The basic reading and arithmetic ability of five to 16-year-old students across the country significantly dropped in 2022 as schools opened after the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Annual Status of Education Report released on Wednesday.
ASER 2022 is a nationwide citizen-led rural household survey that reached almost 700,000 children in over 19,000 villages across 616 districts in India. The last survey was in 2018.
Another major finding is the “small, steady increases in the proportion of children in Std I-VII taking paid, private tuition classes.”
Between 2018 and 2022 this proportion increased further, among students in both government and private schools. Nationally, the proportion of children in Std I-VIII taking paid private tuition classes increased from 26.4% in 2018 to 30.5% in 2022.
In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand, the proportion of children taking paid private tuition increased by 8 percentage points or more over 2018 levels.
The basic reading ability, which is measured by whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph at Class 1 level of difficulty or a story at Class 2 level of difficulty, dropped to pre-2012 levels.
Most children had received their textbooks for the current academic year. Textbooks had been distributed to all grades in 90.1% of primary schools and in 84.4% of upper primary schools.
About 80% of all primary schools had received a directive to implement Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) activities with their students, and about the same proportion had at least 1 teacher who had received training on FLN.
Government school enrollment
Accorind to the report, the period 2006 to 2014 saw a steady decrease in the proportion of children (age 6 to 14) enrolled in government school.
In 2014, this figure stood at 64.9% and did not change much over the following four years. However, the proportion of children (age 6 to 14) enrolled in government school increased sharply from 65.6% in 2018 to 72.9% in 2022. Increase in government school enrollment is visible for almost every state in the country.
In 2006, the All India figure for the percentage of girls age 11-14 who were out of school stood at 10.3%, falling over the following decade to 4.1% in 2018. This proportion has continued to drop.
In 2022, the all India figure for 11-14-year-old girls not enrolled in school stands at 2%. This figure is around 4% only in Uttar Pradesh and is lower in all other states.
The decrease in the proportion of girls not enrolled in school is even sharper among older girls in the 15-16 age group. In 2008, nationally, more than 20% of girls in the 15-16 age group were not enrolled in school. Ten years later, in 2018, this figure had decreased to 13.5%. The proportion of 15-16-year-old girls not enrolled has continued to drop, standing at 7.9% in 2022. Only 3 states have more than 10% of girls in this age group out of school: Madhya Pradesh (17%), Uttar Pradesh (15%), and Chhattisgarh (11.2%).
Average teacher attendance increased slightly, from 85.4% in 2018 to 87.1% in 2022. Average student attendance continues to hover at around 72% for the past several years.
Basic facilities
The fraction of schools with useable girls’ toilets increased from 66.4% in 2018 to 68.4% in 2022. The proportion of schools with drinking water available increased from 74.8% to 76%, and the proportion of schools with books other than textbooks being used by students increased from 36.9% to 44% over the same period.
Most sports-related indicators also remain at close to the levels observed in 2018 (68.9% from 66.5% in 2018).
