ASER 2021 Report – Highlights

November 18, 2021

16th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 (Rural) was published by Pratham foundation on November 17, 2021.

ASER provides report on schooling status of children in the age group of 5-16 age across rural India including the ability to do basic reading & arithmetic tasks.
This year, ASER followed a phone-based survey format, as field survey was not possible due to covid-19 pandemic.
Survey was conducted during September-October 2021.
It tries to find out how children in aged between 5-16 studied at home since the onset of covid-19 pandemic as well as challenges that schools & households now face in the backdrop of opening up of schools.

Important findings of the ASER 2021 report are as follows:

As per report, there was an overall increase in proportion of children enrolled in govt schools in between 2018 and 2020. Enrolment increased from 64.3% to 65.8%. But in 2021, enrolment suddenly increased to 70.3%.
Enrolment rate in private schools has decreased as compared to last year. In 2020, enrolment rate was 28.8% which decreased to 24.4% in 2021.
In 2021, 73.1% school respondents received training to implement Covid-19 prevention measures.
Even though availability of smartphones increased to 67.6% in 2021 as compared to 36.5% in 2018, around 79% of children in private schools had smartphone at home as opposed to 63.7% children in government school.
Number of school-going children taking tuition increased by 40% during closure of their schools.
52% of the respondents cited financial distress caused by covid-19 pandemic as the reason of increase in enrolments in government school.