Navodaya Seats and Schools: 665 JNVs, 80 per School, Fees and Migration

Parents weighing the Navodaya test usually ask two things: how many places are there, and what does a place actually give my child? NVS’s prospectus answers both, though not in one place. There are 665 functional Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, one in almost every district, each admitting up to 80 children to Class VI. A place brings free schooling with board and lodging, uniform and textbooks, a CBSE education — and a condition most families only discover at admission, the Class IX migration rule. This guide sets out the numbers and the terms from NVS’s own documents.

NVS prospectus JNVST 2027.

The prospectus counts 642 regular JNVs, 20 additional JNVs sanctioned for districts with a high SC and ST population (each covering listed blocks only), and 3 special JNVs — 665 in all, up from 654 a year earlier. A total of 689 are sanctioned, “across the country except the State of Tamil Nadu”, and none has been sanctioned in six fully urban districts: Central Delhi, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban. Each JNV admits “a maximum of eighty students” to Class VI, “subject to availability of suitable candidates”, and NVS may reduce the seats to forty where accommodation is short.

Multiplying 665 schools by 80 gives 53,200, but that is only an upper limit: NVS publishes no total Class VI intake. The 2026 winter-bound select lists show why the ceiling is not reached everywhere. Of the 65 district lists we counted, 22 selected the full 80, 7 selected between 41 and 79, 15 selected exactly 40, and 21 selected fewer than 40 — as few as 9 or 10 in Aizawl, Mangan and Dibang Valley. Some of these districts are small, and some JNVs run at 40 seats. These are hill and north-eastern districts only, and NVS publishes no summer-bound intake, so how many districts elsewhere fill all 80 seats is not known.

Two kinds of district work differently. In the 20 districts that have an additional JNV for a high SC and ST population, each JNV covers a listed set of blocks, and the prospectus requires families to check their block against Annexure-II before applying. And Delhi has five JNVs covering sub-divisions listed in Annexure-I, a distribution the prospectus marks “tentative” and “subject to change”; the prospectus notes that “no independent JNV has been sanctioned yet for Old Delhi and Central North”. In both cases the block or sub-division decides which JNV a child competes for, and so which 80 seats.

JNVs are co-educational residential schools “fully financed and administered by Government of India” through NVS, with separate hostels for boys and girls. “Education in the schools is free including board & lodging, uniform and textbooks.” The medium of instruction is the mother tongue or regional language up to Class VIII, then English for Mathematics and Science and Hindi for Social Science; students take the CBSE board examinations. The schools run NCC, Scouts and Guides and NSS, and games and sports.

The only regular payment is the Vidyalaya Vikas Nidhi (VVN), ₹600 a month, collected only in Classes IX to XII. SC and ST students, Divyang students, all girls and children of BPL families are exempt. Children of Government employees who are not in an exempt group pay ₹1,500 a month or the actual Children Education Allowance their parent receives each month, whichever is less — but never less than ₹600.

One of the scheme’s objectives is national integration “through migration of students from Hindi to Non-Hindi speaking State and vice-versa”. In practice, when students are promoted to Class IX, some of them may be sent for one academic year to a JNV in a State of the other language group. The prospectus is explicit about refusal: “In case of refusal by the students/parents selected for migration, continuation of such students in JNV will not be allowed.” Parents sign an undertaking about migration at admission, so it is worth discussing with the child before the documents are signed.

A selected child is admitted only to the JNV of the district applied from; NVS will not shift a child for the medium of instruction or because the parents move. Selection gives no right to admission until the original certificates have been verified, and false information can lead to cancellation. And because there are no wait lists in 2027, a family that declines a seat does not hold it: the next eligible child in the same category and quota is filled automatically on the portal.