ASER Report: Classes resumed after Covid

Why in the NEWS?

• The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 was released in New Delhi, by co-founders of Pratham Dr. Madhav Chavan and Ms. Farida Lambay.
• This is the fourteenth 'basic' ASER report.

Key Points:

• The 'basic' ASER survey generates district, state and national level estimates of the enrolment status of 3 to 16-year-old children, and basic reading and arithmetic skills of 5 to 16-year-old children. 
• Additionally, in ASER 2024, older children aged 14 to 16 were asked questions about their digital access and usage and were administered a set of smartphone-based tasks to gauge their digital abilities.
• ASER 2024 reached 649,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India. 
• Facilitated by Pratham, in each surveyed district, a local organization or institution conducted the survey.

What will you read next in this topic?

1. Key findings of the ASER 2024 
2. Objective of ASER 2024 Report
3. News of improvement in 2024 report
4. Improvement in government schools
5. Impact of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
6. Improvement in states
7. FLN targets under NEP

Key findings of the ASER 2024 

• The survey are presented separately below for three groups of children:

Pre-primary (age 3-5 years):

• NEP 2020 recommends universal provision of early childhood education. ASER 2024 data shows that enrolment in ECE centres/preschool is high and rising. 
• In 2024, more than 80% of children age 3-4 in rural India are enrolled in some type of pre-primary institution (including ICDS centres).
• The proportion of "under-age" (age 5 and below) children entering Std I is declining. Nationally the percentage of underage children in Std I was at its lowest ever, at 16.7% in 2024,

Elementary (age 6-14 years)

• Overall school enrolment rates of children in the age group 6-14 remains high and stable at around 98% since 2022.
• Both reading and arithmetic levels have improved for children in all grades in most states. 
• This increase is largely due to learning gains of children enrolled in government schools. 
• Children enrolled in the early grades in school (Std I-III) show significant increases as compared to data from ASER 2022.

Older children (age 15-16 years)

• The proportion of older children (age 15-16) not enrolled in school has been decreasing steadily in recent years. 
• Today approximately 7% of this age group (both boys and girls) are currently not enrolled in school.
• Nationally, more than 90% of rural adolescents (age 15-16) have access to a smart phone. 
• About 70% adolescents in this age group could do basic digital tasks like setting an alarm, find information on the net and locate specific on-line content and share with others.

Objective of ASER 2024 Report

• ASER visited almost all the rural districts of the country to study the status of schooling of children and prepared a report on the level of basic reading and numeracy.
• This report helps to track the progress of basic literacy and numeracy (FLN - Foundational Literacy and Numeracy) skills.

News of improvement in 2024 report

• According to the report, the post-pandemic learning loss has now been completely overcome, and the level of education has improved.
• The proportion of class three children who can read at the class two level has increased from 20.5 percent in 2022 to 27.1 percent in 2024.
• There was also improvement in class five, where the proportion of children who could read a class two level text increased to 48.8 percent in 2024 from 42.8 percent in 2022.
• The proportion of children able to learn at least arithmetic in class three rose to 33.7 per cent in 2024, the highest in the last decade.
• Arithmetic skills have seen improvement in class five, and the proportion of children able to do at least division is 30.7 per cent in 2024.

Improvement in government schools

• While learning levels have seen significant improvement in government schools, private schools have performed even lower than pre-pandemic levels.
• The proportion of children able to do subtraction in government schools in class three increased by 36.6 per cent between 2022 and 2024, while it was only 10.2 per cent in private schools.

Impact of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020

• NEP 2020 and its focus on basic skills is showing its effect. 
• This is the first time a systematic national effort has been made to improve basic learning outcomes.
• The report showed that almost all states have shown improvement compared to 2022.

Improvement in states

• States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have seen significant improvement.
• The proportion of Class III children in government schools in Uttar Pradesh who can read at the Class II level has increased from 16.4 per cent in 2022 to 27.9 per cent in 2024.
• High-performing states such as Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra had halved the proportion of children reading at the Class II level in government schools after the Covid pandemic, but these have improved in 2024.

FLN targets under NEP

• For the first time, the NEP has set clear FLN (basic literacy and numeracy) targets for the entire country, and states are finding their own paths to achieving these.
• The ASEAR 2024 data shows that concerted efforts are being made in India to improve FLN in primary schools as a national mission.
• The level of education is improving in different parts of the country, which is a positive step towards achieving the basic objectives of education.