Infographic dashboard showing India's TFR decline from 5.9 (1950) to 1.9 (2023), school enrollment at 24.68 Cr (-25L, Classes 1-5 -34L), secondary dropout 11.5%, gender enrollment pie (boys 51%, girls 49%), and demographic timeline to 2061. Data: UDISE+ 2024-25, SRS/NFHS

The Closing Window: Falling Fertility and India’s Make-or-Break Decade for Secondary Education


Introduction

Within 48 hours, two authoritative voices placed the future of Indian education at the centre of the country’s demographic story.

On 30 November 2025, the Indian Association for the Study of Population (IASP) highlighted that rising female schooling has brought India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to approximately 1.9 and will limit the population peak to 1.8–1.9 billion around 2080 [1]. The very next day, economist Sanjeev Sanyal cautioned that the same shrinking youth cohort will soon make large pension commitments unsustainable and will force school and university closures – a trend already visible in South Korea and parts of southern India [2].

Both analyses describe the same reality from opposite angles: annual births have fallen from 29 million in 2001 to roughly 23 million today and continue to decline rapidly [2]. At Education for All in India, we see one urgent conclusion: the next 10–12 years are the final window to achieve universal secondary education while we still have enough children to teach.


The Two Sides of the Demographic Transition

The empowering side – education driving voluntary fertility decline.
  • National TFR has dropped from 3.5 in 2000 to ~1.9 in 2025 [1]
  • Secondary Gross Enrolment Ratio reached 78.7 % in 2024–25 – the fastest-growing segment [3]
  • 97.3 % of schools now have separate functional toilets for girls [3]
  • Female teachers constitute 54.1 % of the total teaching force [3]
  • Closing the remaining ~20 % secondary gap by 2035 could reduce the eventual peak by an estimated 80–120 million [1]
The cautionary side – shrinking cohorts and institutional strain
  • Births peaked at 29 million (2001); now ~23 million and falling fast [2]
  • South Korea is already closing universities and schools; early signs are visible in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh [2]
  • A smaller future workforce will face very high tax burdens to honour today’s pension promises [2]

India vs China: Coercion vs Empowerment

China’s one-child policy (1980–2015) achieved a rapid fertility drop through state coercion, fines, forced sterilisations, and abortions. The result: TFR collapsed to ~1.1–1.2 today, 400 million “prevented” births, a severely imbalanced sex ratio, and an ageing crisis that arrived two decades earlier than expected. By 2022, China began losing population; thousands of schools have closed, and the working-age cohort is shrinking by millions each year.

India, by contrast, has reached almost the same fertility level (~1.9) voluntarily, primarily because girls are staying longer in school. There are no mass human-rights violations, no major sex-ratio imbalance at birth, and the transition has been gradual and state-specific. This is one of modern history’s greatest successes of education-led development.

Yet the endpoint risk remains similar: too few children → empty classrooms → fiscal strain. India has the advantage of foresight and a 15–20-year buffer that China never had. We must use it, and act fast to bring remaining children under the secondary education fold.

The Missing Foundation: We Still Await the 2021 Census

All current projections remain extrapolations from the 2011 Census, as the 2021 Census has not yet been released. As we have repeatedly emphasised [5], long-term education planning must eventually rest on verified district-level counts, not just sample surveys.


Policy Roadmap: One Decade to Act

India is running out of children, and with them, the last realistic chance to achieve universal secondary education. The six-point policy roadmap – “One Decade to Act”—is a tightly focused emergency plan that treats the shrinking child population not as a problem, but as a narrow, non-renewable window of opportunity. Here is what each of the six points actually means, why it matters now, and what it is trying to solve.

  1. Declare 2025–2035 the National Decade of Secondary Education
    This is not mere symbolism. It is a political and budgetary declaration of war on the chronic neglect of Classes 9–12. Primary education has received the lion’s share of attention and money for three decades; secondary has always been the neglected middle child. Naming a full decade forces every future finance minister, every state education secretary, and every five-year plan to justify why secondary is still being short-changed. It creates a deadline that cannot be kicked down the road indefinitely.
  2. Shift budgetary priority to secondary/senior-secondary levels.
    The math is brutal but liberating. Because fewer children are being born, the total school-age population will peak around 2030–31 and then begin to decline. For the first time in independent India, per-student spending can rise dramatically without increasing the absolute education budget. This point demands that the windfall be deliberately captured for secondary and higher secondary schooling rather than silently absorbed into pensions, salaries, or unrelated sectors. It is the fiscal equivalent of harvesting a crop before the season ends forever.
  3. Ensure a Grade 9–12 campus within 3–5 km of every habitation.
    Distance is the single biggest predictor of dropout after Class 8, especially for girls. Today, thousands of villages have a primary school next door, but force teenagers to travel 10–15 km (or more) for secondary classes. A 3–5 km radius is the proven threshold at which daily attendance becomes feasible without hostels or expensive transport. Building compact, viable secondary campuses everywhere is now cheaper than ever because new primary schools are no longer needed in most places. The infrastructure money that used to chase rising primary cohorts can now be redirected upward.
  4. Recruit 1.5–2 million additional secondary teachers (prioritising women in STEM)
    India currently has a sanctioned strength shortage of over 1 million secondary teachers and an actual deployed shortage closer to 1.5 million. Pupil-teacher ratios in many states is high in Classes 9–12; as many as 47 students used to sit in a classroom in Jharkhand. The deliberate focus on women in STEM is strategic on multiple levels: it attacks the severe gender imbalance in science and math faculty, provides role models that keep girls in school longer, and taps into the large pool of educated young women who are currently under-employed. Because cohort sizes will soon shrink, these new teachers will not become a permanent fiscal burden; they are a temporary surge to match the last big wave of adolescents.
  5. Scale proven girl-retention measures.
    India already knows what works: bicycles, cash transfers, separate toilets, self-defence training, and stipends conditional on attendance. These schemes are scattered, underfunded, and often discontinued when a new government takes over. The roadmap demands that every proven intervention be implemented at the national scale immediately and locked in for the entire decade. Every year of additional schooling for a girl lowers her lifetime fertility by roughly 10% and raises her earning potential by 10–20%. With birth rates already below replacement, keeping girls in school until Class 12 is the most powerful long-term investment India can still make in both human capital and demographic balance.
  6. Urgently release the 2021 Census or an official 2025 population estimate.
    Planning without accurate, current, district-level child population data is like flying blind in a storm. The delayed 2021 Census has left the entire education system working with 2011 projections that are now off by millions of children. States in the south are already seeing absolute declines in school-age population; northern states will peak later. Without fresh numbers, no one knows how many new secondary sections to open in Bihar versus how many to merge in Tamil Nadu. This single line is a devastating indictment of governance failure and a non-negotiable precondition for everything else in the roadmap.
When viewed together, these six actions create a unified, time-sensitive strategy. By seizing this brief demographic moment, India can achieve a generational leap in educational attainment before the opportunity fades.


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Concluding Observation

India has achieved through classrooms what China imposed by force. Now we have one decade to complete the task: turn the last large generation of children into the best-educated cohort in our history. A smaller, better-educated India will always be stronger than a larger, undereducated one.

Educate every child today. Secure every classroom tomorrow.

Every one percentage point increase in secondary enrolment over the next decade will reduce the eventual peak by 7–10 million people.

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