Only 44.2% class 5 students in govt schools can read class 2 level text: ASER report

Since 2008 till 2018, private schools have consistently remained ahead of government schools. Due to the poor reading ability in class 5, states the report, the overall ability to deal with textbooks in higher standards has lowered. The declining productivity of schools leads to a substantially smaller number of students learning to read basic texts by the time they reach class 5 every year. But, the fact that the proportion of ‘readers’ grows 1.4 or 1.5 times by the time they reach class 8 means that as children continue to use books, more they learn to read fluently even if not at the desired level. The report suggests while efforts have to be made to ensure all children read fluently by the time they reach class 5, efforts to improve reading ability should be continued even after class 5.

In 2018, the highest reading abilities across the country have been reported from Himachal Pradesh (HP) at 74.5 per cent followed by Kerala at 73.1 per cent. The lowest among them is from Jharkhand with only 29.4 per cent followed by Assam and Madhya Pradesh with 33.5 and 34.4 per cent, report states.

“In 2012, the then Planning Commission acknowledged for the first time that there was a problem with learning outcomes, although the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had been maintaining that learning levels had not gone down”, states the report.

The proportion of children (age 6-14) who are not enrolled in school has fallen below 3 per cent for the first time in 2018 and stands at 2.8 per cent. In terms of gender-specific enrolment too, percentage of girls outside of school has fallen to 4.1 per cent, a drop of over two percentage points.