State pressuring school principals to manipulate education data, allege principals and teachers

Mumbai: For almost a week, group education officers across the state have been sending a directive in the form of a WhatsApp message to principals of primary, higher primary, and secondary schools across the state, reportedly asking them to make changes to the information on the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) data. The message instructs them to mark ‘Yes’ in all columns of the UDISE data, regardless of the factual accuracy of the provided information.

UDISE is a database about schools in India, developed by the department of school education of the central government’s education ministry. UDISE Plus is considered a crucial tool for policymakers and administrators in the education sector. The aim of the portal is to provide accurate and timely data on various aspects of school education, which helps in making informed decisions about policies, programmes and resource allocation.

Some principals have refused to make changes that provide false information about the school. “A directive sent by the group education officer of the zilla parishad school, urging school principals to modify UDISE data, is disturbing,” said J K Patil, a principal at a zilla parishad school. “Reports indicate that the government is allegedly encouraging principals to feed in inaccurate information about school infrastructure, casting a shadow on the transparency and accuracy of educational statistics.”

Patil is one of the principals who has refused to make changes that are meant to hide reality. “We are very unhappy with the messages received from the group education officer,” he said. “We don’t understand under what pressure the government is doing such things; they should stop this immediately.”

Bhausaheb Chaskar, a teacher and activist, said that this was not the first time government officials had told schools to submit favourable reports to them. “Every March 31, we have to declare that our school is digital even though it is not, and we are asked to provide a good ranking in the Shala Siddhi portal (a portal for school leadership and management),” he said.

When contacted, a group education officer said on condition of anonymity, “We are getting oral orders from our seniors to maintain a good record in the district, so we are trying to do this.”

Despite repeated attempts, Suraj Mandhare, education commissioner, was not available for comment.