Haryana government schools lag behind Punjab, HP in arithmetic, literacy skills

Highlighting weak arithmetic skills among Haryana Government school students, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 reveals that only 43.1% of Class 8 students in rural government schools can perform division. This marks a decline of 6.4 percentage points compared to the 49.5% in 2022.

Key findings of Annual Status of Education Report

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Arithmetic skills: Only 43.1% of Class 8 students can do division.

Reading skills: 53.9% of Class 5 students can read a Class 2-level text.

Enrolment drop: Declined from 51.9% (2022) to 46% (2024).

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Facilities gaps: 20.8% of schools have unusable toilets; 14% lack drinking water.

Digital divide: Boys outperform girls in digital literacy tasks like changing passwords and setting alarms.

In comparison, Punjab leads with 58%, followed by Himachal Pradesh (HP) at 44%. The division test involved solving a three-digit number divided by a single-digit number.

For Class 5 students, only 29.4% in Haryana can do division, an improvement from 2022, but still far behind HP (44%) and Punjab (46.3%). Similarly, 33.1% of Class 3 students in Haryana can subtract, with HP (46.7%) and Punjab (43.9%) outperforming the state.

Reading capability

The report also evaluated reading skills. While 53.9% of Class 5 students in Haryana can read a Class 2-level text, showing a 7.1-point improvement, Punjab (60.8%) and HP (65.8%) still lead. Among Class 3 students, only 32.1% in Haryana can read a Class 2-level text compared to HP (46.6%) and Punjab (29.7%).

Falling enrolment

The enrolment of children aged 6-14 years in Haryana Government schools dropped from 51.9% in 2022 to 46% in 2024. Neighbouring states also recorded declines, but HP (58.6%) and Punjab (58%) have significantly higher enrolment rates.

School facilities

Haryana schools face significant infrastructure challenges, including 20.8% schools with unusable toilets, 14% without drinking water facilities, 3.1% without separate girls' toilets; 20% of those provided are unusable. Moreover, 13.6% schools are without libraries, and in 27.2% of schools, students weren’t using library books during ASER’s visit. As many as 71.5% schools lacked computers while in 15.8% of schools, computers were unused.

Digital literacy gender gap

The report found gender disparities in digital literacy among the 14-16 age group in rural Haryana. As many as 60.5% of girls could make a social media profile private compared to 72.9% of boys. 61.2% of girls could change passwords as compared to 75.7% of boys. Only 68.6% of 14-year-old girls could bring a smartphone to complete digital tasks against 74.4% of boys.

Boys also outperformed girls in tasks like setting alarms, browsing information and sharing videos online.