NEP Structure vs Existing Structure: What Changed in UDISE+ 2025-26, and How to Read Both Reports
Based on UDISE+ 2025-26, both the Existing Structure and NEP Structure reports, Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India.
For the fourth year running, the Ministry has released two parallel national reports for the same reference year — one built on the familiar Primary–Upper Primary–Secondary–Higher Secondary (10+2) framework, and a second built on the Foundational–Preparatory–Middle–Secondary (5+3+3+4) structure recommended by NEP 2020. This matters to every planner, researcher and journalist who uses UDISE+ data, for a simple reason: the underlying school-level data is identical in both reports, but a number of headline indicators are not numerically comparable between them. A 7.0% “Secondary” dropout rate in one report and a 9.5% “Secondary” dropout rate in the other are not a contradiction and not evidence of data revision — they are answers to two differently-defined questions. This article updates this site’s earlier NEP-structure analysis with the newly released 2025-26 data and is a working guide to telling the two report formats apart.
India’s Dual Education Reporting Guide, NEP Vs. Existing Structure (UDISEPlus 2025-26).
The Two Frameworks, Class by Class
| Existing Structure (10+2) | Classes | NEP Structure (5+3+3+4) | Classes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-Primary | — | Foundational | Pre-Primary + I–II |
| Primary (part) | I–II | ||
| Primary (part) | III–V | Preparatory | III–V |
| Upper Primary | VI–VIII | Middle | VI–VIII |
| Secondary | IX–X | Secondary | IX–XII |
| Higher Secondary | XI–XII |
The practical effect: Middle exactly equals the old Upper Primary (same three classes, same children), so anything reported at that level translates one-to-one. Foundational and Preparatory together exactly equal the old Primary plus pre-primary, but the report draws the internal line after Class II rather than after Class V. And most consequentially, NEP’s “Secondary” stage absorbs the old Secondary and Higher Secondary into a single four-year block (IX–XII), which is where most of the comparability traps below come from.
Four Years of NEP-Structure Data: The Trend Planners Actually Have
Because the NEP Structure report now has four editions behind it, dropout, transition and retention rates can be tracked on a consistent 5+3+3+4 basis from 2022-23 straight through to 2025-26 — a genuinely useful series that did not exist when this site’s first NEP-structure analysis was written with only two data points.
| Stage | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundational | 0.0 | 0.0 | — | — |
| Preparatory | 8.7 | 3.7 | 2.3 | 1.8 |
| Middle | 8.1 | 5.2 | 3.5 | 3.6 |
| Secondary | 13.8 | 10.9 | 8.2 | 7.0 |
Source: UDISE+ Reports (NEP Structure) 2022-23 through 2025-26; 2022-23 and 2023-24 figures as previously reported in this site’s 2022-23 & 2023-24 NEP-structure analysis; 2024-25 figures as reported in State of Dropout, Transition, and Retention Rates based on UDISEPlus 2024-25 Data; 2025-26 figures computed from UDISE+ 2025-26 NEP Structure, Table 1. Foundational-stage dropout is not separately meaningful given direct Grade 1 admission patterns and is not reported for the two most recent years.
Read this way, the Secondary-stage story is unambiguous and consistent across four years: NEP-structure Secondary (Classes IX–XII) dropout has fallen from 13.8% to 7.0% — essentially halved — over the period the dual-reporting model has existed. The Middle stage shows the one point of caution: after falling from 8.1% to 3.5% over three years, it ticked marginally back up to 3.6% in 2025-26, worth watching in next year’s release rather than dismissing as noise. Transition and retention rates show the same broadly improving pattern: Foundational-to-Preparatory transition rose from 92.2% (2022-23) to 99.2% (2025-26), and Secondary-stage retention (to Class XII) rose from 45.6% (2023-24) to 51.9% (2025-26).
Reading the NEP Structure Report’s Distinctive Features
Three features of the NEP-structure report are worth understanding on their own terms, independent of which edition introduced them:
- A Class I-to-II retention checkpoint within the Foundational stage. Because Foundational spans pre-primary through Class II, the report can isolate retention at this very early checkpoint (98.5% nationally in 2025-26) — a granularity the old Primary (I–V) retention figure alone could never show.
- Foundational-stage GER that explicitly excludes Anganwadi/ECCE enrolment. Foundational GER stood at 42.8% nationally in 2025-26 (41.9% in 2022-23, 41.5% in 2023-24) — a figure that looks like a pre-primary access crisis read in isolation, but which is the GER for only the subset of Foundational-age children enrolled in UDISE+-covered schools. Early-years provision through Anganwadi Centres falls under the Ministry of Women and Child Development and is not part of this figure. Any citation of this number should carry that qualifier.
- School-to-Anganwadi convergence tracking. The 2025-26 NEP-structure report includes tables on the number of Foundational-stage schools co-located with or linked to an Anganwadi Centre or pre-primary section — directly serviceable data for NEP 2020’s early-childhood convergence agenda, though this analysis has not independently verified in which edition this specific table first appeared.
The Comparability Trap: Same Data, Different Numbers
This is the table every planner pulling numbers from UDISE+ 2025-26 should keep at hand — and the central, still-valid reason this comparison matters regardless of how many editions the NEP-structure report has now had.
| Indicator | Existing Structure | NEP Structure | Directly Comparable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upper Primary / Middle dropout rate | 3.6% (Classes VI–VIII) | 3.6% (Middle) | Yes — identical class span |
| Primary→Upper Primary / Preparatory→Middle transition | 93.8% (Class V→VI) | 93.8% (Preparatory→Middle) | Yes — same class boundary |
| Upper Primary→Secondary / Middle→Secondary transition | 88.3% (Class VIII→IX) | 88.3% (Middle→Secondary) | Yes — same class boundary |
| Elementary / Middle retention (I–VIII) | 83.7% | 83.7% (Middle, I–VIII) | Yes |
| Higher Secondary / Secondary retention (I–XII) | 51.9% | 51.9% (Secondary, I–XII) | Yes — both measure to Class XII |
| Secondary dropout rate | 9.5% (Classes IX–X only) | 7.0% (Classes IX–XII combined) | No — different denominators |
| Secondary GER | ~81.5% (IX–X) and ~61.7% (Higher Secondary, XI–XII), reported separately | 71.7% (a single blended IX–XII figure) | No — one report splits, the other blends |
| Primary / Preparatory dropout rate | 0.3% (Classes I–V) | 1.8% (Preparatory, Classes III–V only) | No — Existing includes Classes I–II, NEP excludes them (they sit in Foundational) |
The single most important line in that table for a policy brief or a media citation is the Secondary dropout row. If a state or a journalist compares the NEP report’s 7.0% Secondary dropout figure to a previous year’s Existing-Structure Secondary (IX–X) dropout figure and reports “dropout has fallen sharply,” that comparison is invalid — it conflates a shorter, higher-attrition two-year span with a longer, blended four-year span. This site’s own earlier examination of whether UDISE+ underestimates dropout rates is a useful companion read on exactly how sensitive these figures are to definitional choices like this one.
Why This Also Matters for School-Level Planning, Not Just Indicators
The mismatch isn’t confined to rates — it runs down to how schools themselves are counted. Table 3.1 of the NEP report groups school counts into just three buckets — Foundational+Preparatory combined (7,22,498 schools), Middle (4,32,374) and Secondary (3,11,810) — deliberately merging Foundational and Preparatory at the school level even though it separates them at the enrolment and GER level. A school offering Classes I–V is counted once in the combined Foundational+Preparatory column, but its children are split across two separate enrolment tables. Planners building school-mapping or rationalisation exercises need to work from Table 3.1’s three-way split, not the four-way split used for enrolment and outcome indicators — using the wrong table will silently double-count or omit schools.
Which Report Should a Planner Actually Use?
Neither structure replaces the other for every purpose; they serve different institutional frameworks that will continue to run in parallel for some years:
- RTE Act compliance, elementary-stage PTR norms, and Samagra Shiksha’s Elementary/Secondary budget heads are all still legally and administratively defined around Classes I–VIII (Elementary) and IX–XII, closer to the Existing Structure’s framing. Use the Existing Structure report for compliance and budget-head reporting until scheme guidelines are formally revised to the NEP stages.
- NIPUN Bharat / Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) monitoring is explicitly stage-defined around NEP’s Foundational stage (targeting outcomes by the end of Grade 3, i.e., early Preparatory). Use the NEP Structure report — it is the only one of the two with a Class I–II checkpoint and a Foundational-to-Preparatory transition rate.
- NCF-2023-aligned curriculum, textbook, and PARAKH assessment planning are built around the 5+3+3+4 stages by design. Use the NEP Structure report.
- Any trend analysis spanning years before 2022-23 has no choice but to use the Existing Structure report, since NEP-structure reporting itself only begins that year.
Concluding Observations
UDISE+ 2025-26 is not the first year India’s education data has spoken in two structural languages at once — it is the fourth, and the two are settling into a genuinely usable parallel system rather than a one-off transition artefact. The four-year NEP-structure trend is, on its own terms, an encouraging story: Secondary-stage dropout under the 5+3+3+4 definition has nearly halved since the format’s first edition, and transition and retention rates have improved in step. But the persistence of the dual-report model over four years makes the comparability trap identified in this piece more consequential, not less — a mismatch that recurs every single year, in the same specific place (the Secondary-stage dropout and GER figures), is exactly the kind of error that becomes institutionalised in state report cards and media citations if it isn’t flagged explicitly and repeatedly. The practical task for planners is not to pick one report over the other, but to know, indicator by indicator, which of the two speaks their scheme’s language — RTE and Samagra Shiksha budget heads still run on the Existing Structure’s Elementary/Secondary lines, while NIPUN Bharat and NCF-2023 implementation run on the NEP Structure’s Foundational-to-Middle stages — and to keep both fluencies current as each new edition of both reports arrives.
A Note of Caution
As with all UDISE+-based analysis on this site, standard caveats apply. First, the data remains self-reported by schools on a voluntary basis, and the Ministry’s own disclaimer does not warrant its accuracy. Second, because individual student-wise computation began only in 2022-23, the fully comparable series for both report formats runs four years (2022-23 to 2025-26); the pre-2022-23 figures occasionally cited for context elsewhere on this site use an older, school-wise consolidated methodology and are not strictly comparable to either the Existing Structure or NEP Structure series discussed here.
Suggested Readings
- Analysis of UDISEPlus Reports 2022-23 & 2023-24 per the NEP Structure — the original analysis this piece extends with two further years of data.
- UDISEPlus 2025-26 Data Analysis — the flagship national review for the year covered here.
- State of Dropout, Transition, and Retention Rates based on UDISEPlus 2024-25 Data — the prior-year source for the 2024-25 column in Table 2 above.
- Transition Rates in School Education in India — background on how transition rates are computed and used in planning.
- Does UDISE+ Underestimate Dropout Rates? — a critical look at definitional sensitivity in dropout computation, directly relevant to the comparability trap discussed above.
- Codes, Concepts & Definitions of UDISEPlus — reference for the precise definitions of enrolment, dropout, transition and retention rates used throughout this article.
- Computing the Un-computed Indicators — on indicators the NEP-structure report does not yet publish directly.
Source: UDISE+ 2025-26 Report — Existing Structure (Tables 6.13–6.15) and NEP Structure (Tables 1, 3.1), Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India, released 7th July 2026; UDISE+ NEP Structure Reports 2022-23 and 2023-24, released 30th December 2024.
