In rural Punjab, 85% kids have access to smartphones

Over 85% children in villages of the state have access to smartphones and do basic digital tasks. This was revealed in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2024.

The nationwide rural household survey that reached 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 districts showed that access to smartphones was high for children in the age group of 14-16 years, with more than 85% able to do basic digital tasks in Punjab, which was much higher than the national average.

Facilitated by Pratham, an NGO, as many as 1,170 volunteers and 28 master trainers from 20 partner institutions surveyed 20,226 children aged 3-16 in 11,967 households across 600 villages in 20 districts of the state.

According to the report, a copy of which is with The Tribune, 96.2% children aged 14-16 in the state have access to smartphone at home against the national average of 89.1%, and 94.2% adolescents in the state can use smartphones whereas only 82.2% were able to use it in the country.

The report revealed that 46% children have their own smartphone in the state against the national average of 31.4%. About 79.4% students brought their smartphones to the schools on the day of the survey against the national average of 65.9%. Similarly, 63.3% adolescents in the state used smartphones for education-related work and 86.8% used it for social media activities, while the national average was 57% and 76%, respectively.

The surveyors found that among those who used smartphones for social media activities in Punjab, 75% can block/report profiles, 69.5% can make a profile private, and 68.2% can change a password.

The key findings of the ASER-2024 survey were presented separately for children in three age groups — pre-primary (3-5 years), elementary (6-14 years), and older children (15-16 years). It revealed that under the pre-primary category, the enrolment in early childhood education programmes or pre-school was high, almost 86% for age 3 and 92% for age 4, while enrolment in government pre-schools has shown a significant increase in the state.

Under the elementary section, overall enrolment in school was universal at 99.3%.

“In Punjab, significant improvements in arithmetic have been observed in both Class 3 and 5 at the early grade levels,” the report revealed, while pointing out that even as reading skills improved notably in Class 3, there had been a slight decline in reading performance in Class 5.

The survey also noted learning gains among children enrolled in government schools, whereas it has fallen in private schools.

The percentage of out-of-school children in the age group of 15-16 years was now 3.3 or less and the gender gap was minimal at 0.1%.

Among school observations, the report mentioned that basic school facilities like libraries, computers and electricity were improving over time while the schools reported receiving directives, training and materials or funds related to strengthening foundational literacy and numeracy for early grades in primary schools in the state.

Apart from the use of computers in schools, all other facilities have remained the same as they were in the year 2022. The facilities were only slightly better in Punjab as compared to national averages, except for the availability of libraries and computers being used.