ASER 2023: Annual Status of Education Report to be released on January 17

The Pratham Foundation is set to release the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) on January 17, marking the second year of the return of this pivotal national survey assessing the state of foundational literacy and numeracy in India.

Amid the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the ASER survey by the Pratham Foundation transitioned to a phone-based approach, concentrating on investigating digital disparities and school enrollment levels. However, in 2022, Pratham reintroduced its field survey, covering various cities across the country. Surveyors conducted face-to-face interactions with children and teachers in rural India, providing insights into the state of learning.

ASER 2022 encompassed approximately 7 lakh candidates from 19,060 schools in 616 districts, aiming to evaluate learning outcomes post-pandemic among school children. The 2022 report disclosed that nearly all students (98.4%) in the 6-14 age group are currently enrolled in schools. This figure has seen a notable increase from 96.6% in 2010, 96.7% in 2014, and 97.2% in 2018 to reach 98.4% in 2022. Notably, government school enrollment witnessed a rise of 7.3 percentage points from 2018 to 2022. The ASER report focused on nine districts, 262 villages, and 4,859 households in Manipur, revealing that Manipur has the lowest government school enrollment percentage among northeastern states.

Furthermore, 2022 marked the first instance where the percentage of children currently not enrolled in schools dropped to 2% or below. Despite prolonged school closures during the pandemic, the proportion of children not enrolled in school continued to decline between 2018 and 2022.