Over 21 crore students were enrolled across India’s government and private unaided schools during the 2024-’25 academic year. Of these, only 565 were transgender, shows data tabled in the Rajya Sabha during the Parliament’s Winter Session in 2025.
On the one hand, this was an increase compared to the 149 trans students enrolled in 2021-’22, the earliest year covered in the dataset. On the other, enrollments have dipped in 2024-’25 as compared to the previous two years. These schools enrolled 868 trans students in 2023-’24, and 685 in 2022-’23, making the figures for 2024-’25 a step down.
While these numbers correspond to only two kinds of schools—government and unaided private institutions—both these categories account for around 90 percent of India’s students.
During the 2024-’25 academic session, only four states recorded around fifty trans students or more in both kinds of schools: Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. By contrast, thirteen states and union territories reported no trans students in 2024-’25. In six states and union territories—Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Telangana—the number of trans students has remained zero for four consecutive years.
The data also shows that while private unaided schools enrolled a higher share of trans students in initial years, that pattern has since flipped. In 2020-’21, government schools accounted for only 11 percent of the trans students enrolled. This proportion evened out over subsequent years, and by 2024-’25, government schools enrolled around 65 percent of all trans students.
Even so, this trajectory played out differently among the states that had at least 50 trans students enrolled in any of the four years reflected in the dataset. In Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, for instance, trans students were more likely to attend private schools across all years, while in Bihar and West Bengal, they were more likely to be enrolled in government schools.
In 2014, a Supreme Court judgment affirmed the rights of trans people to self-identify themselves. The court directed the Centre and Indian states to extend affirmative actions for trans people in educational institutions, as well as public appointments. In 2020, India’s National Education Policy—a framework to guide the development of education in the country—identified transgender children as part of socio-economically disadvantaged groups, and aimed to provide them with equitable opportunities through community-based interventions that address context-specific barriers.
India’s schools—which run from early childhood to the end of higher secondary—have been required to include a “third gender” or transgender category in their forms. (It is not clear whether all schools provide this option.) Since this data would include only those students who formally identified themselves as trans, it is likely an undercount. Many trans students may choose not to disclose their identities because they fear encountering bullying and prejudice at their schools. In fact, as early news reports on the directive noted, parents were also reluctant to disclose their child’s gender identity because of their own stigmas.