7,948 Assam schools without ideal pupil-teacher ratio

Guwahati

Assam has 7,948 government and government-aided schools without the ideal pupil-teacher ratio of 30:1, Education Minister Ranoj Pegu told the 126-member State Assembly on Thursday (July 9, 2026).

Replying to separate questions by All India United Democratic Front MLA Mohammad Badruddin Ajmal and his Congress counterpart Asif Mohammad Nazar, the Minister said that the norm is to deploy two teachers per lower primary school while maintaining the pupil-teacher ratio, depending on student enrolment. This is because lower primary schools are generally located within a 1-km radius of one another.

“However, the 30:1 pupil-teacher ratio has not been maintained in 5,303 lower primary schools,” he said, citing UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education) data for 2025-26.

The data revealed that the number of upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary schools not maintaining the 30:1 norm is 1,253, 829, and 517, respectively.

The Education Minister also said 5,128 of the State’s 44,103 schools lack separate classrooms.

“Multi-grade teaching is practised in schools without an adequate number of teachers and students. In most of these schools, two teachers teach students from five classes in the same room. This is not found to have affected the quality of teaching,” he said.

A few months ago, Mr. Pegu said Assam has 2,670 single-teacher government primary schools.

On Thursday (July 9, 2026), he clarified that an educational institution is classified as a single-teacher school when one of its sanctioned teaching posts remains vacant.

“However, local education authorities usually make temporary arrangements by assigning another teacher or a Cluster Resource Centre Coordinator to support such schools,” he said.

He further said that election or other public duties are usually not assigned to teachers of such schools.