The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP‑WASH) published the study ‘Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in schools 2015‑2025’, which estimates that 244 million school‑aged children worldwide had no sanitation facilities in 2025, and India accounts for 50 million of them, the largest national share.
Only four other nations – Nigeria (34 million), Ethiopia (26 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (11 million) and Indonesia (8 million) – reported comparable numbers, underscoring the scale of the challenge in India.
The report also notes a 14 % decline in Indian schools without sanitation since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014, suggesting the flagship cleanliness drive has yielded measurable gains, even as the absolute number of affected children remains high.
Beyond toilets, the same JMP‑WASH data reveal that 20 million Indian pupils lacked basic hygiene services such as hand‑washing facilities in 2025, contributing to a global total of 362 million children without school hygiene. The report flags persistent data gaps for India, limiting trend analysis beyond 2024 for the Central and Southern Asia region.
On the drinking‑water front, India is among 28 of 62 countries on track to achieve universal basic drinking‑water coverage in schools by 2030. Yet 12 million Indian children still attend schools without a reliable water source, representing roughly one in twenty children worldwide lacking this service.
The findings come as the Sustainable Development Goals set for 2030 call for universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in educational settings. While India has narrowed gaps between rural and urban schools for water provision, the sheer volume of children without any sanitation or hygiene infrastructure highlights the need for continued investment and monitoring.