ASER 2022 Report Released After 4 Years: Dip In Reading And Maths Abilities Of Students

The ASER 2022 Report has been released after 4 years. The report highlights a dip in reading and Mathematics abilities of students compared to the 2018 report.

ASER 2022 Report Released After 4 Years

Source : Getty

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 has been released today after four years. The release of the ASER 2022 Report, marks the comeback of an essential national survey which highlights the state of foundational literacy and numeracy in the country and the learning outcome in schools. 

“ASER 2022 will provide vital evidence on the impact of the pandemic on children’s enrolment and learning outcomes, both nationally and for every state in the country,” ASER said in a tweet.

Conducted in 17,002 government schools in 19,060villages across 616 districts, the ASER Survey included 7 lakh children from the age group of 6 to 14 years. 

As per the report, the reading ability of Class 3 students in rural schools across the country has seen an alarming dip since only 20.5% of such students could read a class 2 textbook. The report further underlined a drop of 7 percentage points in the reading ability of children as compared to the ASER 2018 report which highlighted that at least 27.5% class 3 children were able to read a class 2 book. 

The report also shed light on the decline of basic mathematics abilities of children. As per the report, only 25.9% Class 3 children could do basic arithmetics as compared to 28.2% in 2018. 

The ASER 2022 Report also shows that the proportion of government schools with less than 60 students has increased every year over the last decade. A total of 29.9 percent of rural schools had less than 60 students in 2022 compared to 17.3 percent such schools in 2017.

Led by the Pratham Foundation, the ASER Survey was last conducted in its full swing in 2018. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the ASER switched to phone-based, shifting its focus on exploring digital inequality and enrollment levels in schools.

It was only in 2022 when the PRATHAM got back with its field surveys with surveyors stretching out to several states holding face-to-face interactions with teachers and children in rural areas.