The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 is a nationwide citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of children's schooling and learning in rural India. The report’s study reached almost all rural districts of India, and generated district, state, and national level estimates of children's enrollment status and foundational skills.
Information about enrollment in school or preschool was collected for all children aged 3-16, and children aged 5-16 were tested one-on-one to understand their reading, arithmetic, and English skills. Findings from ASER report come at a time when children are back in school after an extended period of school closure.
Evidence on the status of children's schooling and foundational learning helps us understand how best to support these processes going forward, which the report helps to explain better. The Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES) InfoSphere team in its latest research edition takes a closer look at the said report and its key findings, in relation to asymmetric learning outcomes across India’s education landscape. The pre vs post Covid scenario affecting learning outcomes for schoolgoers (girls and boys) across India is discussed at length here from ASER and other complimentary studies’ results.
This essay takes a closer and deeper look into specific learning outcome performance factors such as Reading ability, Arithmetic ability, and gap in resources to determine certain outcomes, ie, ascertaining the state of learning across India’s education landscape. It also attempts to draw a comparison the growing effect of paid tuition classes and finally, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.