Signs of more than a recovery in learning
ASER 2024 reassures that things are back on track and, quite encouragingly, the progress is led by government schools.
Findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 point to a robust recovery from the learning loss incurred in the Covid years. Extended school shutdowns, digital hurdles — lack of access to hardware/connectivity and know-how among teachers and households — and unready systems marked much of the academic years 2020-21 and 2021-2022. As a result, learning gains steadily built over the past couple of decades saw significant erosion. While ASER 2022 painted a mournful picture, ASER 2024 reassures that things are back on track and, quite encouragingly, the progress is led by government schools, which historically have been magnets for criticism.
Reading ability — one proxy being the percentage of Standard III students able to read Standard II level text — is back to the pre-pandemic level of 27%, having fallen to 20.5% in ASER 2022. Government schools recorded a sharp improvement, reaching 23.4%, up not just from ASER 2022’s 16.3% but also the pre-pandemic peak of 20.9%. Private schools recovered some ground but are yet to reach their pre-pandemic peak. The arithmetic learning indicators indicate much more than a recovery, registering substantial increases over the pre-pandemic peak. Here, too, government schools lead.
This turnaround may have been ushered in by the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy focus of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. Shifting gears from teaching only the cream of the class to teaching at each student at her level is starting to pay off. That said, there is still a significant gap to overcome, given an overwhelming portion of the student population still suffers from learning deficiencies. How NEP enables building on present gains will be its true test.