• The Annual Status of Education Report 2023 was released recently.

ASER, initiated in 2005, is a citizen-led survey offering insights into rural India’s children’s education.

• The ASER 2023 report, released by the NGO Pratham Foundation, focuses on the youth of the age group 14-18 years.
• The report titled “ Beyond Basics” carried out an intensive survey in 28 districts across 26 states, eventually interacting with 34,745 youngsters of the aimed age group.
• Unlike the usual country-wide ASER surveys, ASER 2023 is not large in scale; only one or two rural districts in each state have been surveyed.

 

Major findings

• Overall, 8% of 14-18-year-olds are enrolled in an educational institution.
  • Beyond Standard X, more than half are enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream (55.7%), followed by STEM (31.7%) and Commerce (9.4%).
  • A mere 0.7% reported studying agriculture.
• Only 6% of surveyed youth report taking vocational training or other related courses currently.
• A higher percentage of males (40.3%) than females (28%) report doing work other than household work for at least 15 days during the preceding month.
• 95% of males and 90% of females know how to use a smartphone.
• About 25% of this age group still cannot read a Std II level text fluently in their regional language.
• 45% of youth in the age group 14-18 have basic arithmetic proficiency.
• Building foundational literacy and numeracy may be needed for about a fourth of youth in the 14-18 age group.