How Many Schools in Nepal? Flash Report 2081 Education Statistics

Nepal had 35,447 schools in the academic year 2024/25, which corresponds to the Nepali year 2081 Bikram Sambat (BS). This is the headline count from the Flash I Report 2081, the annual school-census snapshot published by the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development (CEHRD), the federal body under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology that succeeded the former Department of Education (DoE). The figure counts institutions delivering formal schooling from Grade 1 upward; it excludes standalone Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) centres and Montessori-style pre-primary classes, which are recorded separately.

The total is a moving number rather than a fixed one. In 2023/24 (2080 BS) the report recorded 35,876 schools, so 2024/25 shows a net decrease of 429. Behind that change, community schools fell by 692 while institutional (private) schools rose by 263, reflecting consolidation of small government schools alongside continued private growth. Because the Flash Report is a dated annual snapshot compiled from the Integrated Educational Management Information System (IEMIS), each year's totals should be read together with the report year rather than treated as permanently current.

This page presents the Flash Report 2081 figures as an at-a-glance dashboard for journalists, students, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and researchers. Every number below is drawn from the same 2024/25 snapshot; where the report contains small internal differences between summary and detailed tables, the detailed-table value is used.

Nepal's school system is dominated by community (public, government-aided) schools. In 2024/25 there were 27,298 community schools, about 77 percent of the national total, against 8,149 institutional or private schools, about 23 percent. When the report breaks religious schools out as a separate line, the split reads as roughly 26,103 pure community schools (73.6 percent), 8,149 institutional (23.0 percent) and about 1,195 traditional and religious schools (3.4 percent). Traditional and religious schools include madrasa (Islamic), gumba (Buddhist monastic) and ashram or gurukul (Hindu Vedic) schools; the Flash Report generally groups these within the community total.

Provincial patterns differ sharply. Bagmati Province has the highest share of institutional schools at 31.5 percent, driven by the Kathmandu Valley's dense private-school market, while Karnali Province has the lowest at 8.6 percent. Religious schools are most numerous in Lumbini Province, which has 474 of them (8.3 percent of its schools), and least common in Karnali, with only 7. These differences matter for anyone comparing districts or provinces, because a national average conceals large regional gaps in how children access schooling.

The community-versus-institutional balance also shifts by level: community schools carry the bulk of basic education, while private schools are proportionately more concentrated at secondary level and in urban areas.

Nepal's school structure runs from ECED through basic level (Grades 1 to 8) to secondary level (Grades 9 to 12), following the country's shift to an 8+4 structure under the Constitution of 2015 (2072 BS) and the School Education Sector Plan. Of the 35,447 schools, 23,905 (67.4 percent) are basic-level schools serving Grades 1 to 8, while 11,542 (32.6 percent) offer secondary education. Within the basic tier, 17,257 schools go up to Grade 5 and 6,648 reach Grade 8. Within the secondary tier, 6,493 schools go up to Grade 10 and 5,049 offer up to Grade 12.

A structural bottleneck is visible in these numbers. Because far more schools stop at basic level than continue to secondary, roughly 84 percent of community-school students must change schools to study beyond Grade 8, compared with about 16 percent of institutional-school students. This transition point is one reason retention weakens after Grade 8.

Separately, the report counts 41,284 ECED units at the pre-primary stage, most of them community-run. Vocational provision is also expanding: the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) supports around 905 pre-diploma and diploma institutes, and CEHRD runs technical streams within selected Grade 9 to 12 schools.

Total enrolment across basic and secondary levels was roughly 7.0 million students in 2024/25, on top of about 1.3 million children in ECED. By level, enrolment was 3,514,928 in basic Grades 1 to 5, 1,832,140 in basic Grades 6 to 8 (5,347,068 across the full basic level), 989,885 in Grades 9 to 10 and 673,855 in Grades 11 to 12 (1,663,740 across the full secondary level). ECED enrolment stood at 1,301,428 children.

Enrolment falls steeply as grades rise, which is the single most important pattern in Nepal's education data. There are more than three times as many children in basic Grades 1 to 8 as in secondary Grades 9 to 12, reflecting both the demographic pyramid and cumulative dropout. Gender balance, by contrast, is close: girls make up just under half of enrolment at almost every level, and the gender parity index (GPI) in the net enrolment rate at basic level has reached 1.00, indicating parity.

Enrolment is also skewed toward community schools at the base and toward private schools higher up: community schools hold about 62 percent of Grade 1 to 5 students but a larger 74 percent share at Grade 9 to 10. This helps explain why aggregate national figures can look different from what families see in a specific city or district.

Two ratios summarise how well the school-age population is reached. The Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) is total enrolment at a level divided by the official-age population, so it can exceed 100 percent when under-age or over-age children (including repeaters) are enrolled. The Net Enrolment Rate (NER) counts only children of the correct official age, so an NER below 100 percent points to out-of-school children in that age group.

In 2024/25 the basic level (Grades 1 to 5) recorded a GER of 130.5 percent and an NER of 94.4 percent; Grades 6 to 8 had a GER of 115.0 percent and an NER of 93.6 percent; and across basic Grades 1 to 8 the GER was 124.8 percent with an NER of 94.1 percent. At secondary level the ratios drop: Grades 9 to 10 had a GER of 99.1 percent and an NER of 75.8 percent, Grades 11 to 12 a GER of 63.3 percent and an NER of only 37.1 percent, and across Grades 9 to 12 a GER of 80.6 percent and an NER of 55.8 percent. ECED GER was around 101 percent.

The gap between a high basic NER and a low upper-secondary NER is the core story of Nepal's enrolment picture. Almost all young children are in school, but participation thins markedly by Grades 11 and 12, where only about 37 percent of the official-age cohort is enrolled at that exact level. Anyone quoting a single 'school enrolment rate for Nepal' should specify the level, because it ranges from the mid-90s at basic level to the high-30s at Grades 11 to 12.

Nepal's schools employed 279,585 teachers in 2024/25 across community and institutional schools. Women made up 42.6 percent of the teaching workforce and men 57.4 percent, but the balance is uneven by level: the female share is highest in the early basic grades (over half of Grade 1 to 5 teachers) and falls sharply at secondary level, where roughly a quarter of Grade 9 to 10 teachers are women. In community schools, the government-approved teaching force numbered 99,096 at basic Grades 1 to 5 and 28,255 at Grades 6 to 8, for 127,351 at the full basic level.

The Student-Teacher Ratio (STR) measures how many students share each teacher. Based on government-approved positions in community schools, the STR was about 21:1 at basic Grades 1 to 5 (down from 23:1 the previous year), 45:1 at Grades 6 to 8 and 26:1 across basic Grades 1 to 8. At secondary level the ratios were about 31:1 for Grades 9 to 10, 77:1 for Grades 11 to 12 and 40:1 for Grades 9 to 12. Because community schools also employ locally and privately funded teachers, the effective classroom ratio is often lower than the approved-position ratio, especially in the upper grades.

The improving basic-level ratios reflect teacher recruitment and the declining number of children in the youngest grades, while the high Grade 11 to 12 ratio signals a shortage of sanctioned secondary teacher positions relative to enrolment.

Beyond headline counts, the Flash Report tracks how many children stay in school. In 2024/25 the survival rate to Grade 8 was 86.5 percent and to Grade 10 about 66.9 percent, meaning roughly one in three children who start school do not reach Grade 10 on time. The Grade 1 dropout rate was about 9 percent, and the net intake rate into Grade 1 slipped from 95.7 to 93.7 percent. Disadvantaged groups remain under-represented higher up: Dalit students were 17.0 percent of Grade 1 to 8 enrolment but 12.5 percent at Grades 9 to 12.

These flow figures matter because Nepal has achieved near-universal access at basic level but still loses large numbers of students through the transition to secondary school. Gender parity at basic level is a genuine success, with the GPI in the net enrolment rate at 1.00, but parity narrows at higher grades and among teachers, and equity gaps by caste, disability and geography persist.

For a longer-run cross-check, the National Population and Housing Census 2021 (2078 BS), published by the National Statistics Office (formerly the Central Bureau of Statistics), reported a literacy rate of 76.3 percent for people aged five years and above, up from 65.9 percent in 2011, with male literacy at 83.6 percent and female at 69.4 percent. The census measures who can read and write, while the Flash Report is a school census of enrolment and institutions; together they show high current enrolment and steadily rising adult literacy.

Two caveats apply to every figure here. They are a dated snapshot from Flash Report 2081 (2024/25) and should be quoted with that year, and they are compiled from school-reported IEMIS returns, so small discrepancies between tables and later revisions are normal. For an exact citation, consult the primary Flash Report and its annexes.