Nishant Saxena
Uttar Pradesh (UP) has recorded the highest enrollment rate in schools in the last 15 years, with 97.1% enrollment, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022. According to the report, enrollment in government schools in UP increased from 44.3% in 2018 to 59.6% in 2022, an increase of 15 percentage points compared to the national average of 7 percentage points. Meanwhile, the number of students enrolled in private schools has decreased from 49.7% in 2018 to 36.4% in 2022.
The report highlights that school attendance remains a problem, with only 56.2% of students present in surveyed government primary schools on the day of the visit, down from 59.9% in 2018. UP schools have also seen a steep decline in teacher attendance, with 79.8% of teachers attending on the day of the visit in 2022, as opposed to 85.6% in 2018.
Director General of School Education Vijay Kiran Anand attributed the improvement in enrollment to the “School Chalo Abhiyan” campaign and the implementation of a lesson plan-based pedagogy under the NIPUN Bharat Mission. He also announced plans to distribute tablets to schools for monitoring the attendance of students and teachers.
While the survey shows improvement in arithmetic levels at all stages (grades III, V, and VIII), it also indicates a decline in reading levels overall (grades III, V, and VIII). The report states that there is an urgent need for “catch up” in basic reading and arithmetic from grade III onwards. The fall in overall reading levels between 2018 and 2022 is driven by a decline in reading levels of private school students, with only 38.5% of grade III students in private schools able to read grade II text in comparison to 45.4% in 2018. On this count, government schools in UP have seen an improvement, with 16.4% of children enrolled in grade III able to read grade II text in comparison to 12.3% in 2018.
Additionally, children’s ability to read simple English sentences in grade V has improved from 18.6% in 2016 to 24.1% in 2022. This percentage is roughly equivalent to the national average of 24.5%. Out of those, approximately 55.5% of the children can also comprehend the meaning of the sentences.