How Covid affected basic reading and math skills

Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), first conducted in 2005, is a large-scale rural survey that tracks children’s reading and numeracy abilities. It surveyed nearly 700,000 primary school students in 616 districts in late 2022—the first full-scale, on-field, national survey since 2018, as the 2020 edition could not be held.

It’s not all gloom and doom though. Despite starting school in the 2020 lockdown, the share of third-grade students who could read a grade II-level text (21%) or subtract numbers (26%) was not significantly affected. The numbers were dismal even before the pandemic: 27% and 28%, respectively, in 2018. Secondly, ASER has managed to conduct field surveys in three states – Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal – in 2021. The data from these states shows that there was a more worrying decline till 2021, and has improved since then, especially in Chhattisgarh, Wilima Wadhwa, director of the ASER Centre, told Mint.

towards equality

There were fears that many children would drop out of schools during the pandemic. But the overall enrollment rate in the 6-14 age group increased from 97.2% to 98.4% in 2018. The 2020 smaller phone-based ASER survey showed an increase in out-of-school children, but that appears to be a temporary setback. However, enrollment may not always translate into attendance. Over the years, the share of students actually enrolled has remained around 72%, despite an increase in teacher attendance.

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Girls aged 15-16 saw the fastest increase in enrollment rates, approaching their male peers. Such girls are at the greatest risk of knocking on their schooling due to conservative family norms. But the share not attending school dropped from 13.5% in 2018 to just 7.9%.

The survey also reported a clear shift from private schools to government schools.

beyond school

In the past, ASER surveys have shown a steady increase in rural students taking private tuition. This trend gained further momentum during the pandemic despite the economic hardships faced by the families. Even as schools saw closures, paid tuition classes scored big as students looked for alternatives to cope with the loss of learning.

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More than 30% of the students of classes I-VIII surveyed took private tuition classes, up from 26.4% in 2018. The proportion of students taking private tuition was highest among students of classes III, IV and VIII (about 32%). After Class V, government school students are more likely to opt for tuition classes than their private school peers.

A state-wise breakup shows that the trend is more popular in eastern and north-eastern states and less so in southern and western states. Bihar, Nagaland, Manipur and Jharkhand saw the highest increase in the share of students going to tuition.

infrastructure crisis

Various basic amenities like toilets, libraries and playgrounds for girls are essential to ensure that students keep attending schools. Despite school closures, progress on this front continues. However, many facilities are inadequate.

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One in four schools surveyed still do not have access to drinking water. Two large states – Gujarat and Karnataka – also saw a drop in share: from 88% to 71.8% and 76.8% to 67.8%, respectively.

There is marginal improvement in the share of schools with toilets for girls, from 66.4% in 2018 to 68.4% in 2022. The stress of teaching students new-age technology was also missing, as less than a quarter of schools were equipped with computers. , in most cases not being used by them on the day of travel. However, libraries were present in 78.3% of schools, and the surveyors found that children read books in most of them.