India's Primary Education Progressing Better Than The Secondary Education: UNESCO

A recent report by UNESCO titled ‘SDG Scorecard Progress Report on National Benchmarks: Focus on Teachers’ has shown India’s higher education system status. As per the report, the primary education level in India is better than the higher level of education.

The report said that among the central and southern Asian countries, India’s progress is fast with a participation rate of nearly 91 percent in pre-primary or early childhood education attendance which is only 4% lower than its 2025 benchmark of 95%. The completion rate for the primary section is 94% in India while the benchmark for 2025 is 99%. The trained teachers in the pre-primary section are progressing faster with 95% which is at par with the 2025 benchmark.

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It is reported that the Upper Secondary section completion rate has remained slow at 51% which is far lower than that of the 2025 benchmark of 84%. However, neighboring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh are said to be progressing fast in both the primary and secondary education levels, as per the report.

In the Out-of-school rate, India’s progress is faster among the primary age group but gets slower in the lower secondary and upper secondary sections. While assessing the minimum learning proficiency, the report suggests that the lack of data is a major obstacle.

As per the UNSECO’s study, the school internet connectivity in India is making an average progress in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary categories and shows room for further improvements. The UNESCO report suggest that the primary education sector in India is relatively better than the lower and upper secondary education sectors.

Notably SDG 4 benchmarks is a novel process which involves countries specifying their contribution to the achievement of the global targets based on their national plans and policies. According to the UNESCO, an Overall, 79% of countries submitted benchmarks, or the national targets, to be achieved by 2025 and 2030 for at least one of eight SDG 4 indicators. The report tracks national benchmarks for various education indicators to address accountability gaps.