In short: UDISE+ data entry for 2026-27 closes on 30 September 2026 (Ministry of Education, D.O. No. 23-6/2026-Stats, 14 July 2026). Children already in your school are only progressed to the next class; a full entry is needed only for new admissions. APAAR IDs are generated by UDISE+ against the child's PEN and fail when the name does not match Aadhaar, when the date of birth or gender is wrong, or when there is no parental consent on file. Fix those in UDISE+ before 30 September; CBSE expects APAAR IDs on the 2026-27 list of candidates.
It is the second week of September. The headmaster of, say, a 600-student school has the UDISE+ (UDISE Plus, the Unified District Information System for Education) portal open in one tab, the SDMS student module in another, a WhatsApp group where the block MIS coordinator posts reminders in capitals, and a printed list of forty-one children whose APAAR ID "did not generate". The Class IX registration circular from CBSE had not arrived when this was written (13 September), but last year's said corrections would close in November and after that, none. Teaching starts at 8:30. This is written for that person.
What is the UDISE+ 2026-27 deadline, and what changed this year?
The Department of School Education & Literacy wrote to every state and union territory on 14 July 2026 (D.O. No. 23-6/2026-Stats). Three sentences in it decide your September:
"As you are aware, UDISE+ transformed to student registry and from classes I to class XII, States/UTs are needed to only progress existing students to the next class, and no fresh data entry is needed for these students. Fresh data entry is required only at the time of admission of new students."
"...complete the data entry by 30th September, 2026."
That is the whole change. UDISE+ is no longer a form you fill from scratch each year; it is a register of children that you move forward one class. The work for a returning child is progression — confirm they are in your school, in the next class, with the same details. The work for a new child is a full entry. The deadline is 30 September.
Two things the letter does not say, and you should know:
- Last year the deadline moved. The portal's own notice board shows "Extension of UDISE+ data entry till 15th December, 2025" posted on 1 December 2025. Planning around an extension is how schools end up in the December queue with everyone else. Plan for 30 September; treat an extension as luck.
- The order of operations matters. The letter separates the two jobs — progress the returning children, enter only the new ones — and a returning child typed in as a new admission risks a second record for a child who already has a PEN (the Permanent Education Number UDISE+ assigns to every student). Do progression first, new admissions second, and treat any "new" child whose name a class teacher recognises as a returning child until proved otherwise.
One child, five systems
The child in front of you exists in five government systems, and CBSE's own list of why APAAR fails says the first place they disagree is her name.
| System | What it wants from you | Who usually does it | Hard date | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UDISE+ (school profile, teachers, facilities) | The school's own record for the year, per the Data Capture Format | Headmaster | 30 Sept 2026 | Teacher and section counts that differ from what CBSE's OASIS has |
| SDMS (the student module of UDISE+, at sdms.udiseplus.gov.in) | Progression of every returning child; full entry for each new admission; APAAR generation request against the child's PEN | Headmaster, or a class teacher per section | 30 Sept 2026 | Returning child entered as new → risk of a second record for one child; name typed as the school spells it, not as Aadhaar spells it |
| APAAR (generated by UDISE+ against the PEN) | Signed parental consent; a name that matches Aadhaar; date of birth and gender on record | Class teacher collects consent, headmaster submits | No separate date — it depends on the UDISE+ record being right by 30 Sept | Any demographic mismatch with Aadhaar → "generation failed"; no PEN → cannot start |
| CBSE registration (Class IX and XI, on Pariksha Sangam) | Candidate, parent names, date of birth, subjects; APAAR linked to the registration data | Exam-cell teacher | Last year: 16 Sept–16 Oct 2025, late fee to 31 Oct, "no extension"; correction window 14–28 Nov 2025, then "NO CORRECTION WILL BE ALLOWED BY THE BOARD" | A spelling that differs from the UDISE+/Aadhaar version becomes the spelling on the board certificate |
| CBSE OASIS (affiliated-school information) | School-level data — sections and strength, teachers and the classes they teach | Principal / admin | Before registration opens: the circular requires OASIS to be updated first | Counts that differ from UDISE+ |
The cost is that the same forty-one children are typed, or at least re-checked, in five places under five deadlines, usually by more than one person — and that each system will reject the child for a reason another system caused. The APAAR failure is the clearest case. (The evidence on what this does to a school's week is in our companion post, the same child entered five times.)
Why does APAAR ID generation fail? CBSE's four reasons
CBSE's registration circular of 11 September 2025 (CBSE/COORD/REGN/2025-26, Annexure-J) lists the issues brought to its notice when APAAR generation failed:
- "Difficulty in integration between different portals."
- "Different data of a student in the school and in Aadhaar records."
- "Time taken to complete the correction/updating process, etc."
- "Lack of parental consent."
The mechanics behind the second reason are on the APAAR portal's own FAQ: "The name of student as per student records in UDISE+ must match with the name of the student as per Aadhaar", "PEN of student is mandatory for generation of APAAR ID", and on failure "an error message will be displayed, indicating issues such as a demographic data mismatch between AADHAAR and academic records. The user must correct the inaccurate data and resubmit their request to generate the APAAR ID."
So in practice a failed APAAR is one of:
- The name is spelt differently. "Mohammed" vs "Mohd", a missing middle name, an initial instead of a surname, a transliteration the admission clerk chose in Class 1. Aadhaar wins; UDISE+ must be edited to match it — or, if Aadhaar is wrong, the family must correct Aadhaar first, which can take weeks.
- Date of birth or gender differs. Often a transfer certificate typed years ago.
- No PEN. A child admitted mid-year and never entered in SDMS has no PEN, and APAAR cannot be requested without one.
- No consent on file. APAAR needs a parent's consent, and the consent form must now offer a way to refuse. The Odisha High Court (Rohit Anand Das v. State of Odisha, W.P.(C) 8285 of 2025, judgment of 12 December 2025) directed the authorities to consider amending the model consent form to include an opt-out, and the Supreme Court (Abishek Baxi & Ors. v. Union of India, order of 20 July 2026, as reported by the Internet Freedom Foundation) directed that the ruling be given effect across India. A parent may say no. If they do, keep the written refusal.
What CBSE told schools to do about it under the heading "For the Current Year-2025-2026": where consent was refused, keep a copy of the refusal and write REFUSED against APAAR in the LOC; where generation failed for any other reason, write NOGEN. And under "For the Next Year-2026-2027":
"If data of student/parent in Aadhaar/UDISE/School/etc. is not correct, the same be got corrected by taking appropriate action so that during LOC submission, APAAR Id of students is available."
Read that as a deadline, and read the cohorts carefully. The students you registered for Class IX and XI last year are the ones who file the list of candidates for the 2026-27 board exams — CBSE expects them to have APAAR IDs by then, and NOGEN was offered only under the current-year heading. This term's Class IX and XI intake gets the same treatment when its turn comes. Either way the correction that makes an APAAR possible is the UDISE+ name field, and you should assume you cannot edit it after 30 September.
UDISE Plus 2026-27 calendar: UDISE+, APAAR and CBSE registration dates
Dates are the Ministry's and CBSE's where marked; the internal ones are our recommendation and are marked as such.
| When | What | Whose date |
|---|---|---|
| Now | Print the SDMS student list per section. Class teachers mark every child: returning / new / left. Collect Aadhaar copies for new admissions and for every child with a failed APAAR. | ours |
| By 15 Sept | Progression complete for all returning children. Every failed-APAAR child has a diagnosis: name / DOB / gender / PEN / consent. | ours — two weeks of margin; last year's extension notice is the evidence that the final fortnight is where schools get stuck |
| By 22 Sept | New admissions entered. UDISE+ names corrected to match Aadhaar. APAAR re-requested. | ours |
| 30 Sept 2026 | UDISE+ data entry complete (D.O. 14 July 2026) | Ministry |
| Last year: 16 Sept–16 Oct 2025 (late fee to 31 Oct; "no extension will be made to the last date") | CBSE Class IX/XI (Class 9 and 11) registration on Pariksha Sangam, after updating OASIS. Register only bona fide, regularly attending students; the circular is explicit that "Only those students shall be allowed to appear for CLASS X AND XII BOARD EXAMINATIONS IN SESSION 2026-27" whose names go through this process. | CBSE circular of 11 Sept 2025 (watch cbse.gov.in for the 2026-27 one) |
| Last year: 14–28 Nov 2025 | Data verification slip → correction window → then no corrections | CBSE 2025-26 circular; expect the same shape |
| Before registration opens | OASIS update — the circular requires it before a school proceeds with registration | CBSE |
UDISE+ and APAAR checklist: seven things to verify before anyone types
Before anyone types anything:
- Every child has a PEN. If not, find out why before doing anything else; APAAR depends on it, and through APAAR so does the CBSE registration.
- The name you will type is the name on the Aadhaar card, character for character, including the order of names. Not the admission register. Not the TC.
- One date of birth — the same on the birth certificate, Aadhaar, UDISE+ and the CBSE registration. Check the day and month have not been swapped somewhere along the way; it is a common silent mismatch.
- Gender as on Aadhaar.
- A signed consent form per child for APAAR — or a signed refusal, filed. Both are your evidence.
- The same person, or the same spreadsheet, feeds UDISE+ and the CBSE registration. Two people typing from two lists is how a child gets two spellings.
- Return every child's registration slip to the parent and ask them to check it — CBSE asks you to do this for exactly the reason that the parent is the only person who knows the name is wrong.
The part nobody has fixed
The Ministry's letter reduces the UDISE+ half of the work honestly: progression is less than re-entry. It does nothing about the other copies of the same record. Back to the headmaster in the second week of September: what gets her through is one clean list that every portal is copied from, kept by one person.
In Circin the school enters the child once, at admission. PEN and APAAR are not built-in fields; the school creates them as custom fields on the student record, types the name as Aadhaar prints it, and exports the section list from that record when the portal work starts. Portal entry becomes copying from one list rather than re-typing from three. It does not make the portals talk to each other; the only link between them today is that UDISE+ generates the APAAR.
What we do not know
- There is no independent measurement of how long portal work takes an Indian school per year. The figures that circulate come from vendors or from individual teachers' accounts. We are collecting our own from pilot schools and will publish them; if you run a school and want to be one of them, tell us.
- Whether the 30 September date will be extended again. Last year it was; the year before, the portal-closing letter came on 3 December. We would not bet a grant allocation on it.
- State-level portals (Karnataka's SATS, Tamil Nadu's EMIS, Bihar's e-Shikshakosh and the rest) add a fifth and sixth copy in many states. This guide covers only the national and CBSE layers.
Sources
- Ministry of Education, DoSE&L, D.O. No. 23-6/2026-Stats dated 14 July 2026 — udiseplus.gov.in, notice "UDISE+ Data Completion for AY 2026–27 and a Separate Vertical for AWES School Reporting" (3 August 2026).
- UDISE+ notice board on the portal home page: "Extension of UDISE+ data entry till 15th December, 2025" (1 December 2025); "UDISE+ 2024-25 Portal Closing" (3 December 2024).
- CBSE, "Submission of Registration Data of Candidates for Class IX/XI, 2025-26", CBSE/COORD/REGN/2025-26 dated 11 September 2025, incl. Annexure-J on APAAR — cbse.gov.in (PDF).
- APAAR portal FAQ — apaar.education.gov.in/faqs.
- Internet Freedom Foundation, "Supreme Court orders pan-India implementation of Odisha High Court's ruling on APAAR ID's consent form" (27 July 2026; Supreme Court order of 20 July 2026 in W.P.(C) 832/2026) — internetfreedom.in.
Last reviewed 13 September 2026. If a date or rule above has changed, write to us and we will correct it with a dated note.