Repetition Rate Divergence: Elementary Improves, Secondary Worsens in UDISE+ 2025-26
Repetition Rate Divergence: Elementary Improves, Secondary Worsens in UDISE+ 2025-26
Based on UDISE+ 2025-26 (Existing Structure), Table 6.12, Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India.
Background
Repetition rate rarely gets the attention dropout and GER get, but it measures something neither of them can: how efficiently the system moves children who stay enrolled through the grades on schedule. By the Report’s own definition, Promotion Rate, Repetition Rate and Dropout Rate for any grade must sum to 100% — a child either moves up, repeats, or leaves. A rising repetition rate at a stage where dropout is falling, as this year’s Secondary data shows, is not necessarily good news dressed up as bad; it can mean children who would once have left the system are now being retained in the same grade instead of progressing — a different, and in some ways more persistent, drain on internal efficiency.
School Dropout Rate: Concept, Formula & Procedure
Three Years, One Diverging Line
| Level | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | 3-Year Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary (I–V) | 2.1 | 2.9 | 2.2 | Improved on 2024-25 |
| Upper Primary (VI–VIII) | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.3 | Improved on 2024-25 |
| Secondary (IX–X) | 3.9 | 4.6 | 5.3 | Worsened, third year running |
Source: UDISE+ 2025-26, Table 6.12; 2023-24 and 2024-25 figures as previously published in this site’s Analysis of UDISE+ 2024-25 Data.
Elementary-stage repetition improved in 2025-26 after a one-year spike: Primary fell back to 2.2% (from 2.9% in 2024-25, itself up from 2.1% in 2023-24) and Upper Primary fell to a three-year low of 1.3%. Secondary shows no such correction — it has risen in every one of the last three years, from 3.9% to 4.6% to 5.3%, a cumulative increase of 1.4 percentage points. In absolute terms, this year’s Secondary repetition rate implies roughly 20.3 lakh students repeated a Secondary-stage grade in 2025-26, against roughly 22.4 lakh Primary repeaters and 8.2 lakh Upper Primary repeaters — meaning Secondary now accounts for a disproportionate and growing share of all repetition in the system relative to its much smaller enrolment base.
West Bengal Is the Outlier That Explains Itself
State data makes the Secondary-stage analysis concrete. West Bengal’s Secondary repetition rate is 21.5% — more than four times the national average and by far the highest in the country, ahead of Assam (17.3%) and Mizoram (15.6%). This is not a standalone anomaly: this site’s state-wise dropout and GER map analysis for 2025-26 already flagged West Bengal’s Secondary GER of 111.1% — the highest of any large state — as most plausibly reflecting substantial over-age enrolment rather than genuine universal access. A 21.5% repetition rate is direct, independent confirmation of exactly that hypothesis: a large number of West Bengal’s Secondary-stage students are not new entrants inflating the GER, they are the same students repeating the same grade, year after year, and being counted again each time.
| Highest | % | Lowest | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Bengal | 21.5 | Tamil Nadu | 0.1 |
| Assam | 17.3 | Telangana | 0.2 |
| Mizoram | 15.6 | Kerala | 0.3 |
| Meghalaya | 11.7 | Andhra Pradesh | 0.5 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 9.9 | Puducherry | 1.4 |
| All India: 5.3 | All India: 5.3 | ||
Source: UDISE+ 2025-26, Table 6.12.
The lowest-repetition states — Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh — are the same southern states that consistently rank among the strongest on retention and dropout elsewhere in this year’s data, suggesting internal efficiency, unlike dropout alone, tracks a fairly stable, familiar set of stronger and weaker state systems rather than telling a substantially different story.
A Likely, Partial Explanation
The 2019 amendment to the RTE Act ended the blanket “no-detention policy” nationally and allowed states to reintroduce detention at Class 5 and Class 8 based on exam performance, with the option (not obligation) to extend similar academic rigour further up the system. Most states that have acted on this have done so at the elementary-exit points, not systematically at Secondary. If Secondary-stage academic standards have tightened in some states even without a formal detention-policy trigger — through board-exam-linked promotion practices, for instance — that would be consistent with a rising Secondary repetition rate that elementary-stage policy changes alone do not explain. This is offered as a plausible partial explanation, not an established one; UDISE+ does not collect the promotion-policy data needed to confirm it directly.
What This Means for Planners
- Track repetition and dropout together, not separately, when assessing Secondary-stage reform. A state that reduces dropout by keeping struggling students enrolled rather than letting them leave may simply convert dropout into repetition — an improvement in one indicator that is not genuine progress in internal efficiency.
- Treat West Bengal’s Secondary GER and dropout figures with the repetition rate in view. A 21.5% repetition rate materially changes how the state’s other Secondary-stage indicators should be read, and this site’s dropout/GER map analysis should be revisited alongside this figure.
- Investigate what is driving the three-year Secondary repetition rise specifically, rather than assuming it will self-correct the way Primary’s one-year spike did in 2025-26 — the pattern at Secondary shows no sign of reversing on its own.
Concluding Observations
Read in isolation, a falling Primary and Upper Primary repetition rate alongside a rising national dropout improvement would look like unambiguous good news for the elementary stage. Read alongside Secondary’s three-year climb, the picture is more precisely a story about where the system’s internal inefficiency is now concentrated — not eliminated, but relocated to the stage where NEP 2020’s universalisation targets are furthest from being met. West Bengal’s data shows what that concentration looks like in the extreme: a Secondary GER that appears strong only because of how much repetition sits behind it. Repetition rate deserves the same routine, state-by-state scrutiny this site already applies to dropout and GER — not as a replacement for either, but as the indicator that reveals what happens to the children who neither leave nor advance.
Suggested Readings
- Analysis of UDISE+ 2024-25 Data by Prof. Arun C Mehta — source of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 repetition-rate baseline used in Table 1 above.
- UDISEPlus 2025-26 Data Analysis — the flagship national review for the year covered here.
- The Secondary Turnaround: Why Dropout Fell and Retention Jumped in 2025-26 — the companion dropout and retention analysis this piece’s repetition data should be read alongside.
- State-Wise Dropout and GER Maps 2025-26: A Visual and Data Guide for Planners
Source: UDISE+ 2025-26 Report (Existing Structure), Table 6.12, Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India, released 7th July 2026.
