According to the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, the reading ability of Class III children in rural schools across India has witnessed a threatening dip as only 20.5% of children could read a Class 2 book.

As per the report, the children’s ability to read has revealed a decline of nearly seven percentage points in 2022 compared to ASER 2018, in which 27.5% of Class 3 children could read a Class 2 book. The reading ability has dropped even below the 2012 level when 21.4% of Class 3 students could read textbooks of Class 2.

ASER is an annual survey executed by the education non-profit Pratham in rural areas of India.

The ASER 2022 report also revealed a decline in children’s ability to do basic math. According to the report, only 25.9% of Class 3 children could do basic arithmetics compared to 28.2% in 2018.

It also displayed that the proportion of government schools with less than 60 students has grown annually over the last decade. In 2022, 29.9% of schools in rural areas had less than 60 students compared to only 17.3% of schools in 2010.

The survey was conducted among 7 lakh children between the ages of 6 to 14 years in 17,002 government schools in 19,060 villages across 616 districts.

Reading ability

The report reveals that states such as Himachal Pradesh (from 47.7% to 28.4%), Kerala (from 52.1% in 2018 to 38.7% in 2022), and Haryana (from 46.4% to 31.5%) showed declines of more than ten percentage points in reading ability of Class 3 children.

Telangana (from 18.1% to 5.2%) and Andhra Pradesh (from 22.6% to 10.3%) also registered big falls in the reading ability of Class 3 children.

The report recorded a similar decline in reading levels among Class 5 children indicating that unaddressed learning gaps tend to worsen over time.

According to the survey, the percentage of Class 5 children registered in government or private schools who can at least read a Class 2 level text dropped from 50.5% in 2018 to 42.8% in 2022.

Among Class 8 children, only 69.6% could read basic textbooks in 2022 compared to 73% in 2018.

Arithmetic ability

The ASER 2022 report displayed that only 25.9% of Class 3 children could do subtraction in 2022 compared to 28.2% in 2018.

Mizoram (58.8% to 42%), Tamil Nadu (25.9% in 2018 to 11.2% in 2022), and Haryana (53.9% to 41.8%) recorded drops of over ten percentage points in the basic arithmetic ability of students.

The percentage of Class 5 children who could divide declined to 25.6% in 2022 compared to 27.9% in 2018.

Himachal Pradesh (56.6% to 42.6%), Mizoram (40.2% in 2018 to 20.9% in 2022), and Punjab (52.9% to 41.1%), which crowned the education ministry’s performance grading index for schools, recorded a decline of 10 percentage points in the basic arithmetic ability of Class 5 children.

However, the basic arithmetic ability of students in Class 8 slightly improved from 44.1% in 2018 to 44.7% in 2022.