In the first sign of recovery from the slump of the Covid pandemic, reading and arithmetic levels for children between the ages of 6 and 14 years have improved across states, with government schools leading the way. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 released on Tuesday, basic reading levels for Class 3 children enrolled in government schools have been the highest since the survey began 20 years ago.

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 and 20.9% in the pre-pandemic year of 2018. Overall reading levels, across both government and private schools, too improved from 20.5% in 2022 to 27.1% in 2024, almost touching the pre-pandemic level of 27.3%.

Arithmetic levels, too,  improved across both government and private schools — from 28.2% Class 3 children who could do at least subtraction in 2018 to 33.7% in 2024, recovering sharply from the slump of 25.9% in 2022.

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, the year children came back to school after the pandemic, 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).

The percentage of Class 5 students who can read a Class 2 textbook has gone up from 42.8% in 2022 to 48.7% in 2024, but was yet to reach the 50.4% of 2018. The math skills, too, of this cohort have recovered from the pandemic years — from 25.6% in 2022 to 30.7% in 2024, up from the pre-pandemic’s 27.8%.

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.

In line with the NEP’s focus on taking early childhood care and education to all children before Class 1, the percentage of children aged between 3 and 5 who enrolled in some form of pre-school rose in 2024 over 2018 and 2022. The sharpest rise was among 5-year-olds — from 58.5% in 2018 to 71.4% in 2024.

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.