ASER Report 2024: The reading level of Class 5 students in government schools has improved to reach 44.8 per cent, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 report released today. For Class 3 students enrolled in government schools, the basic reading levels are highest in 2024. The improvement in government schools has outpaced the recovery in private schools.

In the case of basic arithmetic for elementary grades, both government and private schools have shown substantial improvement reaching the highest level in over a decade.

After a decline in reading levels for Class 3 in government schools throughout the states in 2022, all states had recovered by 2024.

The reading task of ASER assesses students based on whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph in Class 1 or a story at Class 2 level of difficulty.

States that experienced an increase of more than 10 percentage points in reading proficiency between 2022 and 2024 in government schools include Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Odisha, and Maharashtra.

The ASER report stated that the reading levels of Class 5 have been improved ‘substantially’, especially for students enrolled in government schools. The proportion of Class 5 children in government schools who can read a Class 2 level text went down from 44.2% in 2018 to 38.5% in 2022, however, it has increased to 44.8% in 2024.

There were also small improvements in reading levels among Class 5 children in private schools, where the percentage fell from 65.1% in 2018 to 56.8% in 2022 and then rose to 59.3% in 2024.

As mentioned in the report, in 2024, Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh reported the highest proportions of Class 5 students in government schools who could read the Class 2 level textbooks.

States that saw an increase of over 10 percentage points in this proportion in government schools include Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu.

On the other hand, for Class 8 students in government schools, the reading level rose to 67.5%  in the 2024 report. In 2022, only 66.2% were able to read well in government schools.

The reading level performance of private school students remains unchanged between 2022 and 2024.

While government schools in states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Sikkim show notable improvements, however, as mentioned in the ASER report states like Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana have observed a decline.

Class 3 students who were able to solve a numerical subtraction problem was 28.2% in 2018 and 25.9% in 2022, but in 2024, the number rose to 33.7%. In the case of government school students, the number went from 20.9% in 2018 to 20.2% in 2022, increasing to 27.6% in 2024.

While students in private schools have shown smaller improvements since 2022, government schools across most states have exhibited significant gains, with over 15 percentage point increases recorded in states like Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh.

The ASER arithmetic tasks evaluate a child’s ability to recognize numbers from 1 to 9, identify numbers from 11 to 99, solve a 2-digit subtraction problem involving borrowing, and correctly perform a numerical division problem (3-digit by 1-digit), mentioned in the report.

The proportion of children in Class 5 who can at least do a numerical division has improved and rose to 30.7%. This figure was 27.9% in 2018 and 25.6% in 2022. States with improvement (more than 10 percentage points) in government schools include Punjab and Uttarakhand.

The performance of Class 8 students in basic arithmetic remains similar to earlier levels, going from 44.1% in 2018 to 44.7% in 2022 to 45.8% in 2024.