ASER 2021 Report

WHY IN THE NEWS?

16th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 (Rural) was published by the Pratham foundation.

About:

• ASER provides reports on the schooling status of children in the age group of 5-16 age across rural India including the ability to do basic reading & arithmetic tasks.
• This year, ASER followed a phone-based survey format, as a field survey was not possible due to the covid-19 pandemic.
• Survey was conducted during September-October 2021.
• It tries to find out how children in aged between 5-16 studied at home since the onset of a covid-19 pandemic as well as challenges those schools & households now face in the backdrop of opening up of schools.

Key Findings of the report

Important findings of the ASER 2021 report are as follows:

• As per the report, there was an overall increase in the proportion of children enrolled in govt schools in between 2018 and 2020. Enrolment increased from 64.3% to 65.8%. But in 2021, enrolment suddenly increased to 70.3%.
• The enrolment rate in private schools has decreased as compared to last year. In 2020, the enrolment rate was 28.8% which decreased to 24.4% in 2021.
• In 2021, 73.1% of school respondents received training to implement Covid-19 prevention measures.
• Even though the availability of smartphones increased to 67.6% in 2021 as compared to 36.5% in 2018, around 79% of children in private schools had smartphones at home as opposed to 63.7% of children in government schools.
• The number of school-going children taking tuition increased by 40% during the closure of their schools.
• 52% of the respondents cited financial distress caused by the covid-19 pandemic as the reason for the increase in enrolments in government schools.