Bhubaneswar: India's Class 10 dropout rate stood at 20.6 per cent (pc) with Odisha being the highest performing state followed by Bihar, informed Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha on Monday.

While the dropout rate in Class 10 was 49.9 pc in Odisha, Bihar followed at 42.1 pc.

Responding to a question by DMK MP Kalanidhi Veeraswamy on whether the Government is aware of the analysis on the recent exercise by the Ministry of Education that about 3.5 million students stop their education in Class 10, Pradhan in a written response stated that of the 1,89,90,809 students who appeared for Class 10 examination in 2022,  29,56,138 students failed to progress to the next class.

"The reasons for failure of students in examination depends on various factors viz, not attending schools, difficulty in following instructions, lack of interest in studies, lack of quality teachers, lack of support from parents, etc. Further, education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments," the Minister explained.

Sharing details of the State-wise Class 10 dropout rate in the last four years (2018-19 to 2021-22), he said apart from Odisha and Bihar, the other states with high dropouts for the last year are Meghalaya (33.5 per cent), Karnataka (28.5 pc), Andhra Pradesh and Assam with 28.3 pc each, Gujarat (28.2 pc) and Telangana (27.4 pc).

States/UTs that had dropout rates less than 10 pc in 2021-22 included Madhya Pradesh and Dadra & Nagar Haveli (9.8 pc), Jammu and Kashmir (9.5 pc), Uttar Pradesh (9.2 pc), Tamil Nadu (9 pc), Ladakh (7.8 pc), Haryana (7.4 pc), Tripura (3.8 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (2.5 per cent) and no dropout in Manipur and Chandigarh.

States like Assam showed a significant dip in the dropout rate from 44 pc in 2018-19 to 28.3 pc in 2021-22. On the contrary, Odisha registered a steep rise in this regard from 12.8 pc to 49.9 pc in the same period.