Efficient Resourcing and Effective Governance through School Complexes/Clusters 7.1. While the establishment of primary schools in every habitation across the country-driven by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), now subsumed under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme and other important efforts across the States - has helped to ensure near-universal access to primary schools, it has also led to the development of numerous very small schools. According to U-DISE 2016–17 data, nearly 28% of India’s public primary schools and 14.8% of India ’s upper primary schools have less than 30 students. The average number of students per grade in the elementary schooling system (primary and upper primary, i.e., Grades 1–8) is about 14, with a notable proportion having below 6; during the year 2016–17, there were 1,08,017 single-teacher schools, the majority of them (85743 ) being primary schools serving Grades 1–5. 7.2. These small school sizes have rendered it economically suboptimal and operationally complex ...