Kerala reported the sharpest dip in class 3 students' reading ability, as per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022. The nationwide rural household survey, led by citizens, reaches almost 700,000 children in over 19,000 villages across 616 districts in India.
As per the report, the ASER reading test "assesses whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph at class 1 level of difficulty, or a “story” at class 2 level of difficulty. The test is administered one on one to all children in the age group of 5 to 16 in sampled households. Each child is marked at the highest level that s/he can reach comfortably.
Compared to how it fared in 2018, Kerala went from 52.1 per cent to 38.7 per cent in 2022. Himachal Pradesh, on the other hand, went down to 28.4 per cent from 47.7 per cent in 2018. Haryana went from 46.4 per cent to 31.5 per cent and large drops were also visible in Andhra Pradesh, which went from 22.6 per cent to 10.3 per cent and Telangana, which hit 5.2 per cent from 18 per cent.
It was observed that children's basic reading dropped to pre-2012 levels, nationally, which reverses the slow progress made in the intervening years. Both government and private schools for boys and girls in most states saw drops. "The percentage of children in Std III in government or private schools who can read at Std II level
dropped from 27.3% in 2018 to 20.5% in 2022," the report states.
Meanwhile, the drop in arithmetic levels was lesser than the loss in reading. However, children in lower grades were seen to suffer more than those in higher standards.
"Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh maintained or improved slightly over 2018 levels," the report states of class 3 students' arithmetic abilities. However, drops of more than 10 percentage points were seen in Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, and Haryana.
"The All India figure for children in class 3 who are able to at least do subtraction dropped from 28.2 per cent in 2018 to 25.9 per cent in 2022," the report states, adding, "Nationally, children’s basic arithmetic levels have declined over 2018 levels for most grades. But the declines are less steep and the picture is more varied than in the case of basic reading."