ASER 2022: Pandemic affected learning, dip in reading, basic maths skills

"This fall is a huge drop, given how slowly the all-India numbers move, and confirms fears of large learning losses caused by the pandemic," according to Director ASER Centre Wilima Wadhwa.

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ASER has also picked up signs of recovery ever since schools started reopening after long Covid-induced closures. (Graphics by Abhishek Mitra)

Written by: Sourav Roy Barman

5 min readNew DelhiJan 19, 2023 09:39 AM IST First published on: Jan 18, 2023 at 01:12 PM IST

A significant dip in the abilities to read and calculate, by as much as 6.7 and 2.2 percentage points among class 2 students between 2018 and 2022, is among the major findings in the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), which has also picked up signs of recovery ever since schools started reopening after long Covid-induced closures.

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The report, released Wednesday, marks the return of a key national survey that captures the state of foundational literacy and numeracy in the country. Steered by the Pratham Foundation, ASER reports have been released annually since 2005.

“This fall is a huge drop, given how slowly the all-India numbers move, and confirms fears of large learning losses caused by the pandemic,” according to Director ASER Centre Wilima Wadhwa.

Wadhwa’s view that the all-India numbers move slowly is backed by numbers. For instance, between 2014 and 2018, learning levels had been rising gradually, with the proportion of class 3 children who could read a standard II text increasing from 23.6 per cent to 27.2 per cent.

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That stood at 20.5 per cent in 2022. Likewise, the share of children in class 5 who could read standard II level text rose from 48 per cent in 2014 to 50.4 per cent in 2018, but fell to 42.8 per cent in 2022.

The survey covered 7 lakh children across 616 districts and was conducted by 27,536 volunteers. It was last carried out at this scale in 2018 as after the outbreak of Covid-19, ASER became phone-based and turned its focus on exploring digital inequality and enrollment levels in schools.

The drop in numeracy levels has been smaller compared to the dip in reading skills, states the survey. Like in the case of reading, math learning levels had also been steadily rising before the pandemic disrupted the school education system, which was marred by stark inequality as crores of children struggled to cope with the switch to digital modes.

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Overall, the proportion of children in class 3 who could do at least subtraction rose from 25.3 per cent in 2014 to 28.1 per cent in 2018. Among students of class 5, who could solve a simple division problem, the share rose from 26 per cent in 2014 to 27.8 per cent in 2018.

In 2022, the numbers were down to 25.9 per cent and 25.6 per cent respectively. “Clearly, the pandemic has resulted in learning loss. However, what the ASER 2022 figures seem to suggest is that the loss is much greater in reading as compared to arithmetic,” said Wadhwa.

However, over the last one year, signs of recovery have also sprouted. The clearest indication comes from a comparative analysis of learning outcomes in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal between 2021 and 2022. These are the only states where Pratham had undertaken learning outcome surveys even in 2021.

In Chhattisgarh, where the proportion of class 3 children who can read basic text had dropped to an alarming 12.3 per cent in 2021, bounced back to 24.2 per cent in 2022. In West Bengal, it rose from 29.5 per cent in 2021 to 33 per cent in 2022.

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In case of maths, the share of children in class 3 having the ability to solve basic problems rose dramatically from 9 per cent in 2021 to 19.6 per cent in 2022. In Karnataka and West Bengal, it rose from 17.3 per cent to 22.2 per cent respectively and 29.4 per cent to 34.2 per cent respectively.

“Extrapolating from the experience of the three states for which we have 2021 data, we can assume that other states also experienced large learning losses during the pandemic. However, once schools reopened, states made a concerted effort to build or re-build foundational competencies, which has resulted in a partial and in some cases, a full recovery,” said Wadhwa.

While the last few rounds of ASER did not capture the state of foundational learning, the government conducted a study through the NCERT in 2022 to find out whether students were picking up basic skills on literacy and numeracy. The findings of that study mirror some of the trends that ASER has picked up.

The NCERT study had found that as many as 37 per cent of students enrolled in class 3 have very limited foundational numeracy skills such as identifying numbers, and carry out simple mathematical operations, while even the most basic knowledge is absent in 11 per cent learners.