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The 2024 survey covered 605 rural districts across states, 17,997 villages, 352,028 households, and 649,491 children in the 3-16 age group
At the all-India levels, the survey showed a full recovery of learning levels post-pandemic, with the proportion of class 3 children reading fluently at 27.1%. This figure had dropped to 20.5% in 2022 from 27.3% in 2018. (Representational image/Shutterstock)
The recovery in learning levels for both reading and arithmetic across rural areas post-pandemic has been largely driven by government schools despite the fact that private schools have had an edge over the former, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (2024)-Rural released on Tuesday.
ASER, led by Pratham Foundation, a non-profit with a focus on children’s enrolment and learning abilities in rural India, this year returned to its “basic” nationwide survey in 2024, reaching almost all rural districts in India. In 2023, it focused on the 14-18 age group, including the dimension of digital literacy.
The 2024 survey covered 605 rural districts across states, 17,997 villages, 352,028 households, and 649,491 children in the 3-16 age group.
According to the report, there has been a significant recovery from the pandemic-induced learning loss across states. “What is remarkable about the recovery is that it is completely driven by government schools. In rural India, government schools have always lagged behind private schools in terms of learning levels. There is a vast literature on the learning differential between government and private schools, highlighting the fact that simply comparing learning levels across the two is misleading because of the self-selection effect,” the report stated.
Survey statistics show that the recovery “has really been in government schools, with learning levels in private schools still below their pre-pandemic levels”.
For instance, the survey shows that in 2024, while the proportion of children in class 3 able to read at the class 2 level in government schools increased from 16.3% in 2022 to 23.4%, surpassing the 2018 level, the recovery in private schools was more muted—from 33.1% to 35.5%, lower than the pre-pandemic level in 2018. As a result, the learning differential was reduced from 20 percentage points in 2018 to 12 percentage points.
This proportion was 20.9% in government schools as compared to 40.6% in private schools in 2018. In 2022, while learning levels in all schools suffered, the decline in private schools was far greater than in government schools, though the private school advantage remained the same, namely, twice as high as government school levels.
Reading levels in class 5 tell a similar story. In arithmetic, both government and private schools have seen large jumps in learning levels, with 2024 levels surpassing levels 10 years ago. “However, here again, the gains in government schools have been far greater than those in private schools. For instance, between 2022 and 2024, the proportion of children able to do subtraction in class 3 increased by 36.6%—from 20.2% to 27.6%—in government schools as compared to just 10.2% in private schools,” the report stated.
Highlighting the differences between government-run and private schools, the report said that children who go to private schools come from more affluent homes and have more educated parents—household characteristics that are positively correlated to learning. “Therefore, attributing the entire difference in learning levels to a school effect is incorrect. Nevertheless, even after controlling for these household characteristics, private schools do have an edge in learning over government schools,” it said.
At the all-India levels, the survey showed a full recovery of learning levels post-pandemic, with the proportion of class 3 children reading fluently at 27.1%. This figure had dropped to 20.5% in 2022 from 27.3% in 2018.
Similarly, in class 5, the proportion of children who can read a class 2 level text has recovered to 48.8% in 2024. This figure had dropped to 42.8% in 2022 from what was 50.5% in 2018.
In arithmetic, the learning loss post-pandemic in 2022 was smaller in comparison to reading. The proportion of children in class 3 able to do at least subtraction fell to 25.9% in 2022 from 28.2% in 2018. In 2024, this proportion stands at 33.7%, which is higher than the levels seen over the last decade. Similarly, in class 5, the proportion of children able to do at least division declined to 25.6% in 2022 from 27.9% in 2018. In 2024, the number stood at 30.7%.
The report notes that the increase in government school enrolment seen during the Covid pandemic when the economy had slowed down seems to have reversed with private school enrolment steadily rising in rural India. During the pandemic years, there was a big jump in government school enrolment, with the proportion of 6–14-year-old children enrolled in these schools rising from 65.6% in 2018 to 72.9% in 2022. This number is back to 66.8% in 2024.
“This almost complete reversal back to 2018 levels is seen across grades as well as gender, and is not particularly surprising given that the economy has recovered in other sectors as well,” the report said.
Wilima Wadhwa, director of the ASER Centre, said the 2024 estimates are, therefore, extremely useful for a host of reasons. They provide one more data point after 2022 to verify if the changes observed post-pandemic have changed the trend or if the country has reverted to the earlier trend line.
“On the learning front, states have continued to push ahead with a variety of measures to improve foundational learning levels in primary school. Given that the ASER assessment is essentially a floor-level foundational learning assessment, data from this survey will also help track the progress of central government initiatives like the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat mission across the country,” said Wadhwa.
