Govt schools in rural India outperform private in bouncing back from COVID-19 learning loss

New Delhi: The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), released Tuesday, signalled a “full recovery” from the pandemic-induced learning losses, highlighting a strong rebound in basic reading and arithmetic skills among students in classes 3 and 5 in rural areas, with government schools seeing more significant improvements than private schools.

Government schools saw the highest reading levels for Class 3 students in a decade, the report stated. As many as 23.4 percent of Class 3 students could read a Class 2-level text in 2024 compared to 16.3 percent in 2022—a jump of seven percentage points. Moreover, the 2024 figure is an improvement on the pre-pandemic figure from 2018—20.9 percent.

In private schools, the improvement in Class 3 reading levels was comparatively modest, rising by just two percentage points—from 33.1 percent in 2022 to 35.5 percent in 2024. It, however, remained lower than 2018 when it was 40.6 percent.

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The report stated that the overall percentage of Class 3 students able to perform basic subtraction increased to 33.7 percent in 2024, up from 25.9 percent in 2022 and higher than the 28.2 percent recorded before the pandemic in 2018.

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Government schools saw a more pronounced improvement, with a seven-percentage point increase—27.6 percent in 2024 compared to 20.2 percent in 2022 and 20.9 percent in 2018. In contrast, private schools saw a smaller rise of roughly four percentage points, reaching 47.5 percent in 2024, up from 43.1 percent in 2022 and 43.5 percent in 2018.

The report also noted that while 65.5 percent of children aged 6-14 were enrolled in government schools in 2018, this figure spiked to 72.9 percent in 2022 before dropping to 66.8 percent in 2024, explaining that increased enrolments in government schools during the pandemic, which caused economic losses, was driven “more by necessity than choice”. 

The ASER 2024 report, facilitated by NGO Pratham Foundation, is based on a rural household survey that reached 649,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India.

The ASER 2022 report highlighted significant learning losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ability of young children to read falling to its lowest level since 2012 and to solve basic arithmetic problems dropping to levels not seen since 2014.

Despite recovery, learning levels are still low 

The report stated that the data showed a “full recovery” from pandemic-induced learning loss, with primary-grade learning levels even surpassing pre-pandemic figures in some cases. Overall, the proportion of Class 3 children reading at a Class 2 level rose from 20.5 percent in 2022 to 27.1 percent in 2024. However, that also means 72.9 percent of Class 3 students cannot still read fluently in their local languages. 

Overall, Class 2 students who can do subtractions rose from 25.9 percent in 2022 to 33.7 percent in 2024, and Class 5 students able to do at least division increased from 25.6 percent to 30.7 percent in the same period. However, that also means 66.3 percent of Class 2 students cannot do subtractions, and nearly 70 percent of Class 5 students cannot do divisions.  

In Class 8, the percentage of students performing basic arithmetic remained similar, going from 44.1 percent in 2018 to 44.7 percent in 2022 to 45.8 percent in 2024. That means more than 50 percent of Class 8 students cannot perform basic arithmetic tasks now. 

The ASER reading task evaluates whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph (Class 1 level), or a story (Class 2 level). The arithmetic task checks if a child can recognise numbers 1-9 and 11-99, perform two-digit subtraction with borrowing, or solve a three-digit by one-digit division problem.

The report also emphasised that the focus on foundational skills in National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marked a significant shift, with a national push to improve learning outcomes.

“Typically, in past years, school teachers worked “to complete the curriculum”, and as a result, they ended up teaching to the “top of the class” in a class that is diverse in terms of learning levels and demographic characteristics. “For the first time, under NIPUN Bharat, teachers across the country are given a different brief— to focus on foundational skills,” said ASER Centre Director Wilima Wadhwa.

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Govt school enrolment at pre-pandemic level

According to the ASER report, government school enrolment has reversed back to pre-pandemic levels across most states, except Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir. 

“This almost complete reversal back to 2018 levels is seen across grades as well as gender and is not particularly surprising given that the economy has recovered in other sectors as well,” said Wadhwa. 

The education ministry’s UDISE+ report released last month also highlighted a decline of 87 lakh students in government schools across the country in 2023-24 compared to the previous year. In contrast, private schools have seen an increase in enrolment, indicating a trend of reverse migration—students who shifted from private to public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic are now returning.

The ASER report 2024 showed that the proportion of children aged between 15-16 years who are not enrolled in any schools dropped sharply from 13.1 percent in 2018 to 7.5 percent in 2022 but stayed nearly the same at 7.9 percent in 2024 at the all-India level. The proportion of girls not enrolled has increased slightly from 7.9 percent in 2022 to 8.1 percent in 2024. 

Though several states have seen a decline in the proportion of girls not enrolled in any schools, the proportion remained higher than 10 percent only in a few states, such as Madhya Pradesh (16.1 percent), Uttar Pradesh (15 percent), Rajasthan (12.7 percent), Mizoram (12.3 percent), Gujarat (10.5 percent), and Chhattisgarh (10 percent).

Increase in pre-primary enrolments

The ASER report 2024 also highlighted that enrolment in pre-primary schools has seen significant improvements, with notable shifts in patterns among children in the three to five age group between 2018 and 2024.

For children aged three years, enrolment in pre-primary schools—including Anganwadi centres, government pre-primary classes, and private lower kindergarten and upper kindergarten programmes—has steadily risen. For three-year-olds, the enrolment rate increased from 68.1 percent in 2018 to 75.8 percent in 2022 and 77.4 percent in 2024.

States such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Telangana have achieved near-universal enrolment for this age group. However, in states such as Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh, over 50 percent of three-year-olds remain unenrolled.

For four-year-olds, enrolment in pre-primary institutions also showed a positive trend. The national figure increased from 76 percent in 2018 to 82 percent in 2022 and reached 83.3 percent in 2024. By 2024, some states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha, had surpassed 95 percent enrollment for four-year-olds, demonstrating a strong push towards early childhood education.

The enrolment rate for five-year-olds has also improved significantly, rising from 58.5 percent in 2018 to 62.2 percent in 2022 and reaching 71.4 percent in 2024. In states such as Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, and Nagaland, enrolment in pre-primary institutions for five-year-olds now exceeds 90 percent, marking a major step forward in early education access across India.

“Today, more than 100 million children are in the ‘foundational stage’-age group. How we equip and support these children in the next five years will decide what India will be like twenty-five years from now. We have made rapid progress in provisioning education for preschoolers. Similar momentum, energy and effort to ensure quality in early childhood education will be the highest-impact investment that India can make for the rest of this century,” said Pratham CEO Rukmini Banerji.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)

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