Hey there! Guess what? We’ve got some news for you about a report called the Annual Status of Education Report, or ASER for short. So, this report is all about checking how well kids in rural India are doing in their studies. They wanna know if you guys can read and do simple math stuff. 

Now, this ASER thing has been going on every year since 2005, but in 2021, things got a little funky because of this wacky thing called the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, instead of doing the usual surveys in person, they decided to be all modern and use phones for the survey. They called up kids and families to see how you’ve been managing school at home during the pandemic. Can you imagine talking on the phone for a school survey?

Important Details

• The survey happened in all these different rural areas across 581 districts in 25 states and 3 union territories. That’s like a huge adventure, right? They wanted to know what challenges schools and families are facing now that the schools have reopened. We can only imagine the chaos of getting back to school after being cooped up at home for so long!
• Now, here are some really interesting things they found out from the survey. Drumroll, please! They discovered that more kids are enrolling in government schools. Yup, the percentage of students going to these schools increased between 2018 and 2020, reaching a whopping 70% in 2021. Meanwhile, the enrollment in private schools dropped a bit from 28.8% to 24.4%. 
• Oh, and get this, during the school closure, a bunch of smart kids started taking tuitions to keep up with their studies. That number went up by a crazy 40%! Way to go, little geniuses! And now that the schools have reopened, around 73% of them received training on how to keep everyone safe from COVID. Safety first, right?
• Here’s a mind-boggling fact for you: the use of smartphones has skyrocketed to a whopping 67% in 2021. That’s a whole lot of tiny screens lighting up everywhere!
• So there you have it. The ASER report tells us all about how you and your pals are doing in school. It’s like a big report card for the whole country! Now go out there, learn, and have a blast in second grade! Stay awesome!