25 January 2024 – The Indian Express

ASER 2023 – Looking Beyond the Basics in Education

• Over the past two decades, debates concerning education and foundational knowledge have resulted in notable policy and agenda adjustments in India. 34,745 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 participated in the recent ASER 2023: Beyond Basics study, which was performed in 28 districts in 26 states. The paper, which focuses on teenagers, offers fresh suggestions for enhancing youth learning outcomes in India and maximising the demographic dividend of the nation.

What is the ASER 2023: Beyond Basics Annual Status of Education Report?

About:

• ASER is a national citizen-led household survey that offers an overview of the state of children’s education and learning in rural India. It is conducted by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation.
• The “basic” ASER gathers data on preschool and school enrollment for kids between the ages of 3 and 16 and conducts one-on-one assessments with kids between the ages of 5 and 16 to determine their basic reading and math skills.
• The “basic” ASER survey was first introduced in 2005 and was carried out annually until 2014, at which point it moved to an alternate-year cycle in 2016.

Goals:

• The survey conducted in 2023 centred on children in rural India, aged 14 to 18, with a particular focus on their goals and their capacity to apply maths and reading skills to everyday situations.
• The main goal of the most recent survey was to gather data on many facets of youth development in rural India that would be useful to stakeholders from various sectors for informing practice and policy.

The following domains were examined in the 2023 survey:

Activity: What kinds of activities are the young of India today involved in?

Capability: Do they possess both fundamental and practical reading and math skills?

• Digital literacy and awareness: Are they able to use a smartphone? What do they do with their smartphones, and are they able to perform basic things on them?

Which are the report’s main conclusions?

Action:

• Increasing Enrollment: 86.8% of people aged 14 to 18 are enrolled in school overall. For children ages 14 and 18, the rate of unenrolled youth is 3.9% and 32.6%, respectively.
• Vocational Training: The majority of youth enrolled in vocational training (16.2%) are college-level students. The majority of young people enrol in short-term (6 months or less) courses.

Capability:

• Foundational Skills: Roughly 25% of the 14–18 age group still struggles to read a text at the Std II level fluently in their native tongue.
• More than half have trouble solving division problems (3 digits by 1 digit). The percentage of 14–18-year-olds who can solve such issues successfully is only 43.3%.
• Calculations for Everyday Use: When the beginning point is 0 cm, about 85% of young people questioned are capable of measuring length with a scale.
• When the beginning point is changed, this proportion falls precipitously to 39%. Nearly 50% of young people can perform other common computations overall.
• Use in Daily Life: Approximately two-thirds of young people who can read at least a text written at the Std I level can respond to at least three of the four questions by reading and comprehending written directions.
• Financial Calculations: Among teenagers who can perform at least one subtraction operation, more than 60% can manage a budget; roughly 37% can apply a discount; nevertheless, only approximately 10% can compute repayment.
• However, in practically every endeavour, women perform lower than men.

Digital Intelligence and Proficiency:

• Digital Access: Nearly 90% of young people are familiar with using and own a smartphone.
• Compared to men, women are less likely to know how to operate a computer or smartphone.
• Communication and Online Safety: Out of all the young people who use social media, only roughly half are aware of the settings for online safety that were asked about in the poll.
• Digital Tasks: About two-thirds of young people can set an alarm for a specified time, and 70% of them can use the internet to look up answers to questions.
• A little more than one-third can calculate the time required to get from one place to another using Google Maps. In every task, men perform better than women.

Which are the Main Issues Raised in the Report?

Difficulties Raised by Low Academic Achievement:

• Low levels of Foundational Numeracy: The report draws attention to the low levels of Foundational Numeracy, which may seriously impair young people’s capacity to manage daily calculations.
• Flat Learning Trajectories: Students’ academic performance hasn’t improved all that much over time.

Obstacles Caused by Curriculum Restrictions:

• Acute Academic Competition: Indian parents frequently have too high expectations for their kids. Parental expectations result in intense academic rivalry, extensive coaching, and significant family spending.
• All of them increase the strain of exams, which are frequently followed by deep sadness for the student and their family in the event of subpar exam performance.
• Curriculum that is “over-ambitious”: The curriculum in the Indian education system is “over-ambitious,” failing to acknowledge the fact that a huge number of pupils struggle academically and are unable to keep up with grade-level material.
• For example, the only year that two Indian states took part in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) was 2009; the country’s performance came in second lowest, barely ahead of Kyrgyzstan.

Difficulties Raised by Indeterminate Goals:

• Not Motivated to Study: More boys than girls said in the survey results that they had no desire to continue their education beyond class 12. Boys talked about making money during the discussion, whereas ladies talked about wanting to study at least to the university level.
• The percentage of young people who are not actively enrolled in school or college increases with age, ranging from 3.9% for 14-year-olds to 10.9% for 16-year-olds and 32.6% for 18-year-olds. This increase is not surprising.
• The Absence of Clarity: Students are not given enough direction when it comes to making decisions regarding their future. Many students are unclear about what subjects to take, how much additional schooling they require, and what sorts of careers they ought to pursue.
• According to the ASER survey, one in five young people were unable to identify any kind of work or career that they were interested in.
• No Role Model: Of the pupils surveyed, 48.3% of girls and 42.5% of males did not have a role model for their desired work, according to statistics from the ASER report.

Difficulties associated with Digital Deprivation:

• Less Technical Propensity: The Arts/Humanities stream comprised the majority of the youth in this age range. Over half of students in grades XI and beyond are enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream (55.7%), with STEM (31.7%) and Commerce (9.4%) following closely behind.
• Compared to men (36.3%), women are less likely to be enrolled in the STEM stream (28.1%).
• Surface Layer Use of Digital Component: During reference week, nearly eighty percent of young people say they watched a movie or listened to music on their smartphone.
• The digital component is intriguing since, on the one hand, it demonstrates that everyone is able to use the essentials. However, they’re only using the surface layer, primarily interacting with social media, and aren’t utilising it deeply.
• Gender disparity in tech access: Since men are more than twice as likely as women to own a smartphone, they probably use it for a greater range of purposes and for longer periods of time.

What is the best course of action?

Reduce the Difficulties of Early Childhood:

• Financial help and Grants: Give economically disadvantaged students financial help and grants because, at this age, many of them must work to support their family financially, creating a vicious cycle.
• Redefining societal Norms: Among girls, the ability of young women to pursue higher education was found to be significantly influenced by the changing societal norms surrounding the proper age of marriage.

All-inclusive Approach to Enhancing Learning:

• Flexible Education System: Using technology to provide online resources, interactive platforms, and remote learning can help to improve the quality of education in general. This is one way that adopting flexibility can be achieved. A method for registering for various types of learning and earning opportunities ought to exist for students.
• Reform Assessments: NEP 2020 states that “careful tracking of students’ enrolment, attendance, and learning levels, so that they can be provided suitable opportunities to re-enter school or catch up” will be used to attain the objective of 100% secondary school enrolment.
• Exam pressure can be decreased by altering the procedures and times for assessments.
• Pathway Linking: In order to turn school reform ideas into actionable steps, it will be essential to connect secondary school reform principles with NIPUN.
• Monitoring results closely will be essential for progress and ultimate success.

Get Students Ready for the Future:

• Emphasis on Developing Critical Thinking: To provide more room for critical thinking and more comprehensive, inquiry-based, discovery-based, discussion-based, and analysis-based learning, curriculum content in each subject will be pared down to its most basic elements.
• Future-Oriented School Systems: Our educational system has to be changed to help students become more future-focused so they may assist and mentor younger people down pathways that could be advantageous to them and put them in a stable position.
• Establish digital mentorship initiatives that pair students with professionals and subject matter experts in their areas of interest. This can support students in making future decisions that are well-informed.
• Given that we are an emerging economy, it is imperative that we provide young people with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to drive their own progress as well as that of their families and communities. With these all-encompassing measures, the actual potential of India’s anticipated “demographic dividend” and “digital dividend” may be achieved.