The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 has revealed significant learning gaps among students in rural schools of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, mirroring a national trend of poor literacy and numeracy skills. The study found that among students of class 8, only 56% of them could read a class 2 level text in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The reading assessment is done with Telugu texts.
In arithmetic, the situation remains concerning. Around 40% of Class 3 students in Andhra Pradesh could identify numbers up to 99 but struggled with subtraction and division. Telangana fared slightly better, with 50% of students demonstrating basic number recognition but facing similar difficulties with arithmetic operations.
Despite challenges in foundational learning, digital literacy among students is significantly high. In Andhra Pradesh, 88.1% of surveyed children aged 14 to 16 reported being able to use a smartphone, while in Telangana, the figure was even higher at 92.3%.
The ASER 2024 study also assessed the availability of essential facilities in government schools. Researchers visited the largest government primary school in each sampled village to observe infrastructure conditions. In Andhra Pradesh, only 56% of these schools had access to drinking water, while in Telangana, the figure was slightly lower at 53%.
Conducted nationwide across rural districts, the ASER survey in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was based on the erstwhile district boundaries as per the 2011 Census, before the states’ bifurcation. The study covered 600 households per district, with 30 villages selected per district and 20 households surveyed in each village.
The report also provides insights into school enrollment. In Andhra Pradesh, 1.3% of children aged 15 to 16 were not enrolled in school, while in Telangana, this figure was higher at 2.5%.