District Literacy Rate & School Count Directory of Nepal (2021 Census)

Two education figures are searched for Nepal's districts more than almost any other: the literacy rate of a district and the number of schools in it. Nepal's National Population and Housing Census 2021 (2078 BS) records a national literacy rate of about 76.2 percent for the population aged five years and above who can read and write, made up of 83.6 percent for males and 69.4 percent for females. Against that average the districts diverge sharply, from the high eighties in the Kathmandu Valley to the high fifties in the central Tarai.

At the top sits Kathmandu, the most literate district in Nepal with a census literacy rate of 89.23 percent, followed closely by the other Valley districts and Kaski. At the bottom is Rautahat in Madhesh Province at 57.75 percent, the lowest of all 77 districts. School provision follows the population map rather than the literacy map: the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development (CEHRD) counts roughly 35,000 schools across the country in its annual Flash Report, concentrated in the populous Tarai districts and the Kathmandu Valley.

This page assembles those two indicators for Nepal's 77-district framework in one place, so that a query such as 'literacy rate of Kathmandu' or 'number of schools in Morang' can be answered with a sourced figure and its year. Every literacy figure below is drawn from the 2021 census (National Statistics Office), and every school figure from the CEHRD Flash Report; each district also links to its full profile on the districts hub for population, area, map and local levels.

The literacy rate and the school count come from two different systems, and it helps to keep them apart. The literacy rate is a census product. The National Statistics Office (formerly the Central Bureau of Statistics) defines a literate person as anyone aged five years and above who can both read and write, and it publishes the rate for the country, each of the seven provinces and all 77 districts. Because it is a census, the figure is a once-in-a-decade snapshot: the 2021 count was enumerated in 2078 BS and its final, detailed results were released on 24 March 2023.

The school count comes from the education ministry's own annual survey. CEHRD gathers school data every year through the Integrated Educational Management Information System (IEMIS) and publishes it in the Flash I Report near the start of each school year. That report tabulates the number of schools by level and by district and local level, distinguishing community (public) schools from institutional (private) ones. Unlike the census literacy rate, school counts change every year as schools open, merge or close, so any district figure should always be read together with its report year.

One common confusion is worth flagging. Nepal also runs a 'literate Nepal' or 'fully literate district' campaign, under which a district is declared literate once it crosses a roughly 95 percent threshold on a broader, functional definition of literacy. That campaign metric is not the same as the census literacy rate. By 2021 more than 55 of the 77 districts had been declared fully literate under the campaign, yet the census rate for those same districts is lower because it uses a stricter, read-and-write test across the whole population aged five and above.

The most literate districts in Nepal cluster in and around the Kathmandu Valley and the Pokhara region. Kathmandu leads at 89.23 percent, followed by Lalitpur at 88.08 percent, Bhaktapur at 87.96 percent and Kaski at 87.73 percent. Just below the leading four come other urbanised districts such as Chitwan at 83.68 percent and Jhapa at 82.83 percent, both comfortably above the national average of 76.2 percent.

The pattern is driven by urbanisation and the depth of school and college provision. The Valley and Pokhara concentrate secondary schools, campuses and private institutions, attract educated migrants from across the country, and have long histories of near-universal primary enrolment. Bhaktapur illustrates the trajectory well: its literacy rose from 81.68 percent in the 2011 census (2068 BS) to 87.96 percent in 2021, a gain of more than six percentage points in a decade.

These figures are the census read-and-write rate for the whole population aged five and above, so they sit below the campaign-style 95 percent thresholds sometimes quoted in news reports. For long-tail searches, the takeaway is stable: Kathmandu is the single most literate district in the country, and the four highest-ranked districts are all in Bagmati and Gandaki provinces.

At the other end, the lowest literacy rates are concentrated in Madhesh Province along the central and eastern Tarai. Rautahat has the lowest district literacy rate in Nepal at 57.75 percent, with neighbouring Mahottari at 59.77 percent close behind. Of the eight districts with the lowest literacy rates in the 2021 census, seven lie in Madhesh Province.

Madhesh Province as a whole records a literacy rate of 63.5 percent, well under the national figure, and it also shows the widest gender gap: male literacy in the province is about 72.5 percent against female literacy of only 54.7 percent. That roughly 18-point gap between men and women is far larger than the national gap and is the single biggest reason the province trails. Deep-rooted causes include lower female enrolment, early marriage, agricultural child labour and historically weaker school access in the Tarai plains.

Low rates are not confined to Madhesh. Several remote districts of Karnali and Sudurpashchim provinces, such as those in the high mountains of the far north-west, also fall below the national average, held back by sparse settlement, difficult terrain and long distances to secondary schools. The consistent message across the bottom of the table is that Nepal's literacy divide is as much about gender and geography as about wealth.

Nepal operates a very large school network for its size. The CEHRD Flash I Report for 2081 BS (2024/25) counts on the order of 35,447 schools nationwide, and other government summaries around the same period put the figure near 35,000. Of these, roughly 23,905 are basic-level schools running up to grade 8, while about 11,542 offer secondary education through grades 9 to 12. The majority are community (public) schools run by local governments, with institutional (private) schools accounting for a smaller share, concentrated in and around the cities.

Where those schools sit follows population rather than literacy. The most populous Tarai districts and the Kathmandu Valley carry the densest school networks, while small hill and mountain districts have far fewer. Large plains districts such as Morang and Jhapa in the east, and Rupandehi and Kailali in the west, each run well over a thousand schools across all levels, whereas a lightly populated mountain district may have only a few hundred. Kathmandu combines a dense cluster of both community and institutional schools serving its two-million-plus residents.

The direction of change matters for anyone reading these counts. Falling birth rates and heavy out-migration from the hills are shrinking school-age populations in many districts, so provinces have been merging or closing under-enrolled community schools even as private enrolment holds up in the towns. That is why per-district school totals are published fresh each year in the Flash Report district tables and should always be quoted with their reporting year.

For each district, a complete education snapshot pairs two sourced numbers: the census literacy rate (2021, National Statistics Office) and the school count (latest CEHRD Flash Report). Kathmandu, for example, reads as 89.23 percent literacy against a large, mixed community-and-private school base; Morang reads as 78.61 percent literacy against one of the country's biggest school networks; and Rautahat reads as 57.75 percent literacy in a province still building out its schools. Reading the two figures together is more useful than either alone, because a district can have many schools and still trail on literacy where enrolment and retention are weak.

Each district in this directory cross-links to its full profile on the Amarnepal districts hub, at amarnepal.com/districts/[district], where you can see population (2011 and 2021 census), area, density, headquarters, an administrative boundary map and the full list of local levels. Use the district page for the demographic and geographic context, and this page for the education indicators.

Because school counts move every year, always check the current CEHRD Flash Report for the newest district table before citing a precise number, and treat the census literacy rate as fixed until the next census. Where a figure here is indicative rather than exact, that is noted so the number can be relied on.