The latest Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) comes bearing some rare good news: an improvement in learning levels across states, led largely by government schools.

For instance, the number of Class 3 children who can read a Class 2 textbook in government schools stands at 23.4%, up from 16.3% in 2022, the year children came back to school after the pandemic years and the resultant shutdowns that led to big learning losses. Across government and private schools, basic arithmetic levels have improved from the pre-pandemic year of 2018 – from 28.1% Class 3 students who could at least do a simple subtraction sum that year to 33.7% now.

The report points out that while almost all states (barring J&K and Nagaland) have shown a recovery in learning levels of Class 3 students when compared to 2022, states such as Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh showed a 10-percentage point increase in reading levels in 2024 when compared to 2022.

Other states have also seen big gains when compared to 2018. Bihar saw a jump of almost 8 percentage points in Class 3 reading levels to 20.1% in 2024, while Uttarakhand recorded a sharp rise, from 24.7% in 2018 to 35.6% in 2024. Bihar also saw improvements in Class 3 arithmetic — from 18% in 2018 to 28.2% in 2024.

But the surprise leader of this pack are the government schools of Uttar Pradesh, where reading levels went up 15 percentage points – from 12.3% in 2018 to 27.9%. Overall, across its government and private schools, reading levels went up from 28.3% in 2018 to 34.4% in 2024. The state’s basic arithmetic levels, too, went up, from 26.9% in 2018 to 40.7% in 2024.

While there have been improvements in learning levels across age categories, the gains are the highest in the primary sections, which is the focus of learning initiatives of state governments and the Union Education Ministry’s Nipun Bharat Mission, which focuses on foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN).

While there is still a long way to go in terms of learning levels – the fact that 30% children, across ages, can’t read a Class 2 textbook is a dismal pointer – the gains are significant considering the slump of 2022. When children came back to school that year after two years of the pandemic, almost all states recorded big drops in learning levels, with questions raised about the long-term impact of the slump.

What then explains this “sudden improvement in learning levels”, as Wilima Wadhwa, Director, ASER Centre, termed it?

Most signs point to the National Education Policy, 2020, and its focus on foundational skills.

While ASER and other surveys, including the government’s own National Achievement Survey (NAS), have for years pointed to the challenge of poor learning levels across the country, despite rising enrollment levels aided by the Right to Education Act, it was with the NEP that the government for the first time identified foundational learning as the key focus area. According to NEP 2020, “the highest priority of the education system will be to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary school by 2025”.

Suman Bhattacharjea, Director, ASER, told The Indian Express, “While ASER has for years been pointing to poor learning levels in the foundational years, it was with NEP that the government threw in its lot, focussing on curriculum changes, teacher training etc. States also put their mind and money into the whole idea.”

Rukmini Banerjee, CEO, Pratham Foundation, said that besides NEP, what helped was that the slump of 2022 came with an opportunity to start afresh. “In 2022, there was a new energy in schools. Children and teachers… everybody wanted to be in school. And everybody said, ‘Kuch to karna chahiye’. The time was right, in some sense.”

Stating that it’s “heartening” to see government schools leading in learning outcomes, Sanjay Kumar, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, said, “The COVID-induced learning gap set us back, but we have overcome it… With NIPUN Bharat, there has been focused messaging, along with focused financing for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN). Assessment has become part of the school education discourse… We have been engaging more with teachers and following up with states on their training. There is also an increasing level of engagement and coordination with states.”

Talking of the gains reflected in the survey, Sridhar Rajagopalan, co-founder of the Bengaluru-based Educational Initiatives, said, “There is no doubt that there has been a certain focus from the government on FLN. Also, there is greater acceptance of FLN now than before. People like us and ASER have been talking about, but for the government to take it up… it has happened post NEP. While it is creditable that some of the Covid losses have been made up for, we have to put it in perspective. Against the poor performance of the last few years, this looks good. But we are still not doing well as, say, Sri Lanka.”

On the need to build on some of these gains, he added, “We need to take external assessment seriously. There is still a lot to be done in terms of support to teachers etc. FLN is not the only thing we need to do. We also need to focus on middle grades, board exam reforms etc. There is a whole menu of things that can be done. If we continue with business as usual, these gains will peter out.”

ASER is a nationwide rural household survey conducted by the NGO Pratham. The latest survey, which comes after the smaller Beyond Basics survey of 2023, assessed 6,49,491 children in 605 rural districts on basic reading levels and arithmetic. The survey considered children in three age categories – pre-primary (ages 3 to 5), elementary (6 to 14), and older children (15 to 16).

The report also shows that government school enrollment, which saw a rise during the pandemic as children moved out of private schools, has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels. The percentage of 6-14-year-olds enrolled in government schools was 65.6% in 2018, rose to 72.9% in 2022, and has now fallen to 66.8%. The overall school enrollment rate among 6-14-year-olds stood at 98.1%, close to the figure of 98.4% in 2022.

For the first time, ASER also included a section on digital literacy – access, ownership and use of smartphones, and basic digital skills – among 14-16-year-olds. It found that more boys than girls report knowing how to use a smartphone – 85.5% boys compared to 79.4% girls.

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