Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2022

FOCUS

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is a nationwide household survey on children’s education and learning outcomes conducted across rural India. Children aged 3-16 years are surveyed based on pre-school and school enrolment levels, and those between 5-16 years of age are assessed individually on their reading, arithmetic and English skills.

Since 2005, the ASER has been conducted annually. ASER started publishing every two years in the year 2016, with the ‘basic’ national ASER being alternated with smaller surveys focusing on other age groups and learning factors. This ASER report is a nation-wide field-based ‘basic’ report after a gap of four years brought about due to the covid-19 pandemic. 

ASER's sample design consists of two stages. In the first stage, villages are chosen at random from the Census village directory for each rural district. In this way, the population of rural India is holistically covered. In the second stage, households are chosen at random from each of the villages identified in the first stage. This sampling approach produces a fair representation of each district. Subsequently, the estimations are consolidated at the divisional, state, and national levels. 

The 2022 ASER survey was carried out in 374,554 households across 616 districts and 19,060 villages in India. As many as 700,000 children across the country were surveyed.

This 348 page document is divided into 12 chapters: Commentary (Chapter 1); About ASER (Chapter 2); The National Picture (Chapter 3); India (Chapter 4); Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh (Chapter 5);  Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand (Chapter 6); Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya (Chapter 7); Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim (Chapter 8); Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal (Chapter 9);  Divisional Estimates and Aspirational Districts (chapter 10); ASER 2022 Process Documents (Chapter 11); Annexures (Chapter 12).

    FACTOIDS

  1. The overall enrolment of children aged 6-14 years increased from 97.2 per cent in 2018 to 98.4 per cent in 2022.

  2. Four out of every 10 children between three and six years of age were enrolled in Anganwadi Centres in 2022. While it varies across states, the enrolment has gone up in all states. As opposed to the 57.1 per cent in 2018, 66.8 per cent of 3-year-olds were enrolled in Anganwadi Centres in 2022. The percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in anganwadis increased from 50.5 per cent in 2018 to 61.2 per cent in 2022.

  3. As was the case before 2022, providing a high-quality pre-school education continues to be a challenge. A single anganwadi worker is tasked with providing six distinct services to mothers and young children.

  4. The proportion of children in the 6-14 age group who are not enrolled in schools has halved from 2.8 per cent in 2018 to 1.6 per cent in 2022.

  5. In 2018, 30.9 per cent of children attended private schools. By 2022, this has decreased to 25.1 per cent. This 5.8 percentage point decline translates into an abrupt 19 percent decline in private school enrolment and an increase of 11 per cent in enrolment at rural government schools.

  6. In 2006, the number of girls aged 11 to 14 years who were not enrolled in school, nationwide, was 10.3 per cent; over the next 10 years, this number decreased to 4.1 per cent in 2018. This percentage has further decreased over time. The percentage of girls aged 11 to 14 who are not enrolled in school nationwide in 2022 is two per cent. Only in Uttar Pradesh does this number hover around four per cent.

  7. Percentage of girls between the ages of 15 and 16 years who are not enrolled in school stands at 7.9 per cent in 2022. Only three states have more than 10 per cent of girls in this age range who are not enrolled in school – Madhya Pradesh (17 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (15 per cent), and Chhattisgarh (11.2 per cent).

  8. The percent of children in Class I to VIII who take private tuition increased from 26.4 per cent in 2018 to 30.5 per cent in 2022 at the national level.

  9. Children's basic reading skills nationwide have fallen back to pre-2012 levels, undoing the gradual advancement made in the previous years. In the majority of states, reductions in reading skills can be seen in both public and private schools, and for both boys and girls.

  10. According to ASER 2022 data, reading suffers a far bigger loss than arithmetic does. For most grades nationwide, children's fundamental maths proficiency levels have dropped from the 2018 levels but compared to basic reading, the decreases are less abrupt, the report states.

  11. At an all-India level, average teacher attendance increased from 85.4 per cent in 2018 to 87.1 per cent in 2022. Average student attendance has continued to be steady at 72 per cent for the past few years.

  12. The percentage of schools that had functional girls' toilets rose from 66.4 per cent in 2018 to 68.4 per cent in 2022. Over the same time period, the percentage of schools with access to drinking water went from 74.8 per cent to 76 per cent, and the percentage of schools where students use books beyond textbooks increased from 36.9 per cent to 44 per cent.


    Focus and Factoids by Naitri Derasari.

AUTHOR

ASER Centre, New Delhi

COPYRIGHT

ASER Centre, New Delhi

PUBLICATION DATE

18 Jan, 2023

TAGS

#private-schools #education #rural-education #government-schools

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