Drop in children's basic reading abilities

New Delhi: The basic reading ability of school students across all classes has dropped to pre-2012 levels while basic maths skills have declined to 2018 levels, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2022, released on Wednesday.

It showed that the drops are visible in government as well as private schools in most states and for both boys and girls. While the maximum drop in reading abilities has been seen in states such as Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, the drop in maths skills has been seen in Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Haryana.

ASER is a nationwide, citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of children's schooling and learning in rural India. The first ASER survey was conducted in 2005 and repeated for 10 years. ASER 2022 is the first field-based "basic" nationwide ASER after a gap of four years. It comes at a time when children are back in school after an extended gap in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Nationally, children's basic reading ability has dropped to pre-2012 levels, reversing the slow improvement achieved in the intervening years.

Drops are visible in both government and private schools in most states, and for both boys and girls," it said. The ASER reading test assessed whether a child can read letters, words, and a simple paragraph at the class 1 level of difficulty, or a 'story' at the class 2 level of difficulty. The test was administered one on one to all children in the age group of five to 16 in sampled households.

Each child was marked at the highest level that she or he can reach comfortably. "The percentage of children in class 3 in government or private schools who can read at class 2 level dropped from 27.3 per cent in 2018 to 20.5 per cent in 2022.

This decline is visible in every state and for children in both government and private schools," it said. States showing a decline of more than 10 percentage points from 2018 levels include those that had higher reading levels in 2018, such as Kerala (from 52.1 per cent in 2018 to 38.7 per cent in 2022), Himachal Pradesh (from 47.7 per cent to 28.4 per cent), and Haryana (from 46.4 per cent to 31.5 per cent). Huge drops are also visible in Andhra Pradesh (from 22.6 per cent to 10.3 per cent) and Telangana (from 18.1 per cent to 5.2 per cent).