ASER
REPORT - REPORT & INDICES
News:
Rural girls want to be
engineers, docs but end up in arts courses | Data
What's
in the news?
●
Girls and boys in rural India are almost
equally aspiring to become doctors or engineers.
●
In fact, the number of girls aspiring to
get into these professions is marginally higher than boys, according to the
recently released survey data published by the Annual Status of Education
Report (ASER).
Key
takeaways:
●
Their roles reverse when it comes to
choosing a stream for higher studies.
●
In grade XI and higher, more boys end up
studying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses; in
contrast, more women choose arts and humanities, the data shows.
ASER
Report:
●
ASER is a household survey conducted across 616 rural districts and covers
6.9 lakh children in the age group of 3
to 16 years to record their schooling status and assess their basic reading
and arithmetic skills.
●
The report is being brought out after four
years and records the impact of school closures in 2020 and 2021, as well as
the return to school of children in 2022.
●
It is conducted by NGO Pratham.
●
It uses household rather than school-based sampling.
ASER
Report 2023:
Target
Age Group:
●
A household survey was conducted among
rural students aged 14 to 18 years in 28 districts across 26 states to assess
the foundational reading and arithmetic abilities of 34,745 students.
Focused
Domains in Survey:
The survey was focused on
the following domains such as
●
Activities:
Activities
in which India’s youth are currently engaged.
●
Awareness
and Digital Skills: Awareness of digital technologies and
platforms among the youth.
●
Educational
and career pathways: Aspirations of Indian youth.
●
Ability
to apply foundational skills to daily life situations:
Basic and applied reading and math abilities among the youths.
Key
Highlights from the ASER Report 2023:
1.
Status of Youth Activities:
●
Across all enrolment categories, a higher
proportion of females than males were doing household work daily. Overall, this
difference is about 20 percentage points.
●
Among males and females, most youth
working in activities other than household work tend to be working on family
farms.
●
It was found that a higher percentage of
males (40.3%) than females (28%) had done work other than household work for
more than 15 days.
●
Around 30% of youth are working for their parents.
2.
Aspirations:
●
The survey shows that the two most popular
choices among the boys and young men
in the sample were army (13.8%) and
police (13.6%).
●
Among the girls and young women surveyed, teacher (16%) and doctor (14.8%) were
the most preferred choices.
3.
Age Gap in Enrollment:
●
Overall, 86.8% of 14-18-year-olds are
enrolled in an educational institution. Although the gender gaps in enrolment
is small, there are prominent differences by age.
●
The percentage of
youth not enrolled is 3.9% for 14-year-old youth and is 32.6% for 18-year-olds.
4.
Choice of Streams:
●
Most people in this age group were
enrolled in the Arts/Humanities streams.
●
In Class XI or higher, more than half are
enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream (55.7%) and females are less likely to
be enrolled in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics stream
(28.1%) than males (36.3%).
5.
Status of Vocational Training:
●
Only
5.6%
of surveyed youth are taking vocational training or other related courses.
●
The vocational training is most likely to
be taken by the youth at the college level (16.2%). Moreover, most youth are
taking short duration courses of six months or less.
6.
Assessment of Basic Skills and Literacy levels:
●
About
25% of this age group cannot read a standard II-level text fluently in their
regional language.
●
Across enrollment categories, females
(76%) do better than males (70.9%) in reading a Std II level text in their
regional language.
7.
English Reading Skills:
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Around 57.3% can read English sentences.
●
Of those who can read in English, nearly
three-quarters (73.5%) are able to understand the meaning of the sentences.
8.
Division Problems:
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More than half among 14-18-year-old youth
struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems wherein only 43.3% are able to do such problems
correctly.
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In 2017, 39.5 percent of youth could do a
superficial (grade 3-4 level) division problem, while in 2023, this proportion
went up to 43.3%.
9.
Applying Foundational Skills to Daily Life:
●
Two-thirds of the surveyed youths (65.1 percent) were able to read
functional instructions on a packet of ORS solution.
Challenges:
1.
No Improvement in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Skills (FLN):
●
According to the report, in 2017, 76.6
percent of 14-18-olds could read a grade 2-level text, while in 2023, this
number reduced to 73.6%.
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Low levels of foundational numeracy affect
the ability of youth in tackling everyday calculations where they need to apply
measurement or use the unitary method in practical situations.
2.
Poor Quality Labour force:
●
This deficit in foundational numeracy
significantly impacts the quality of the country’s labour force.
3.
Balancing Academics and Family Responsibilities:
●
Most of the youths face compounded
challenges as they need to balance academic requirements with responsibilities,
such as working in family farms.
●
These responsibilities impact the
aspirations of youth.
4.
Poor Utilisation of Smartphones for Education Purpose:
●
The current use of smartphones for
educational purposes is significantly lower than that for entertainment.
●
Close to 80% reported using their
smartphone for an entertainment-related activity, such as watching a movie or
listening to music.
5.
Gender Disparity in Reading and Arithmetic Skills:
●
Males performed better than females in
arithmetic and English reading across most of the tasks that test the ability
to apply basic numeracy and reading skills.
●
For instance, only 41.1% females were able
to tell the time compared to 51% males. Similarly, 88% males were able to
measure length compared to 82% women.
6.
Gender Disparity in Digital Skills:
●
Of those who can use a smartphone, 43.7%
of males own smartphones as compared to 19.8% of females.
●
Across all phone-related tasks assigned to
respondents, boys outperformed girls.
●
Performance in digital tasks improved with
education level. Ability to perform digital tasks also increased with basic
reading proficiency.
Go
back to basics:
NGO
PRATHAM:
●
Pratham is an innovative learning organization created to improve the quality of
education in India.
●
As one of the largest non-governmental
organizations in the country, Pratham focuses on high-quality, low-cost, and
replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system.