports. Technology must be accompanied by trained teachers, reliable connectivity, digital content and meaningful classroom integration. The third reform must be economic. Career-oriented education should begin well before university. Students should understand the possibilities available in vocational education, entrepreneurship, technology, tourism, agriculture, healthcare, creative industries and emerging digital professions. The fourth reform must be psychological. Students need to believe that their education has value even when a government job is not waiting at the end of it. That requires changing the definition of success.
For decades, Kashmir’s educational imagination has been heavily centred on a narrow hierarchy: government job first, professional degree second, everything else somewhere below. A modern economy cannot sustain such a limited definition of achievement. The demographic dividend cannot be taken for granted. Kashmir’s young population is often described as an opportunity. But a young population becomes a demographic dividend only when it is educated, skilled, healthy and economically productive. Youth without opportunity can become frustrated rather than productive. The decline from a 113.7 per cent primary GER to 44.8 per cent at higher secondary should therefore be read as more than an education statistic. It is a warning about the narrowing of the pathway between childhood and adulthood.
The ladder has not disappeared. But too many rungs are becoming difficult to reach. Kashmir does not need another campaign telling parents to send their children to school. Families already understand the value of education. What they increasingly need is evidence that the system will reward persistence with genuine opportunity. That means better schools, better teachers, relevant curricula, credible recruitment, stronger private-sector employment and a fairer, more transparent relationship between education and opportunity. The ultimate test of an education system is not how many children enter Class 1. It is how many can climb all the way to a future they can believe in. If Kashmir’s young people begin to see education not as a ladder to opportunity but as a ladder leaning against an empty wall, the crisis will no longer be confined to schools. It will become a crisis of the region’s future.
(The author is a research scholar. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
