5th June, 2025
On June 5, 2025, UNESCO released its Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 2024–25, titled Leadership in Education: Lead for Learning. The report highlights significant global and India-specific disparities in learning outcomes and gender representation in educational leadership.
Global Highlights
- Reading Proficiency Gap: For every 100 girls who meet the minimum reading level, only 87 boys do—this drops to 72 boys in middle-income countries.
- Math Post-Pandemic Reversal: While gender parity in math persisted for years, recent data—especially from TIMSS 2023—shows that COVID-19 reversed progress, with girls in countries like Brazil, Chile, the UK, Italy, and New Zealand falling behind boys.
India-Specific Insights
Learning Outcomes & Enrolment Reality
- Near-Universal Primary Enrolment, yet Huge Learning Gaps: While most Indian children access schools, 73% of under-10 Indian kids struggle to read simple text, underscoring a severe learning crisis.
- ASER & NAS Reveal Deeper Concerns: ASER 2023 reports nearly 45.6% of Class V students read a Class II-level text, and only 43.2% can solve basic division.
Gender Representation in Leadership
- Although women make up around 60–62% of elementary teachers, leadership representation remains limited:
- Only 5% of vice-chancellors/directors in national institutions.
- Within a broader sample, women constitute 9% of vice-chancellors and 11% of registrars.
- At the school level:
- Only ~35–42% of principals are women, despite high female teacher presence.
- UDISE+ data shows 42.1% of secondary and 28.6% of higher-secondary principals are women, whereas women are 62.4% of primary teachers.
School Leadership Quality & Training Gaps
- Leadership appointments lack standardization—often based on seniority rather than skills, with little pre-service training or induction, unlike structured systems in Vietnam or Bangladesh.
- Administrative Overload: Principals in 14 middle-income countries—including India—spend approximately 68% of their time on administrative tasks (meals, data entry, infrastructure), leaving minimal bandwidth for instructional leadership