44% students in 1st standard in K'taka cannot read alphabets: ASER report

Over 44 per cent of students in the first standard in schools across Karnataka cannot even read an alphabet, the Annual Status of Education Report 2022 report reveals. The study shows a steep decline in learning outcomes in children, even when enrollment numbers in 2012 had fallen only marginally.

In the pan-India study, a citizen-led household survey by the NGO Pratham, as many as 31,854 children in the age group 3 to 16 years across 17,814 households in 900 villages under 30 districts were surveyed in Karnataka. In the survey, which studies the learning outcomes amongst school-going children, children were assessed on whether they can read. For the difficulty level of the first standard, this included alphabets, words and paragraphs while for the difficulty level of the second standard, it included a story.

This is a sharp decline from the 66.2 per cent boys in the eighth standard who could read a second standard text in 2018; in 2022, only 53.2 per cent boys in the same age could read the text. Among girls, the readability in the same age fell from 73.8 per cent to 65.8 per cent

The study showed that while in 2012, 48.57 per cent of students in the fifth standard could read the study material prescribed for the second standard, in 2022, it fell to 30.2 per cent. Among students in the eighth standard, only 22.5 per cent could read a first standard text book, but about 59.9 per cent could read a second standard text book.

The study also shows that in math, only 22.2 per cent of the students could manage to do subtraction. This is a decline from the 26.4 per cent students who could do subtraction in 2018. Similarly, while 20.5 per cent of students could do division in 2018, only 13.3 per cent of students could do so in 2022.

The enrollment of children across schools in the state have marginally fallen from 2006 when 78.7 per cent of children went to school. In 2022, 76.3 per cent children are enrolled in school, which is a significant increase from 2018 when only 69.9 per cent children were enrolled in schools.

In Karnataka, the overall enrolment of children in a school, whether private or public, for children under 3 years of age, is currently 94.3 per cent, which is an increase from 92.2 per cent in 2018. The national average is 78.3 per cent in 2022.