Enrolment in govt schools sees decline, shows ASER

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 15

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2018, which was released today, has showed a decline in enrolment and attendance in state government schools from 55.3 per cent in 2010 to 42.6 per cent in 2018.

However, it suggests that learning level has registered an improvement in schools in all these years.

Since 2007, the enrolment of children in the 6-14 age group has been above 95 per cent. However, the proportion of children (same age group) who are not enrolled has fallen below to minimum 1.7 per cent in 2018.

The report further says that in 2010, the proportion of girls in the 11-14 age group, who were out of school, stood at 7.7 per cent. However, in 2018, the overall proportion of girls in this age bracket who are out of school has fallen to 6.8 per cent.

On the other hand, the state has witnessed a continuous increase in enrollment in private schools since 2010.

In 2010, the enrolment in the 6-14 age group was 41.8 per cent, but in 2018, the figure increased to 55.3 per cent.

The ASER reading test assesses whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph at Standard I level of difficulty, or a ‘story’ at Standard II level of difficulty. The test is administered one-on-one to all children in the 5-16 age group and the child is marked at the highest level that she or he can reach.

The report found that 5 per cent improvement has been witnessed in this respect in class III students in 2018 as compared to 2016.

In the ASER-2018, children in the 14-16 age group were given a few tasks which required calculations to be done in everyday contexts. Children were asked to calculate time, compute how many tablets would be required to purify water (application of unitary method), figure out where to buy books given two different price lists (financial decision making), and compute a discount. Each of these tasks was done one-on-one.