Governance

 ‘School enrolment fell during pandemic’

·         The sixteenth Annual status of Education Report (Rural) 2021 was released on-line on seventeenth November 2021 each year from 2005 to 2014, and then each alternate year until 2018, ASER has reported  on the schooling standing of kids within the 5-16 age group across rural India and their ability to do basic reading and arithmetic tasks.

·         Last year, COVID-19 interrupted this trajectory, along with most else.

·         In 2020, ASER developed a completely new design, consisting of a phone-based survey that explored children’s access to learning opportunities. With the pandemic extending into yet another year, field-based survey operations were still impossible on a national scale.

·         As a consequence, ASER 2021 followed the same format of a phone-based survey.

·         Conducted in September-October 2021, eighteen months when the first lockdown, the survey explores how kids within the age group of 5-16 studied at home since the onset of the pandemic and therefore the challenges that the {schools|the faculties|the colleges} and households currently face as schools open up across states.

·         ASER 2021 FINDINGS the percentage of rural children who werent enrolled at school doubled during the pandemic, with government schools seeing a rise in enrolment at the expense of private schools, according to the Annual status of Education Report (ASER), 2021.

·         Over a 3rd of children enrolled in classes one and two have not attended school in person.

·         In 2018, only 2.5% of children were not enrolled in school.

·         In both the 2020 and 2021 surveys, that figure had jumped to 4.6%.

·         School Enrollment Patterns At an all-India level, there has been a clear shift from private to government schools.

·         No modification in kids aged 6-14 not enrolled in school: The proportion of children not presently enrolled in school increased  from one.4% to 4.6% in 2020.

·         This proportion remained unchanged between 2020 and 2021

·         More older children in school than ever before: Among older children in the age group of 15-16, an increase in government school enrollment from 57.4% in 2018 to 67.4%.

·         Tuition Big increase in children taking tuition: At an all-India level, in 2018, less than 30% children took private tuition classes.

·         In 2021, this proportion has jumped to almost 40%.

·         This proportion has increased across both sexes and all grades and school types.

·         Tuition is up across the country.

·         Increase in tuition-taking highest among the less advantaged: Taking parental education as a proxy for economic standing, the proportion of kids with parents within the ‘low’ education class who ar taking tuition increased  by 12.6 percentage points, as opposed to a 7.2 percentage point increase among kids with parents within the ‘high’ education category.

·         Access To Smartphones Smartphone ownership has almost doubled since 2018 family economic status makes a difference in smartphone availability: As parents’ education level will increase (a proxy for economic status), the likelihood that the household has a smartphone conjointly will increase Smartphone accessibility doesnt translate into access for kids: though over 2 thirds of all enrolled children have a smartphone at home (67.6%), over a quarter of those dont have any access thereto (26.1%).

·         There is additionally a clear pattern by grade, with more kids in higher categories having access to a smartphone as compared to kids in lower grades.

·         Learning Support At Home Learning support at home has decreased over the last year.

·         School reopening is driving decreasing support: Among each government and personal school going kids, those whose schools have reopened get less support from home.

·         Access To Learning Materials Almost all children have textbooks: Almost all enrolled children have textbooks for their current grade (91.9%).

·         Slight increase in extra materials received: Overall, among enrolled kids whose schools had not reopened, 39.8% kids received some kind of learning materials or activities (other than textbooks) from their teachers during the reference week.