SHILLONG, Jan 19: Youth aged 14-18 years in East Khasi Hills were able to read a Standard II text, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023.
The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ was released in New Delhi on Wednesday, by representatives of ASER 2023 district partner organisations.
In Meghalaya, the ASER 2023 survey was conducted in East Khasi Hills by volunteers from Martin Luther Christian University.
ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ puts the spotlight on youth aged 14 to 18 years in rural India. This age group was also the focus of ASER 2017.
Among all youth aged 14-18 in East Khasi Hills, 37% could do at least division in the ASER arithmetic test and 82.7% could read at least sentences in the ASER English test, the report showed.
83.7% of them were enrolled in some formal education institutions and 27.8% youth were enrolled in government institutions. 16.3% youth were not enrolled anywhere, and this proportion was higher among 17-18-year-olds as compared to 14-16-year-olds.
Among those aged 17-18 years, 31.9% males were not enrolled in any formal education institutions as compared to 25.1% females.
Additionally, for 17-18-year olds, 1.5% of them were enrolled in some form of vocational training and 36.8% were engaged in some work (other than household work) for at least 15 days in the month prior to the survey.
Among all youth aged 14-18 in East Khasi Hills, 85.1% could read at least a Standard II level text in the ASER reading test, 37% could do at least division in the ASER arithmetic test and 82.7% could read at least sentences in the ASER English test.
For everyday calculations, 40.3% could calculate the time, 28.2% could add weights, 73.3% could measure length (easy), and 26.1% could measure length (hard), and 39.1% could apply the unitary method.
Of those who could read at least a Standard I level text (ASER reading test), 52.9% could read the text on a medicine packet and answer at least 3 out of 4 questions about it. Of those who could do at least subtraction (ASER arithmetic test), 55.3% could do a task for managing a budget, 12.5% could apply a discount and 0.8% could calculate repayment across most of these application-based tasks, males outperformed females, except when it comes to the measurement task.
In East Khasi Hills, 89.6% youth had a smartphone at home; 90.1% youth reported being able to use a smartphone. Among males, this proportion was 89.2% and among females it was 90.8%.
Of those who could use a smartphone, 25.8% males had their own smartphone as compared to 14.8% of their female counterparts.
Among all those who could use a smartphone, 50.9% did at least one education-related activity in the week prior to the survey as compared to 87.8% who used any social media. While a high proportion of youth used social media in the reference week, a far smaller proportion knew how to access its safety features like blocking a profile, making a profile private, etc.
In East Khasi Hills, 62.1% could bring a smartphone to do digital tasks and of these, 66.8% could do the task of setting an alarm, 45.6% could browse the internet to find information, 21.9% could use Google Maps and 82.4% could find a YouTube video.
ASER is a nationwide citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of the status of children’s schooling and learning in rural India. First implemented in 2005, the ‘basic’ ASER survey was conducted annually until 2014 and switched to an alternate-year cycle in 2016. The ‘basic’ ASER collects information about enrolment in pre-school and school for children in the age group of 3 to 16, and assesses children aged 5 to 16 one-on-one to understand their foundational reading and arithmetic abilities.
The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ survey was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states, reaching a total of 34,745 youth in the age group 14-18 years.
One rural district was surveyed in each major state, with the exception of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where two rural districts were surveyed.
It may be noted that at the national level, nearly 43% of children in the 14-18 age group cannot read sentence in English, while 25% of the rural kids struggle to read a Class 2 level text in their respective regional language.
