Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s secondary dropout rate declined to 14.1% in 2025-26 from 15% in 2024-25, indicating an improvement in the latest academic year, School and Mass Education Minister Nityananda Gond informed the state assembly on Friday.
The dropout rate had risen from 12.80% in 2023-24 to 15% in 2024-25 before declining in 2025-26, according to UDISE+ data cited by the minister.
However, the state government does not have data on the number of students who passed Class X in 2024-25 but did not enrol in Class XI, or how many of them subsequently joined ITIs, polytechnics, diploma or nursing courses, or enrolled under NIOS/SIOS and other programmes, Gond said.
The minister was responding to a written question by Bhawanipatna MLA Sagar Charan Das in the Assembly.
Gond said the district-wise details of Out-of-School Children (OoSC) identified, mainstreamed and remaining under the Odisha Shiksha Sarvekshan (OSS)/Child Tracking Survey had been provided in an annexure.
Across the 30 districts of Odisha, 2,16,131 OoSC were identified after excluding duplicate, test and invalid entries. Of these, 79,996 children had been mainstreamed, while 1,36,135 were yet to be mainstreamed.
The data also showed that earning compulsion, lack of awareness and unwillingness of parents were among the three major reasons for children dropping out of school.
As per the Odisha Shiksha Sarvekshan (OSS) report, 26,932 children were reported to have dropped out due to earning compulsion, specifically where there was no other earning member in the family.
Lack of awareness accounted for 23,449 cases, while unwillingness of parents was cited in 59,656 cases.
Together, the three reasons accounted for 1,10,037 dropout cases across the state, according to the data presented in the Assembly.
