Rise in govt school enrolment during pandemic reversed: Report

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2024 on Tuesday highlighted a reversal in the increase of government school enrolment seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report said the enrolment for children in the 6-14 age group in government schools had nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, while private school enrolment had stabilised at 30 per cent, a figure that has remained consistent for over a decade.

The report said, “Nationally, the enrolment rate for children in the 6-14 age group has remained above 98 per cent since 2022, though the rate has slightly dipped by 0.3 per cent from 98.4 per cent in 2022 to 98.1 per cent in 2024.”

Despite this small drop, the report highlighted significant improvements in foundational literacy and numeracy.

For children enrolled in Class III, who are at Class II level in reading and arithmetic, reading skills have increased from 20.5 per cent in 2022 to 27 per cent in 2024, and arithmetic skills have seen an even more substantial rise, with 33.7 per cent of children demonstrating basic arithmetic proficiency, up from 25.9 per cent in 2022.

The report also highlighted a significant decline in the proportion of students of the 15-16 age group not attending school. The percentage of boys not enrolled in this age group dropped from 12.6 per cent in 2018 to 7 per cent in 2022, but rose to 7.7 per cent in 2024. For girls, the rate declined from 13.5 per cent to 7.9 per cent in 2022, only to increase to 8.1 per cent in 2024.

For younger children, the report showed a steady increase in enrolment rates for pre-primary education (3-5 age group) between 2018 and 2024.

One of the more striking findings of the report is the rise in digital literacy among teenagers. More than 82 per cent of children in the 14-16 age group know how to use a smartphone, and over 57 per cent of them use it for educational purposes. However, 76 per cent of the group reported using their smartphones for social media. The report also noted that while the use of smartphones for educational purposes is similar among boys and girls, more boys (78.8 per cent) use smartphones for social media compared to girls (73.4 per cent).

The report also revealed that smartphone ownership among teenagers had increased, with 27 per cent of 14-year-olds and 37.8 per cent of 16-year-olds owning devices. There is a clear gender gap in smartphone ownership, with 36.2 per cent of boys owning phones compared to 26.9 per cent of girls.

In terms of household access to technology, the report found that nearly 84 per cent of rural households now own smartphones, up from 74 per cent in 2022. In the 14-16 age group, smartphone ownership has risen from 19 per cent in 2022 to about 31 per cent in 2024.

The ASER survey, which covered 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India, was facilitated by the NGO — Pratham.