Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had claimed in a program on 26 May 2025 that almost all the primary, upper primary and composite schools in the state have been transformed and the remaining two-three percent schools will also be renovated in the next one year.
A year after his claim, the BBC News Hindi team took stock of 25 schools in five districts of Uttar Pradesh and tried to know what is the ground condition of the schools in Uttar Pradesh.
On our investigation, Additional Secretary of Basic Education Department of the state, Partha Sarathi Sen Sharma said that there are a large number of schools in the state and wherever complaints come from, they are being resolved, all the schools of the state cannot be assessed on the basis of a few schools.
However, for this investigation, we traveled approximately 1200 kilometers in UP and started from a government primary school in Gorakhpur which was found running in a rented house.
As soon as you enter this house, children from first to fifth class study in the dark corridor with sackcloth spread on the floor.
Teachers say that they are not able to make children sit in open light because there is a washroom at the back and it smells bad.
According to Sangeeta Maurya, in-charge of the school, it is very difficult to teach children amidst such inconveniences, but they have to spend four to six months of the year like this.
The school's own building is submerged in water due to floods. This is not the first time, this happens every year due to floods.
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She says, “Every year journalists come, every year we count the problems. But no solution is found.
There is still no electricity in the school built in 1962
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After this we reached the primary school (Railway, Boliya) of Gorakhpur where electricity has not been supplied since its construction till date.
Rachna, the teacher here, told us, "It would have been better if there was some light, fan running, smart classes." Children would also be attracted and would stay in the school.'' According to Udice+, this school was built in 1962.
UDISE+ i.e. Unified District Information System for Education Plus of the Ministry of Education of the Government of India is an online database to collect information related to schools across the country.
In this, data related to the number of schools, admission of children, availability of teachers and electricity, water, toilets, classrooms and other basic facilities in schools is recorded.
At another school in Gorakhpur, we received complaints of water dripping during the rainy season and extreme heat during summer due to the tin roof.
Nirmala, the in-charge of this school, shows us videos of the roof leaking in the rain and says that sometimes the situation becomes such during the rains that children have to be sent back home. Due to weak infrastructure, the number of children in the school has reduced.
Apart from these three schools, we found the conditions in the two other schools of Gorakhpur which we visited to be good. All the facilities like permanent buildings, clean water, toilets, smart classrooms were present here.
State Secondary Education Minister Gulabo Devi belongs to Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh.
We visited six government schools in Sambhal, two of which were running without buildings and two were lacking rooms. Due to which teachers were seen teaching children under the open sky.
The upper primary school of Gunnaur of Sambhal has been running without a building for the last three years.
School headmaster Chintamani says, "The old dilapidated building of the school was demolished in the year 2023. A demand was made for a new building, the building has also been approved, but there is no information as to when the money will come for the construction."
While capturing similar pictures from some other schools of Sambhal, we reached PM Shri Upper Primary School of the same district.
PM Shri Schools come under the Basic Education Department of the state, but a major part of the budget for their development and modern infrastructure comes from the Central Government. Still, there are no benches and desks for the children studying here.
One teacher to teach children from class one to fifth
After Sambhal we reached Aligarh. This is the district of State Basic Education Minister Sandeep Singh.
On September 10, children of a primary school in Bhamori Khurd village of this district refused to study, saying that the school building was dilapidated. The department assured of immediate action, only then the matter was calmed down.
According to the UDICE+ portal, all the five rooms of this school are in good condition but when you go inside you see broken balconies, weak ceilings and children studying on benches under the stairs.
There is only one teacher to teach children from class one to class five.
Similar is the situation in the nearby primary school, which is running with the help of a principal and a Shiksha Mitra.
Satendra Kumar, basic education officer of the district, says, “Our primary schools come in two cadres – one urban cadre and the other rural cadre. There has been a shortage of some teachers in the urban cadre. To overcome this, a formal demand for more than 11 thousand posts from the government level has been sent to the Commission."
However, this is not the only district facing shortage of teachers in government schools.
While giving details of the situation of a school in Lucknow, social worker and educationist Sandeep Pandey says that there are only two regular teachers for five hundred children in a school.
He questions, "Teachers are not being recruited, the number of children is falling." 26 thousand schools have been closed. Among the teachers appointed, someone is sitting in the room filling the register or is engaged in census duty. We are making such a big compromise with the future of children only because children from poor families come to study in government schools.
Shortage of teachers in government primary and upper primary schools of Uttar Pradesh has been a challenge for a long time. In the budget document of the Union Education Ministry for the year 2025-26, it is recorded that about 1 lakh 37 thousand teacher posts are vacant at both these levels in the state.
Of these, 59,882 posts are related to direct recruitment and the remaining posts are related to promotion.
How is the condition of PM Modi's parliamentary constituency?
According to UDICE+ 2025-26 data, the student-teacher ratio in Uttar Pradesh is 19:1 at the primary level and 21:1 at the upper primary level.
Under the RTE Act, the standard of 30:1 (1 teacher for 30 students) and 35:1 (1 teacher for 35 students) is fixed for both these levels.
That means the average ratio of the state is within the prescribed standards. But the average ratio of the state does not tell the condition of every school. According to Section 25 of the RTE Act, it is the responsibility of the government to maintain the prescribed student-teacher ratio in every school.
At the same time, the condition of government schools in Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looks better. However, work remains to be done here also regarding some matters.
Sanat Kumar Singh, a senior member of the Primary Teachers Association of Varanasi district, said, "As far as I know, there are ten to fifteen percent schools where the work of furniture is still pending. Not having sweepers is the biggest problem.
In the year 2018, the Uttar Pradesh government had started Operation 'Kayakalp' to improve the basic facilities of primary and upper primary schools.
Under this, 19 parameters were decided. These included facilities like clean drinking water, separate toilets for boys and girls, electricity, secure boundary wall, school building and furniture for children to sit.
In May 2025, State Basic Education Minister Sandeep Singh had informed the media that under 'Operation Kayakalp', about Rs 11 thousand crore has been spent so far on the rejuvenation of 1,32,852 council schools.
In Uttar Pradesh, council schools are those government schools which are run by the Basic Education Department.
What do the government and statistics say?
According to Udice Plus, NITI Aayog and Basic Education Department of UP, "Out of 1,32,852 primary and upper primary schools in the state, 45,000 schools still do not have adequate furniture."
"There are 6,957 schools where electricity has not yet been provided. There is no running source of drinking water in 576 government schools."
"Girls' toilets are not in working condition in 2,261 schools. Of these, there are 28 schools where there are no girls' toilets."
Cleaning and maintenance of these toilets is also a big challenge because there is no provision of regular cleaning staff in schools.
On these figures, Partha Sarathi Sen Sharma, Additional Secretary, Basic Education Department, said, "Out of the 19 parameters of Operation Kayakalp, we need to work on two - furniture and computers/smart classrooms. The government has kept the budget for both."
"The remaining 17 parameters, like water, motor, toilet and blackboard, are fine in most schools. Yes, some things are made and then get spoiled. For this, composite grants are given to schools."
"The complaints about the schools in which you are talking need to be seen in proportion and the state of the entire system should not be judged on the basis of the cases of a few schools."
Apart from basic facilities, there are very few options for higher education in government schools of Uttar Pradesh. About 98.18% of the schools here are primary and upper primary only. This means that in these schools there is provision for education only up to class eight.
The number of secondary and higher secondary schools in the state is only 2,485, which is 1.82 percent of the total government schools.
unannounced restrictions
In the months of July and August this year in UP, we saw a large number of children studying in government schools taking to the streets with their demands. Protests by Zen Alpha also took place in Azamgarh, Kanpur, Hamirpur, Bijnor, Lucknow, Kannauj, Unnao, Meerut, Mahoba, Lucknow, Barabanki and Fatehpur.
Ankur Sonkar, a resident of Fatehpur, became the face of one such protest demanding improvement in the basic facilities of the school, who along with hundreds of other students studying with him, sat on a dharna outside Sarvodaya Inter College, Fatehpur on July 27.
Image source, BBC/?
Ankur recalls, "There were problems there for a long time - like there were no gates in the toilets, no cleanliness, children were not getting books, water was not provided properly, there were no fans in the rooms."
We were not given entry in many schools saying that we had orders from above. In many schools, teachers hesitate to speak openly on these issues because they fear departmental action, and FIRs against those who expose the poor condition of schools.
Two months later, the facilities at Ankur's school have been improved to some extent, but thousands of schools in Uttar Pradesh are still waiting for basic facilities.
Published by Collective Newsroom for the BBC.
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