Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023

Context (TH I IE): The gender gap widens with progressive levels of education owing to more significant barriers to schooling that girls face due to social norms.
The 2023 survey focused on an older group of 14–18-year-old children.
The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ survey was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states.

About ASER

ASER is a nationwide citizen-led household survey by NGO Pratham Education Foundation.
It provides the status of children’s schooling and learning in rural India.
ASER reports are usually referred to by the government while formulating policies.
The ‘BASIC’ ASER:
1. Collects information about enrollment in pre-school and school in the age group of 3–16 and
2. Assesses children aged 5–16 one-on-one to understand their foundational reading and arithmetic abilities.

Objectives

2023 survey focused on students’ ability to apply reading and math skills to everyday situations and their aspirations.
Generating evidence on diverse aspects of youth development in rural India.
Enabling stakeholders across sectors to use this evidence to inform policy and practice.
The 2023 survey explored the following domains:
1. Activity: What activities are India’s youth currently engaged in?
2. Ability: Do they have essential and applied reading and math abilities?
3. Digital awareness and skills: Do they have access to smartphones? What do they use smartphones for, and can they do simple tasks on their smartphones?
4. Aspirations: What do they aspire to become? Who are their role models?

Key Findings of the Report

Activity

Increased Enrollment

There has been overall increase in the enrollment of children in government schools.
Overall, 86.8% of 14-18-year-olds are enrolled in an educational institution.
The percentage of youth not enrolled is 3.9% for 14-year-old youth and 32.6% for 18-year-olds.
The decrease in the proportion of girls not enrolled in schools for the age group from 4.1% in 2018 to 2% in 2022 is a significant improvement and a positive development.

Vocational Training

Youth at the college level are the most likely to be taking vocational training (16.2%).
Most youths are taking short-duration courses (of 6 months or less).

More students transiting to secondary education

More children in India have more years of schooling than ever before.
- Pandemic economic distress didn’t lead to older children dropping out.

Ability

Foundational Skills

25% of 14-18 age group struggle to read a Std II level text fluently in their regional language.
Over 50% face difficulties with arithmetic skills expected by Grade 5 students.
More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems and only 43.3% of 14-18-year-olds are able to do such problems correctly.

Everyday Calculations

Nearly 85% of surveyed youth can measure length using a scale when the starting point is 0 cm.
Overall, close to 50% of youth can do other standard calculations.

Daily Life Applications

About two-thirds can answer at least 3 out of 4 questions based on reading and understanding written instructions.

Financial Calculations

Over 60% are able to do the budget management task; about 37% can apply a discount, but only about 10% can calculate repayment.
- However, females perform worse than males on almost all tasks.

Gender Disparity in Reading and Arithmetic Skills

Males performed better than females in arithmetic and English reading across most of the tasks.
For example, only 41.1% of females were able to tell the time compared to 51% of males.
Fewer females (28.1%) are in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics stream (STEM) stream as compared to males (36.3%).

Flat Learning Trajectories

Over time, there hasn’t been significant improvement in the academic progress of students.

Poor Quality Labour Force

This deficit in foundational numeracy and foundational skill gap significantly impacts the quality of the country’s labour force.

Digital Awareness and Skills

Digital Access: Close to 90% of all youth have a smartphone in the household and know how to use it.
Communication and Online Safety: Of all youth who used social media, only about half are familiar with the online safety settings that were included in the survey.
Digital Tasks: 70% of youth can browse the internet to find the answer to a question, and about two-thirds can set an alarm for a specific time.
A little over 30% can use Google Maps to find the time taken to travel between two points.

Underutilisation of Digital technology

Despite the high availability of smartphones in rural households (95%), their use for educational purposes is limited.
Close to 80% of the youth report having used their smartphone to do an entertainment-related activity, such as watching a movie or listening to music.
They mainly engage with social media.

Gender Disparity in Digital Skills

43.7% of males own smartphones as compared to 19.8% of females.
Across all phone-related tasks, boys outperformed girls.
Females are less likely to know how to use a smartphone or computer than males.

Aspirations

Less Technical inclination

Most of the students in this age group (14-18 years) were enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream.
In Std XI or higher, more than half are enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream (55.7%), followed by STEM (31.7%) and Commerce (9.4%).

Balancing Academics and Family Responsibilities

Most of the youths face compounded challenges as they need to balance academic requirements with responsibilities, such as working on family farms.
Around 30% are already working, often for their parents. However, they don’t want to continue the same work in future.
These responsibilities impact the aspirations of youth.

Acute Academic Competition

Parents in India often harbor overambitious aspirations for their children.
These aspirations of parents translate into acute academic competition, widespread coaching, and heavy expenditure by families.

Not Motivated to Study

A more significant proportion of boys than girls reported not wanting to study after class 12.
Girls wished to study at least the undergraduate level, while boys talked about earning money.

The Dearth of Clarity

There is a lack of clear guidance for students when it comes to making decisions about their future.
Many students are unsure about what to study, how much more education they need, and what kinds of jobs they should be aiming for.

No Role Model

42.5% of males and 48.3% of females did not have a role model for their aspired work.

Key Concerns Highlighted in the Report

Inadequate Teacher-student ratio and Teacher’s Training

Almost 8% of India’s schools have only one teacher (2023 data).
Teachers lack training in modern pedagogical methods and struggle to employ interactive and engaging teaching techniques.

Insufficient Learning Resources

Limited access to textbooks and learning materials hinders students’ ability to practice and reinforce foundational skills.
The Lack of reading materials also affects students’ language development.

Socio-economic Disparities

Students from lower-income families face challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, lack of educational support at home and limited access to extracurricular activities.

Language Barriers

Students studying in non-native language face challenges in understanding and expressing themselves.
- E.g. Students from tribal regions face English reading barriers.

Outdated Curriculum

The School Curriculum doesn’t incorporate digital literacy and thus students remain unprepared be a part of the modern workforce.

Assessment Practices

Assessments focussing on memorization rather than critical thinking, has led to students prioritising rote learning over understanding foundational concepts.

Recommendations of ASER 2023

Devolution of central and state grants to local bodies: The Central and State grants should be disaggregated to Local Bodies, ensuring direct transfer of untied funds to schools.
Development of Public libraries– Public libraries should be developed to address the scarcity of learning resources.
- E.g. The Karnataka government has done commendable work on strengthening its public libraries.

Community management of schools

Schools must be community-managed, and the State government should primarily act as the financing agent.
The private sector should be encouraged to adopt schools to improve their quality.
- E.g. The Mid-Day Meal responsibility should be handed over to the village-level self-help group (SHG) of women.

Regular school-level interactions with parents

Teachers must build a relationship with every household to ensure children’s care and learning.
Parental involvement can greatly improve learning outcomes.
- E.g. The Nipun Bharat Mission to ensure oral and written literacy and numeracy should become a people’s movement like the Total Literacy Campaign.

Ease Out Early Childhood Struggles

Financial Aid and Grants: Provide financial aid to economically disadvantaged students as many of these students need to earn and support their families financially during this age group.
Shifting the Social Norms: Among girls, shifting social norms with regard to the appropriate age of marriage emerged as a key driver of young women’s ability to study further.

Prepare Future Ready Students

Focus on Developing Critical Thinking: Reducing curriculum in each subject to its core essentials, and enable critical thinking and more inquiry, discovery, discussion and analysis-based learning.
Future Oriented School Systems: Our school system needs to be more future-oriented which can guide the kids into paths that may benefit them and place them in secure position.
Digital Mentorship Programs: Implementing mentorship programs to connect students with professionals in their fields of interest, helping them to make informed decisions about their future.

Comprehensive Strategy for Learning Improvement

Reform Assessments: NEP 2020 speaks of the goal of 100% secondary school enrolment, to be achieved through “careful tracking of students’ enrolment, attendance, and learning levels.
Examination pressure can be reduced by reforming how and when assessments can happen.
A close tracking of outcomes will be key to improvements and eventual success.
Pathway Linking: Linking secondary school reform concepts with NIPUN will be crucial in transforming school reform ideas into practical measures.

Flexible Education System

Embracing flexibility often involves leveraging technology to facilitate remote learning, online resources, and interactive platforms, enhancing the overall educational experience.
Leveraging smartphones to improve learning outcomes: Smartphones can be used to deliver online modules to students to supplement classroom teaching.
- For ex- Interactive online tests should be designed in the form of games for the students.
Innovative learning methods: Indoor and outdoor sports, cultural activities, play-way learning items, video films, and sound boxes must be used to supplant learning.