ASER Report 2023 Reveals 25% of Teens Struggle with Basic Reading Skills

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86.8% of 14-18 year olds are enrolled in either school or college. The proportion of youth who are currently not enrolled in school or college rises with age from 3.9% of 14-year-olds to 10.9% of 16-year-olds and 32.6% of 18-year-olds.

ASER Report 2023 Reveals 25% of Teens Struggle with Basic Reading Skills

New Delhi: Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has released the ASER Report 2023 on January 17, 2024. According to their survey, about 25% of students aged between 14-18 group still cannot read a Std II level text fluently in their regional language. Atleast 42.7% cannot read sentences in English.

ASER is a nationwide citizen-led household survey that provides a glimpse of the status of children’s schooling and learning outcomes in rural India. The ASER 2023 “Beyond Basics” survey was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states, reaching a total of 34,745 youth in the age group 14-18 years. One rural district was surveyed in each major state, with the exception of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where two rural districts were covered.

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According to the report, 86.8% of 14-18 year olds are enrolled in either school or college. The proportion of youth who are currently not enrolled in school or college rises with age from 3.9% of 14-year-olds to 10.9% of 16-year-olds and 32.6% of 18-year-olds.

“The proportion of out-of-school children and youth has been declining, led by the government’s push to universalise secondary education,” it stated. The report, however, pointed out that while young people remain in school longer, there’s no significant change in their foundational literacy and numeracy skills (FLN).

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In 2017, 76.6 per cent of 14-18-year-old coulds read a Class 2-level text, while in 2023, this number is slightly lower at 73.6 per cent. In arithmetic, in 2017, 39.5 per cent of youth could do a simple (Class 3-4 level) division problem, while in 2023, this proportion is slightly higher at 43.3 per cent. “More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems. Only 43.3 per cent of 14-18-year-olds are able to do such problems correctly. This skill is usually expected in Class 3-4,” the report found.

It added that 54.7% of the teens between age 17-18 are working and are unlikely to come back to school to study further. ASER 2023 also included some functional tasks that youth might encounter in their daily routines such as reading and understanding instructions on a medicine package, or applying a discount on an item on sale, or calculating repayment on a loan or browsing the internet to find information

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In terms of calculation, the report highlighted that while nearly 85% of the surveyed youth can measure length using a scale when the starting point is 0 cm, the proportion drops sharply to 39% when the starting point is moved.

In gender-wise comparison, female students (76%) do better than males (70.9%) in reading grade 2nd level text in their regional language, while in contrast, male students do better than their female counterparts in arithmetic and reading English text.

The report stated: “Of course, if a student has progressed through the school system without acquiring these foundational abilities, they are unlikely to acquire them later since teachers follow the grade curriculum and assume that students in their grade have met the requirements of the previous grade.”

For the first time, the ASER also recorded the course stream of students enrolled in grades 11 and 12 and in college. In class 11 and 12, 54% are enrolled in arts and humanities, 9.3% in commerce and 33.7% in science. Analysing the gender aspect of the steam divide, the report stated that female students are less likely to be enrolled in the STEM stream (28.1%) than males (36.3%).

“Not surprisingly, among these students, 92.8% were able to read a Std II level text and 69.7% could do the division problem. This further underscores the point that FLN deficits need to be corrected at the time they occur, otherwise learning deficits just accumulate as students are confronted with higher level competencies as they advance through the school system,” it stated.

Among youth who can use a smartphone, two-thirds report having used it for some education-related activity during the reference week, such as watching online videos related to studies, solving doubts, or exchanging notes. “Close to 80% of the youth report having used their smartphone to do an entertainment related activity, such as watching a movie or listening to music, during the reference week,” the report stated.

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