How Rural India Fared in School Education

Recovery from pandemic losses

- Abhishek Jha

NEW DELHI: School education has either recovered from the pandemic's losses or is on its way to doing so. This is the key takeaway from the 14th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released by the Pratham Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, on January 28.

While part of the recovery can be attributed to students going back to school regularly after missing classes during the pandemic, part can also be attributed to the New Education Policy's (NEP) focus on improving foundational skills or what ASER tracks as learning outcomes. To be sure, the recovery remains uneven across states and enrolment level.

The 14th ASER report is based on a 2024 survey conducted in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts. It reached 649,491 children in the 3-16 years age group, and tested the reading and arithmetic skills of over 500,000 children in the 5-16 years age group. ASER reports are considered the most credible source of information on learning outcomes among school students in rural India.

The findings of this report are crucial because it is only the second such report after the Covid-19 pandemic, the last one being 2022. The ASER report is released every two years but the 2020 survey could not be conducted because of the pandemic, which makes 2018 the pre-pandemic benchmark for learning outcomes.