PRINCE KUMAR
Ranchi, Nov 17: The Jharkhand government has surpassed the all-India average of 70.3% of the children enrolled in the government schools in 2021 by 8.3% making it 78.6% of the state’s students. The fact came to the fore after the 16th Annual Status of Education Report 2021 was released by Pratham Foundation on November 17.
According to the report, there is a huge increase in the students taking paid tuition classes in the state where the percentage increased from 44.1 in 2018 to 57.6 in 2021. On the other hand, the report also covered the availability of smartphones in homes, availability of learning materials and learning support at home in which the state was below the all-India average. The all India average of the students having a smartphone remained at 67.6% whereas the state’s 60.2% students have access to smartphones.
The report also shows that the state’s learning support at home lags behind the all-India average by 6.3%. In a similar manner, the state’s students’ access to the availability of learning materials lags by 2.1% than the all-India average.
ASER reports on the schooling status of children in the 5-16 age group across rural India and their ability to do basic reading and arithmetic tasks. As a field-based survey could not be conducted due to the Pandemic, ASER 2021 has followed the format of a phone-based survey. The survey was conducted in September-October 2021. The survey tries to find out how children in the age group of 5-16 studied at home since the onset of the pandemic and the challenges that the schools and households now face as schools reopen across states. The report was prepared on the basis of the telephonic survey conducted in rural areas of 581 districts across 25 states and three union territories between September and October. As many as 76,706 households, 7,299 schools in 17,184 villages across India were covered in the survey.
