Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 28 Jan: The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2024, the 14th nationwide field based survey, shows improvement in school facilities in Arunachal Pradesh. However, the state still lags behind the rest of India in terms of usable school facilities.
Though inputs and facilities in schools, like midday meals, electricity and libraries are improving, the state’s schools reported low level of inputs and activities related to foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) for early grades in Arunachal when compared to the national figures.
According to the ASER report, less schools in rural Arunachal report receiving directives, training and materials or funds related to strengthening FLN for early grades in primary school.
“Since the launch of the National Education Policy in 2020, a high priority has been placed on helping children in early grades in primary school acquire FLN skills. To strengthen the education system for delivering FLN skills to children, there have been focused inputs on teacher training, appropriate teaching learning materials (TLM) for early grades. Three month ‘school readiness’ programmes for incoming Standard I children are also being conducted in government primary schools,” the report added.
Other finding of ASER-2024 for Arunachal (rural) reveals an increase in enrolment in early childhood education programmes or preschool for ages 3 and 4. However, ‘underage’ (under age 6) children enrolment in Standard I is declining. In 2024, in Standard I, 21.3% children were ‘underage’.
Also, the overall enrolment in schools for age group 6-14 remains very high at 97.2%.
The report also shows an improvement in basic reading and arithmetic in all grades, especially in the earlier grades.
Interestingly, learning gains are higher for children enrolled in private schools as compared to government schools. Further, the number of out-of-school children between the age group of 15-16 years is now less than 10% for boys and girls.
The ASER-2024 report also revealed that the figures for ability to do digital tasks among the age group of 14-16 years were higher in Arunachal than the national figures.
Access to smartphones was high for 14-16 age group with over 97% children having access to smartphones.
