12.60%. That is the share of J&K's secondary-school students who dropped out in 2024-25 — and it is the one number in Parliament's latest review of the Union Territory that moved in the wrong direction.
The figure comes from the 260th Report of the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, on the "Review of Administrative Governance, Socio-Economic Development and Internal Security in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir; and Border Security Management and Preparedness in the UT of Ladakh", presented to Parliament on 7 August 2026.
What makes it striking is the company it keeps. Everywhere else in the school ladder, J&K's dropout numbers improved sharply.
The numbers, in order
- Primary: dropout fell from 8.97% in 2023-24 to 1.50% in 2024-25 — a very large single-year improvement.
- Upper primary: fell from 4.30% to 3.20%.
- Secondary: rose to 12.60%.
So the system is holding on to younger children far better than it was, and losing older ones faster. The committee's concern is not that J&K is failing at enrolment; it is that the losses have migrated to exactly the stage where they are hardest to reverse.
Where the students actually go
The dropout rate is a flow. The Gross Enrolment Ratio is the stock, and it tells the same story more bluntly. The committee recorded a GER that falls at every rung:
- 114.2 at primary level
- 77.0 at upper primary
- 65.4 at secondary
- 53.7 at higher secondary
Read the ends of that list together. J&K enrols more children at primary level than there are children of primary age — the over-100 figure reflects pupils outside the standard age band — and by Classes 11 and 12 it is reaching roughly half the relevant age group.
For a young person in Jammu, that is not an abstraction. It is the reason a Class 12 cohort is smaller than the Class 6 cohort that preceded it, and the reason competition for the seats and jobs that follow is shaped by who is still in the room at seventeen.
What the committee asked for
The report does not stop at diagnosis. Its central recommendation is a dedicated "Secondary School Retention Programme", and the components it names are specific rather than rhetorical:
- targeted scholarships
- free transport
- hostel facilities
- digital devices
- remedial courses
- career counselling
Alongside it, the committee wants universal enrolment pursued in mission mode with district-wise targets, and asks for special attention to the groups the data hits hardest — girls, economically disadvantaged students, tribal and migratory communities, students with disabilities, and those in border and mountainous areas. It also recommends recruitment incentives for teachers posted to difficult areas, with the Chief Secretary reviewing progress.
The skilling half of the recommendation
The second strand is about what school leads to. The committee recommends aligning skill-based programmes with J&K's actual economic base — naming tourism, hospitality, horticulture, agriculture, handicrafts, healthcare, information technology and renewable energy — and building structured partnerships with industry and local enterprises.
The mechanisms it wants attached to those partnerships are apprenticeships, internships, entrepreneurship support and "Earn While Learn" opportunities. That last phrase is doing real work: a significant share of secondary dropout is economic, and a programme that lets a student earn without leaving school addresses the actual reason many of them go.
How this sits with what we already knew
This is the second national body in a month to put J&K's school retention problem on the record. Earlier in August, NITI Aayog's read on the UT's schools flagged a 44.8% enrolment ratio by Class 12 and 1,371 single-teacher schools. Different body, different report, different metric — same shape of problem.
There is also a response already in motion. The J&K government has cleared a phased roadmap to upgrade 714 existing high schools into K-12 campuses, which would remove one concrete reason students drop out after Class 10: having to change institutions, and often travel further, to continue.
What to watch next
A parliamentary committee recommends; it does not implement. The things to track are whether a Secondary School Retention Programme is actually notified, whether district-wise enrolment targets appear, and whether the 714-school upgrade timeline holds. Each of those is checkable, and each would show up in the next set of dropout figures.
If you are a student in Jammu weighing whether to continue after Class 10, the practical read is simpler: the scholarships, hostels and transport support named in this report are the levers being argued over on your behalf. Knowing they exist — and asking your school what you are already eligible for — is the part you control.
