Express View on ASER report: Cues for reform
- January 18, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
No Comments
Express View on ASER report: Cues for reform
Subject :Schemes
Section: Education
Context:
- Latest ASER report has significant pointers on how country could use education to leverage its demographic dividend
More on news:
- The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) focuses on an age group that is critical to India unlocking its demographic dividend — 14- 18-year-olds in rural areas.
- The report has seen a heartening trend of more students transitioning to secondary education.
- ASER 2023 notes that “today more children in India have more years of schooling than ever before”.
- The 2023 survey focuses on children’s ability to apply reading and math skills to everyday situations and their aspirations.
- It also sought to capture their access to digital technology and whether they possess the skills to use it.
- The latest report doesn’t see enrollment as an end in itself.
Key findings:
- About a fourth of those surveyed find difficulty in reading a Grade 2 level text in the local language.
- More than half struggles with arithmetic skills in which they should have been proficient in by Grade 5.
- This is a serious deficit that has a bearing on the quality of the country’s labor force.
- Only 6 percent of the surveyed are currently doing vocational courses
- There is an increasing pressure on young students amidst acute academic competition.
- The difficulties of a section of learners get compounded as they have to juggle academic requirements with responsibilities like working in family farms.
- The use of smartphones for education today is way less than that for entertainment.
- About 90% of surveyed households had smartphones.
- Almost 95% boys and 90% girls could use a smartphone.
Key suggestions:
- ASER suggests reforming pedagogic processes to reduce pressures on such students.
- The increasing use of smartphones in rural areas can be used as an opportunity to extend education, and design classrooms that are flexible with time and schedules.
- There is a need to nudge students and their parents to use digital technologies for learning.
- NEP 2020 envisions embedding digital technologies in the educational landscape.
- China is able to realize its demographic dividend to a large extent by prudent reforms in its technical and vocational education and training systems
About ASER report:
- It is a nationwide survey of rural education and learning outcomes in terms of reading and arithmetic skills.
- It is conducted by the NGO Pratham for the last 15 years.
- It has been conducted every year since 2005 in almost all rural districts of India.
- It is the largest citizen-led survey in India.
- It is a household-based rather than school-based survey.
- It is also the only annual source of information on children’s learning outcomes available in India today.
- It uses Census 2011 as the sampling frame and continues to be an important national source of information about children’s foundational skills across the country.
- The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ survey was carried out among 34,745 young respondents in 28 rural districts in 26 states, including two districts each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.