Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023

The Annual Status of Education Report 2023 has been published recently by Pratham, a civil society organisation.

What is ASER?

It is a nationwide citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of the status of children’s schooling and learning in rural India.
Conducted by- Pratham, a non-governmental organisation.
Launched- 2005
Published- It was conducted annually until 2014 and switched to alternate year cycle in 2016.
Basic ASER- It collects information about enrolment in pre-school and school for children in the age group of 3 to 16, and assesses children aged 5 to 16 one-on-one to understand their foundational reading and arithmetic abilities.
ASER, 2017- For the first time it focused on the activities, abilities and aspirations of the youth aged 14 to 18 in 28 districts of the country.
ASER 2023- It revisits 14-18 age group on collecting data and information about new domain that have emerged as important in the post pandemic world.
Theme- Beyond Basics
Data collection- The survey was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states in India.

What are the key highlights of the report?

Category	Enrolment %
Overall enrolment	86.8%
Not enrolled for 14 year old	14 year old- 3.9%
Not enrolled for 14 year old	18 year old- 32.6%

Opted streams- Most of the people in this age group were enrolled in the Arts/Humanities streams.
Females are less likely to be enrolled in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) stream (28.1%) than males (36.3%).
Vocational training- Only 5.6% of surveyed youth report taking vocational training or other related courses currently.
Basic reading- About 25% still cannot read a Class II level text fluently in their regional language.
Math abilities- More than half struggle with division (3 digit by 1 digit) problems.
English ability- A little over half can read sentences in English (57.3%).
Of those who can read sentences in English almost three quarters can tell their meaning.
Gender based performance- Females can do better than males in reading a Class II level text in their regional language.
Males do better than females in arithmetic and English reading.
Across all digital tasks, such as finding and sharing videos, searching the internet, setting an alarm, and using Google maps, boys outperformed girls.
Gender gap- Males are more than twice as likely to have their own smartphone as females.
Mobile penetration- Close to 90% of all youth have a smartphone in the household and kn0w how to use it.
About two-thirds of the youth reported using smartphones for educational purposes, such as watching online videos related to studies, solving doubts or exchanging notes.
Digital literacy divide- Females are less likely to know how to use a smartphone or computer as compared to males.
Skill deficit- The report revealed that there is a huge skill deficit among adolescents, many of them only a few years away from entering the job market.

Source:

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