Between 2001 and 2011, nearly 27 per cent (17.5 lakh) of India's differently-abled population in the age-group of 5-19 years never attended any educational institution even as 12.1 per cent (8 lakh) of them dropped out of schools.
But as per the recently released Census 2011 in India, 40.2 lakh (61.2 per cent) are attending educational institutions, which still sends out some optimism as it is an improvement of about 11 percentage points for the differently abled persons in the age group attending schools.
Further, out of the 40.2 lakh disabled persons attending educational institutions, 22.8 lakh (56.7 per cent) are males and 17.4 lakh (43.3 per cent) are females.