CMS Education Survey 2025: Haryana’s school education most expensive, Bihar’s most affordable

Parents in Haryana spend the most on schooling their children, while those in Bihar pay the least; Tripura has the highest proportion of school students relying on private coaching classes, even as the neighbouring Mizoram records the lowest; and Odisha, West Bengal and Punjab households spend significantly more on the boys' education compared to girls, when it's the opposite for Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

These are some of the insights from the central government's latest Comprehensive Modular Survey (CMS) on Education, which is a part of the 80th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS). The survey report, published on Tuesday by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI), examines the household expenditure on school education as well as private coaching. The findings are based on the data collected from 52,085 families and 57,742 students between April and June this year across all the states and union territories in the country.

The survey revealed that Indians, on an average, spent Rs 12,616 per student on school education, including course fee as well as transportation, uniform, textbooks and stationery expenses, in the last academic year. However, this figure greatly varies according to state, gender, school type and whether the household is in a rural or urban area.

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NSSO: Highest and lowest school fees

For instance, Haryana's average school expenditure of Rs 25,720 is almost twice the national average, while Bihar's Rs 5,656 is less than half of it. Manipur, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are some of the other costlier states.

Highest and lowest annual per student expenditure

The eastern states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal figure at the bottom of the school spending table.

Lowest annual per student expenditure

Cost of coaching classes, private tuition

The analysis of NSS data also looked at the proportion of schoolgoers enrolled in private coaching classes and the average spending on them. Tripura leads on both these metrics, with almost 78.6% of the respondent students reporting seeking the services of private tutors. That's almost three times the national average of 27%.

West Bengal is a close second with 74.6% children in coaching classes. They also recorded the highest annual per student expenditure on tutors -- Rs 12,566 for Tripura and Rs 7,878 for West Bengal. By comparison, the national average is Rs 2,409.

On the other hand, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh are among the states with below 10% enrollment in private tuitions. The families in these states only spent a few hundred rupees to send their kids to coaching institutes.

Students enrolled in private coaching

School Education Costs: Girls vs boys

The MOSPI survey also revealed a gender divide in spending across the country.

While nationally the average spending on boys' schooling is Rs 1,804 higher than Rs 11,666 spent on girls, the states are a more mixed bag. Odisha's Rs 8,948 spending on male students is roughly 50% more than Rs 5,807 cost of girls' education. Similarly, Punjab families spend close to Rs 6,000 more on their male children's education.

States with higher average expenditure on boys’ education Rs

The number of states favouring the girl child is fewer -- eight, to be precise. Kerala, the country's most literate state, leads the pack with around Rs 3,000 more spent towards female students on an average.

States with higher average expenditure on girls’ education Rs

Also, these trends are far from being uniform across education levels. For example, Telangana households are shown to have spent more on girls at secondary level, but favour boys in middle and higher secondary stages.

Similar disparity is evident when it comes to private coaching, as the annual average Rs 2,572 per male student expenditure exceeded Rs 2,227 accounted for girls. In Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, the average expenditure on boys' tutors, though relatively low, was almost double the amounts spent on girls' coaching. Mizoram, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Goa, Assam, Manipur and Karnataka were the exceptions as their families spent more on female students in the range of Rs 19 and Rs 1,571 per annum.

Urban schooling costs 5 times more

Then there's the rural-urban gap. In all the states, except for Goa, urban households had to spend considerably more on their kids' education than village dwellers.

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The starkest difference was seen in Odisha, where the average urban expenses on school education was more than five times the rural spending. It was followed by Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Meghalaya.

States with high rural-urban expenditure disparity in Rs

Punjab, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur are among those with a relatively smaller rural-urban gulf.

States with low rural-urban expenditure disparity in Rs

The study also assessed the sources of kids’ education funding. It was found that government scholarships accounted for the primary source of funding for 9% of students in Gujarat – the highest in the country – followed by 8.5% school goers in Telangana. In most of the other states, the share of such students is almost negligible.