What is an admission number?

What an admission number means

An admission number is the number a school gives a student when it admits them, against their entry in the admission register. It stays the same for as long as the student is at that school. CBSE’s bye-laws put it plainly: “Successive numbers must be allotted to students on their admission and each student should retain this number throughout the whole of his career in the school.”¹

It is the school’s number, not a government one. A new school gives the child a new admission number. The numbers that follow the child from school to school are the PEN and the APAAR ID.

Where the register is called the scholar register, you will also hear it called the SR number or scholar number.

Where the school office meets it

• The admission register. Each entry carries the number.
• The transfer certificate. CBSE’s TC format prints the admission number in its header, beside the book and serial number.¹
• UDISE+. The student section of the data form asks for the “Admission Number in Present School”, along with the admission date.² The same field sits in the student’s enrolment profile in SDMS.³
• Day-to-day work. Fee receipts, library cards, ID cards and certificates are easier to match to the right child when each one carries the admission number.

What the school has to do

1. Give numbers in one running sequence for the whole school, in the order students are admitted.¹
2. Never reuse a number, even after the student leaves.
3. When a former student comes back, give them their old number. CBSE’s bye-laws say a student returning “after absence of any duration shall resume his original admission number”.¹
4. Enter the same number in UDISE+ that you wrote in the register.

Scoolin does not let two students share an admission number, even when one is typed in capitals and the other is not.

Common mistakes

• Mixing it up with the roll number. The roll number is the student’s place in a class or section, and it can change every year. UDISE+ keeps them apart: the admission number is required, while the section roll number is optional.²
• Restarting at 1 every year. The bye-law asks for successive numbers, and a fresh count each year soon gives two students the same one.
• Giving a returning student a new number. Their history splits in two.
• Writing the PEN or the board roll number in its place. Each number has its own box on the TC and on UDISE+. Read the label.

Related terms

• Scholar register: the register the number belongs to.
• School leaving certificate: the TC, which prints the number.
• PEN: the student’s 11-digit UDISE+ number, which moves with them.
• UDISE+: where the number is reported each year.

Sources

1. CBSE, Examination Bye-Laws (2013 edition), bye-law 8(ii) and Annexure-I, format of transfer certificate. Back to the text
2. Department of School Education and Literacy, UDISE+ Data Capture Format for 2025-26, item 4.2, as circulated by the Directorate of Education, Delhi. Back to the text
3. UDISE+, SDMS User Manual for school users, section 3.1.5. Back to the text