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Only 69.5% of students in Andhra Pradesh and 54.5% of students in Karnataka make it to 11th and 12th standard, according to the Union Education Ministry’s Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE) 2025–26 report.
While Andhra has managed to retain 100% of its students at the primary (classes 1 to 5) and elementary (classes 1 to 8), the retention rate drops a little to 97.6% at the secondary level (classes 1 to 10) and by the time students get to higher secondary level (classes 1 to 12), the retention rate falls to an abysmal low of 69.5%. Of the students who continue to higher secondary, 64.5% are boys while 74.8% are girls.
In Karnataka, 96.8% students get primary schooling. This drops to 93.3% at the elementary level and further down to 87.3% at the secondary level. At the higher secondary level, only 54.5% of Karnataka’s students reach class 11 and 12 of which 46.7% are boys and 62.8% are girls.
In comparison, Kerala has 90.1% and Tamil Nadu has a retention rate of 75.9% at the higher secondary level.
However, the data shows that Karnataka has fared better than Andhra when it comes to professionally qualified teachers.
While Andhra has maintained stable teacher qualification levels at the primary stage, the share of professionally qualified teachers declines significantly at higher levels of schooling. Only 72.9% of the teachers are professionally qualified at the higher secondary level (classes 11 and 12) in Andhra. Of these 73% are women and 72.8% are men.
In comparison, Karnataka has 83.6% professionally qualified teachers teaching at the higher secondary level. Of these, 85.1% are men and 82.1% are women.
In comparison, Tamil Nadu reports that 97.7% of its higher secondary teachers are professionally qualified, followed by West Bengal at 96.8% and Maharashtra at 96.3%.