Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+)

The school education system in India is one of the largest in the world, consisting of more than 1.49 million schools, 9.5 million teachers, and over 265 million students from various socio-economic backgrounds.

Quality education is the right of every student without any discrimination. With thriving competition from private schools, there have been significant efforts from the Government of India to provide improved facilities and infrastructure in government schools. It becomes essential to have a robust, real-time and credible information collection mechanism for an objective evaluation of the system, based on which specific interventions for improvements can be designed.

The Government of India developed an application, “Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+)“, under the Ministry of Education, to collect the school details about factors related to a school and its resources.

Table of Contents

About UDISE

District Information System for Education (DISE)

At the time of initiating the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) in 1994, the Government realised that a sound information system was essential for successfully monitoring and implementing the programme. The MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development)in 1994, as a part of the DPEP national endeavour, decided to design and develop a school-based computerised Education Management Information System (EMIS). The primary responsibility for EMIS was entrusted to the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi.

With support from MHRD (now Ministry of Education/MoE) and financial assistance from UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), the school-based computerised Education Management Information System (EMIS) was initiated in 1995 by NIEPA, which was known as the District Information System for Education (DISE). In tune with the spirit of the DPEP, the district was selected as a nodal point for the collection, computerisation, analysis and use of school-level data.

Beginning with 42 districts in 7 States (Assam, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu), the coverage of DISE was later on expanded to include 271 districts across 18 States with the scaling up of the DPEP. Over the years, the system was extended to cover the entire elementary level of education till Class VIII.

Secondary Education Management Information System (SEMIS)

In 2009, with the introduction of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), a separate and dedicated Secondary Education Management Information System (SEMIS), was initiated for Class IX to XII.

SEMIS aimed to create a comprehensive database on secondary and higher secondary education for facilitating planning, monitoring and related secondary education management activities under the RMSA. It intended to cover all recognised institutions in the State/UT imparting secondary and higher secondary education.

Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE)

Subsequently, the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) was initiated in 2012-13, integrating the DISE for elementary education and SEMIS for secondary education. UDISE is the most extensive EMIS system in the country, providing necessary data for planning and managing school education.

About UDISE+

The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) is an improved and updated version of the UDISE. The entire system is now online and has been collecting data in real-time since 2018-19.

The Department of School Education & Literacy, under the Ministry of Education, developed the UDISE+ system of online data collection in 2018-19 to overcome the issues related to the erstwhile practice of manual data filling in paper format.

In the UDISE+ system, improvements have been made mainly in the areas of data capture, data mapping, and data verification. It is mandated to collect information from all recognised and unrecognised schools imparting formal education from Pre-primary to Class XII.

Information collected through the digital platform of UDISE+ is utilised for planning, optimised resource allocation, and implementing various education-related programs and assessments of progress made.

UDISE+ collects information through an online Data Collection Form (DCF) on parameters ranging from school profile, physical infrastructure, teachers, enrolments, examination results, etc. The DCF is divided into eleven sections. Each Section contains multiple questions to capture various performance indicators of the school.

The Schools which get onboarded successfully on the platform are provided with a UDISE Code, which acts as a national-level unique identifier. UDISE+ has the school as the Unit of Data Collection and the district as the Unit of Data Distribution.

Since the introduction of UDISE+, it has acquired the status of the official statistics system of the Ministry of Education and is now operational in all the districts of India.

Features of UDISE+

Monitor and measure school performance in Real-time.
Visualisation and presentation of complex data in a simple form.
Standard as well as query-based reports and comparative charts.
Stakeholders can access and analyse information to make evidence-based decisions.
Cross-sectional analysis of data to study the relationship among various factors impacting the school’s performance, especially in enrolment.

UDISE+ School Data Capture

UDISE+ has the school as the Unit of Data collection and the district as the Unit of Data distribution. It has the mandate of collecting information from all schools imparting formal education from Classes I to XII.

UDISE+ collects information on school profiles, physical infrastructure, teachers, enrolments, examination results, etc., through an online Data Collection Form (DCF). The DCF is divided into eleven Sections, and each Section includes multiple questions to capture various performance indicators of the school.

School Directory Management

The Centralized School Management Portal facilitates the following pivotal functionalities as part of this module:

Creation of School in UDISE+ platform with UDISE code.
Updating/managing various School Information, viz. school status, basic school details, location, etc.
User management through adding or changing the user details at various levels like school, block and district.

Know Your School

‘Know Your School’ is a module of UDISE+ for retrieving school information and school report summary filled in the Data Collection Form (DCF) by filtering according to their respective state, district, and block. It gives the user an option to search for their respective school either by entering the UDISE code or the school name.

The user can also view the overall summary for any State in terms of aggregate percentage of the schools & facilities, teachers, and enrolment data.

GIS Mapping

School report cards giving vital information such as school category, management, infrastructure, enrolment, student-teacher ratio, student-classroom ratio, etc., will be linked to the photos of the schools on the map.

The exact geographic location of schools with latitude & longitude can be viewed. Base map services like street maps and high-resolution satellite images are available for a better understanding of the topography (terrain) of the school locations.

Benefits of UDISE+

Enables real-time exchange of information and provides a platform for online uploading school-related details.
Provides unique UDISE code to schools to uniquely identify them.
Improved monitoring, measurement, and tracking of vital Key Performing Indicators (KPIs) related to school performance.
Provides a platform to organise and classify all school data across the country and build a credible database of school data.
Time-series data allows to study trends over the years and monitor improvement/growth.
Enables leveraging data analytics on school data to identify factors affecting school performances.
Rationalises the capturing of school data – improves consistency and reduces error.
Gives insights on the status of school education in States/UTs, including Key performance levers and areas for improvement.
Provides traceability and audit trails of officials uploading the school data,
Offers improved security of sensitive school/student data.

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