In 2024, ASER revisited nearly all rural districts across India to assess children’s schooling status and their foundational skills in reading and arithmetic. The latest data offers valuable insights into the progress of foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) nationwide.
The findings bring encouraging news, indicating a strong recovery from post-pandemic learning losses. At the national level, the proportion of Class III students reading at a Class II level had gradually increased from 23.6% in 2014 to 27.3% in 2018, only to drop significantly to 20.5% in 2022. Now, in 2024, it has rebounded to 27.1%. A similar trend is observed in Class V, where the percentage of students reading at a Class II level rose from 48% in 2014 to 50.5% in 2018, declined to 42.8% in 2022, and has now recovered to 48.8%.