PIB Tracker13,092 schools of 14.71 lakh, and the ripple to the rest is an intention
PM SHRI has selected 13,092 exemplar schools out of India’s 14.71 lakh, and describes their mentoring of neighbouring schools as intent, without a target, a budget line or a count.
What happened
- A PIB Backgrounder sets out the Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI) scheme, launched on 7 September 2022 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to strengthen more than 14,500 existing schools into exemplar institutions demonstrating NEP 2020.
- The total project cost is ₹27,360 crore over 2022-23 to 2026-27, with a Central share of ₹18,128 crore; the Central share of approved PAB outlay rose from ₹2,520 crore in 2023-24 to ₹5,224 crore in 2026-27, around 107 per cent.
- As of July 2026, 13,092 schools stood selected across 36 States and UTs, 725 districts and 8,340 blocks/ULBs — 1,305 primary, 3,102 upper primary, 3,141 secondary and 5,544 higher secondary.
- Selection runs in three stages: a State MoU, an eligibility pool from UDISE+, then the Challenge Method requiring 70 per cent for urban and 60 per cent for rural schools, with final selection by an Expert Committee under the Secretary (SE&L).
- Selected schools run the NCF or SCF on the 5+3+3+4 structure with bagless days, artisan internships, mother-tongue teaching in early grades and ICT; UDISE+ 2025-26 records 6,102 Sanskrit, 1,994 Urdu and 9,152 regional-language teachers in them.
For Prelims
- PM SHRI: Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India, launched 7 September 2022, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, to develop more than 14,500 existing schools as exemplar institutions demonstrating NEP 2020.
- Outlay: total project cost ₹27,360 crore across five years, 2022-23 to 2026-27, of which the Central share is ₹18,128 crore.
- PAB trend: the Central share of approved Project Approval Board outlay rose from ₹2,520 crore in 2023-24 to ₹5,224 crore in 2026-27, an increase of around 107 per cent.
- Coverage: as of July 2026, 13,092 schools selected — about 90 per cent of the target — across 36 States/UTs, 725 districts and 8,340 blocks/ULBs, expected to benefit more than 20 lakh students directly.
- Composition: of the 13,092 schools, 1,305 primary, 3,102 upper primary, 3,141 secondary and 5,544 higher secondary; including 913 KVS, 620 NVS, 80 KGBV and 4 NCERT schools.
- Challenge Mode: the three-stage selection — Stage 1 a State/UT MoU with the Centre, Stage 2 an eligibility pool from UDISE+ benchmarks, Stage 3 the Challenge Method needing 70% urban and 60% rural, with final selection by an Expert Committee headed by the Secretary (SE&L).
- Eligibility floor: a candidate school must have a pucca building, barrier-free access, safety measures, separate toilets, drinking water, hand-washing, electricity, teacher ID cards, a library or sports facility, and enrolment above the State average at elementary and senior secondary levels.
- Quality and training machinery: the School Quality Assessment Framework (SQAF) monitors quality; the scheme rests on six pillars derived from 9 chapters of NEP 2020; up to ₹3 lakh per DIET and up to ₹2,500 per teacher is provided for capacity building.
For UPSC: PM SHRI is the clearest current example of a demonstration scheme: a competitively selected set of institutions is raised to an exemplar standard that the rest of the system is then expected to copy. Use the arithmetic — 13,092 schools of 14.71 lakh, more than 20 lakh students of 24.69 crore — wherever an answer must separate upgrading a sample from lifting a median. It also gives the cleanest available description of Challenge Mode selection, useful on competitive selection as a design choice in Centrally Sponsored Schemes and on the implementation of NEP 2020 at school level.
What it is NOT: The backgrounder publishes no learning-outcome data of any kind — no assessment score, no foundational literacy and numeracy attainment, and no comparison with schools outside the scheme — even though learning outcomes are one of the criteria on which schools are scored to get in, and no evaluation of the scheme is cited. It reports only schools selected, never how many have been upgraded or are operational to the prescribed standard; it gives no State share against the ₹18,128 crore Central share and no expenditure against approved outlay, no count of schools mentored under the intended ripple effect, and it names the six pillars without listing them.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS2.13 · GS2.10 · Linkage L2
Anchor
PM SHRI is a demonstration scheme, and the title of this backgrounder promises what a demonstration scheme cannot deliver on its own. It selects 13,092 schools out of India’s 14.71 lakh and raises them to an exemplar standard. Whether every school becomes a model school then depends entirely on diffusion, not on the upgrade itself.
Substantiation (data)
Launched 7 September 2022, PM SHRI carries a project cost of ₹27,360 crore for 2022-23 to 2026-27, with a Central share of ₹18,128 crore; the Central PAB outlay rose from ₹2,520 crore in 2023-24 to ₹5,224 crore in 2026-27, about 107 per cent. By July 2026, 13,092 schools stood selected across 36 States and UTs, 725 districts and 8,340 blocks, reaching more than 20 lakh of 24.69 crore students.
Exemplification
The Challenge Method is the teachable part. A State signs an MoU, UDISE+ generates a pool against minimum benchmarks, and schools then compete for a score of 70 per cent in urban areas or 60 per cent in rural, assessed on infrastructure, learning outcomes, pedagogy, PM POSHAN, vocational education, green initiatives and stakeholder commitment, and verified by physical inspection before an Expert Committee signs off.
Problematisation
Read the eligibility floor and see what selection rewards. A candidate school already needs a pucca building, electricity, barrier-free access, separate toilets, drinking water, a library or sports facility, and enrolment above the State average. Those are attributes of schools already near the top of the distribution, so the scheme buys improvement where the base is strongest.
Comparison
Set the two kinds of measurement against each other. The backgrounder reports selection — 13,092 schools, about 90 per cent of target — and staffing, including 6,102 Sanskrit, 1,994 Urdu and 9,152 regional-language teachers from UDISE+ 2025-26. It reports no learning outcome at all, though learning outcomes are one of the criteria on which those schools were scored to get in.
Position
The ripple is asserted, not instrumented. PM SHRI schools are to mentor neighbours through handholding, collaboration and clustering, but the release names no mentoring target, no budget line for it and no count of schools reached. Until that is measured, the scheme’s claim on the system rests on 13,092 upgraded schools and an expectation about the rest of the 14.71 lakh.
Deploys into: Health, education and human resources (GS2.13): exemplar schools set against the median school · Government policies and interventions (GS2.10): competitive selection as scheme design, and what it selects for · NEP 2020 implementation: 5+3+3+4, foundational literacy and numeracy, bagless days and mother-tongue instruction · Centrally Sponsored Schemes: reading a Central share against a total project cost · Output versus outcome: schools selected as the reported number when learning is the stated object
PIB Backgrounder / Ministry of Education · 2026-09-09 · PRID 2308156 · PIB source ↗