Building The Foundations: Highlights From ASER 2019 Early Years Report

For the last fifteen years, Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has provided an important and timely reminder that schooling does not equal learning. There is now wide acceptance that – despite spending at least five years in school, only half of all children in India can read a Grade 2 level text.

The first ten years of ASER provided a fairly consistent picture of learning nationwide: learning levels were low; progress was slow; and ‘learning profiles’ (representing gains in learning per year of schooling) were relatively flat – meaning that years spent in school only equate to ‘time served’ and not ‘skills gained’. …………………………….