Breaking India’s Sisyphean cycle
ASER 2024 survey shows positive results. NIPUN Bharat has created momentum in education, this needs to be sustained
The legend of Sisyphus from Greek mythology is widely known. The gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a massive boulder up a hill for eternity, only for it to roll back down each time he neared the top. India’s policy challenges, particularly in education and employment, often seem like a Sisyphean struggle. Progress is made, yet the summit remains elusive.
For instance, while we have achieved a near 100% Gross Enrollment Rate across primary age groups of 3-10 years, learning outcomes continue to be a major concern. However, unlike Sisyphus’s fate of eternal futility, India’s efforts are yielding tangible milestones.
The Annual Status of Education (Rural) Report (ASER) 2024 highlights a remarkable recovery from Covid 19-induced learning loss. In 2022, only 16.3% of Class 3 students could read a simple Class 2-level text. Today, this figure stands at a far greater 23.4%. Similarly, only 26% of Class 3 children could perform basic subtraction in 2022; now this has significantly improved to 34%.
What’s more, some of these metrics are at their best ever since measurements began, including the last pre-Covid assessment carried out in 2018. Government schools, where the poorest children go, have made the most progress. On the ability to read a Class 2 level text, Class 3 students in government schools improved to 23.4% now from 20.9% in 2018. On basic subtraction, it has gone up to 33.7% now from 28.2% then.
Alongside these improvements, results on early childhood education (ECE) — for children aged 3-6 — are also heartening. Research shows that 85% of brain development takes place at this stage, and it is essential that the child’s brain be stimulated with play-based inputs at this time. Coverage of children aged 3, enrolled in a preschool or ECE centre, has gone up from 68.1% in 2018 to 77.4% now.
The credit for these gains should go to initiatives undertaken by the Government of India, as well as by states. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 stressed the critical importance of both ECE and Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) — or the ability to read simple texts with understanding and to perform basic addition and subtraction — in the early grades of primary school, without which subsequent educational efforts will not succeed. To boost FLN, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat Mission in July 2021.
By unlocking over ₹13,000 crores in funding, the Mission has enabled states to implement impactful interventions such as innovative teaching-learning materials for FLN and teacher capacity-building. This has been critical given that state education budgets are often skewed towards salaries and infrastructure, leaving little room for initiatives to improve learning quality.
Uttar Pradesh has taken up NIPUN in mission mode, building on earlier initiatives like Mission Prerna. The results it has achieved accumulate further evidence that the new approaches are working. Children in Class 3 of government schools who can read Class 2 texts jumped from 7.2% in 2016 to 27.9% now; those who can perform subtraction went up from 7.9% then to 31.6% now.
Madhya Pradesh, another poor and populous state, has also shown progress — Class 3 exhibited nearly a 50% rise from 2018 baseline levels for basic arithmetic operations. If we can bring about change of this magnitude, within a short span of time, in the villages of India’s poorest and most populous states, clearly something is working and there is hope for the future.
While these are green shoots, there is still a considerable way to go if India is to ensure quality schooling for all — a necessary condition to reach the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047. The NIPUN Bharat Mission has been one of the most transformative initiatives in school education. Extending it for another five years (till the end of 2030), coupled with increased investments in ECE, is essential to ensure that we keep up the momentum and our educational efforts are not undone. They will yield dividends for India in the form of a skilled and capable workforce.
We thus need a NIPUN 2.0 to build on the achievements of NIPUN 1.0. While 1.0 focused on getting the blueprint right, 2.0 will need to focus a lot more on rapid scale-up to states. This requires renewed commitment from state leadership down to teachers, as well as an ecosystem of organisations working collaboratively with the government at state and district levels.
The average lower-middle-income country spends 6.5% of its education budget on ECE, but India spends roughly half this proportion. It should double its ECE spend, to above ₹60,000 crore from the current ₹32,000 crore, and establish a dedicated mission for it. Every school should have a Balavatika pre-primary section for ECE. Expanded ECE budgets should be used to hire an extra worker at anganwadi centres, who are trained in and focuses on ECE. Randomised control trials show this to be an effective strategy for improving ECE outcomes. Better childcare will also free women in the child’s household to work, boosting India’s low female labour force participation rate and household incomes.
Unlike Sisyphus, India has the power to secure its place at the top of the hill — where every child learns, every talent thrives, and every opportunity is realised. The boulder may be heavy. But with sustained efforts and a focused vision, we can move it to the summit.
Ashish Dhawan is founder-CEO and Bikkrama Daulet Singh is operating partner, The Convergence Foundation.The views expressed are personal