ASER 2024: Reading & arithmetic skills improve among Class 3 and 5 students, led by govt schools

IT COVERS 6.49 LAKH CHILDREN IN RURAL INDIA

- 

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024, a comprehensive rural household survey conducted by the Pratham Foundation, was released on January 28. This year's survey reached 649,491 children across 17,997 villages in 605 rural districts of India.

The findings highlight significant progress in reading and arithmetic skills, recovery from pandemic-induced learning loss, and trends in digital literacy.

The ASER 2024 report highlights that the reading levels among students have shown marked improvement, with substantial recovery from the declines recorded in 2022.

For Class 3 students, the percentage of children able to read Class 2-level text rose to 23.4 per cent in 2024, compared to 16.3 per cent in 2022 and 20.9 per cent in 2018. Government schools contributed significantly to this improvement, surpassing the corresponding recovery in private schools.

States with over 10 percentage point increases in Class 3 reading levels in government schools between 2022 and 2024 include Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Odisha, and Maharashtra.

Among Class 5 students, the percentage of children in government schools who could read a Class 2-level text recovered to 44.8 per cent in 2024, after falling to 38.5 per cent in 2022 from 44.2 per cent in 2018.

Private schools saw smaller gains, with this proportion rising to 59.3 per cent in 2024 from 56.8 per cent in 2022, though still below the 65.1 per cent recorded in 2018.

For Class 8 students, the reading levels in government schools showed a slight improvement, reaching 67.5 per cent in 2024 compared to 66.2 per cent in 2022. However, this remains below the 69 per cent recorded in 2018. In private schools, there was no significant change in reading levels between 2022 and 2024. States like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Sikkim demonstrated notable improvements, while declines were observed in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana.