In 2018, the highest reading abilities across the country have been reported from Himachal Pradesh (Representational Image) In 2018, the highest reading abilities across the country have been reported from Himachal Pradesh (Representational Image)

Only 44.2 per cent class 5 students studying in government schools can read class 2 level text, according to the latest Annual Status of Education (ASER) report 2018 which was released today – January 15, 2019. While this is an increase of 2.5 percentage points from 2016, there has been a steady decline in the reading abilities of government school students since 2008. In fact, it is the first time since 2008 that there has been an improvement in the same.

The trend was similar in private schools too. Since 2008, the ability of class 5 students to read class 2 level text in private schools has also declined from 67.9 per cent in 2008 to 61.2 per cent in 2012. Since 2012, the trend picked upward trend and in 2018, it reached 65.1 per cent, which is still lesser than 2008 numbers.

2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 India 53.1 50.7 41.7 42.2 41.7 44.2

Since 2008 till 2018, private schools have consistently remained ahead of government schools. Due to the poor reading ability in class 5, states the report, the overall ability to deal with textbooks in higher standards has lowered.

The declining productivity of schools leads to a substantially smaller number of students learning to read basic texts by the time they reach class 5 every year. But, the fact that the proportion of ‘readers’ grows 1.4 or 1.5 times by the time they reach class 8 means that as children continue to use books, more they learn to read fluently even if not at the desired level.The report suggests while efforts have to be made to ensure all children read fluently by the time they reach class 5, efforts to improve reading ability should be continued even after class 5.

In 2018, the highest reading abilities across the country have been reported from Himachal Pradesh (HP) at 74.5 per cent followed by Kerala at 73.1 per cent. The lowest among them is from Jharkhand with only 29.4 per cent followed by Assam and Madhya Pradesh with 33.5 and 34.4 per cent, report states.

“In 2012, the then Planning Commission acknowledged for the first time that there was a problem with learning outcomes, although the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had been maintaining that learning levels had not gone down”, states the report.

The proportion of children (age 6-14) who are not enrolled in school has fallen below 3 per cent for the first time in 2018 and stands at 2.8 per cent. In terms of gender-specific enrolment too, percentage of girls outside of school has fallen to 4.1 per cent, a drop of over two percentage points.

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