Key Details
The WHO–UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) tracks whether schools have water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services that meet defined minimum standards—not simply whether infrastructure exists.
Basic Service | Global Schools, 2025 | India, 2015 → 2025 |
|---|---|---|
Drinking water available from an improved source | 78% | 55% → 97% |
Usable, single-sex sanitation | 77% | 62% → 81% |
Handwashing with soap and water | 72% | No India estimate for 2025 |
Globally, 429 million school-age children lacked basic drinking water at school, 460 million lacked basic sanitation and 545 million lacked basic hygiene in 2025. The report estimates that 14% of Indian schools had no sanitation service—a different measure from the 19% that lacked basic sanitation.
Global Gains Remain Too Slow for 2030
School WASH coverage has improved since 2015, but the JMP estimates that universal basic services by 2030 would require progress to accelerate fourfold for water and hygiene and fivefold for sanitation. At current rates, hundreds of millions of children would still lack each service in 2030.
“Basic” has a practical meaning: water must be available from an improved source; toilets must be usable and single-sex; and handwashing facilities must have both water and soap. A school can therefore have a tap, toilet or handwashing station without meeting the basic-service standard.
India’s Water Gains Outpace Sanitation
India’s estimated basic-water coverage rose 42 percentage points between 2015 and 2025, reaching 97% of schools. Basic sanitation rose 19 points, reaching 81%. The report estimates that around 50 million school-age children in India attended schools with no sanitation service in 2025.
The India figures make the gap more specific than a general call for school infrastructure: water access is now much more widespread, while usable sanitation remains the larger measured shortfall. The JMP cannot establish India’s 2025 basic-hygiene coverage because the latest national data do not support an estimate beyond 2024.
Monitoring Is Moving Beyond Facility Counts
The report also examines what school WASH monitoring may need to capture beyond today’s basic indicators: maintenance and cleanliness, menstrual health, disability access, younger children’s needs, student experience and resilience to disruptions. These are areas for developing more informative measures, not additional services the report claims to have measured consistently in every country.
Policy Relevance
Make sanitation usable: India’s 81% basic-sanitation coverage points to a different task from installing more facilities alone. Education authorities need to identify schools where toilets are absent, unusable or fail the basic standard, and address maintenance as well as construction.
Restore hygiene monitoring: Without a current estimate of handwashing facilities with soap and water, India cannot assess all three school-WASH services together or identify where that provision is missing.
Follow the Full Report Here: Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools, 2015–2025