The ASER Report 2022 released recently revealed that almost all (98.4%) students in the age bracket of 6-14 years are now enrolled in schools.
About ASER Survey
It is a citizen-led household survey that provides estimates of the enrolment status of children aged 3-16 and the basic reading and arithmetic levels of children aged 5-16 at the national, state and district level.
ASER is published by NGO Pratham, and the survey has been conducted every year since 2005.
The survey reaches children in the age group of 3-16 in almost all rural districts of India.
It uses household rather than school-based sampling.
Highlights of ASER 2022
In ASER 2022 Survey, 7 lakh candidates from 19,060 schools in 616 districts were surveyed to calculate the learning outcomes post-pandemic on school children.
Enrollment has gone from 97.2 per cent in 2018 to 98.4 per cent in 2022.
As many as 72.9 per cent of the surveyed students go to government schools.
In only three states, the number of girls not going to school is above 10% – Madhya Pradesh (17%), Uttar Pradesh (15%), and Chhattisgarh (11.2%).
Nationally, children’s basic reading ability has dropped to pre-2012 levels, reversing the slow improvement achieved in the intervening years.
In both government and private schools, only 20.5% students of Class 3 can read, compared to 27.3% in 2018.
The proportion of Class 5 students who can read has dropped to 42.8% in 2022, compared to 50.5% in 2018.