The latest round of the National Family Health Survey, NFHS-6 (2023-24), reports that for the first time, women are more likely than men to have completed ten or more years of schooling. The national gender gap in higher secondary attainment, measured as the difference between men’s and women’s shares, has shifted from a male advantage in NFHS-5 (2019-21) to a one-percentage-point advantage for women. This marks an important change in the historical pattern of educational attainment in India.(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.)The percentage of women with ten or more years of schooling increased by 5.4 percentage points, compared with a 4.4 percentage-point increase for men from NFHS-5 to NFHS-6. This trend was seen in 33 out of 35 States and Union Territories, with declines recorded only in Goa and Jammu & Kashmir, as shown in Figure 1. The largest rise happened in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (+12.5 percentage points), Arunachal Pradesh (+11.0), and Odisha (+10.9). States with historically lower attainment, such as Bihar (+4.3) and Uttar Pradesh (+3.2), also reported gains.The proportion of females aged six and above who ever attended school increased from 71.8% to 73.7% between NFHS-5 and NFHS-6. This measure includes all living women rather than only recent cohorts, and hence, it is expected to change slowly. Current data indicate that the new challenge for government and policymakers has shifted from enrolment to completion, with girls now progressing through higher secondary education faster than boys in most regions.