Enrolment shifts from private to govt schools in rural India: ASER 2021

Enrolments for 6-14 age group rise to 70% in govt schools, fall to 24% in private ones

In what could be a sign of pandemic-induced distress, there’s been a major shift with students opting out of private schools to enrol in government ones across the country, especially in the 6-14 age group, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021.

At an all-India level, enrolment in private schools for children in the age group of 6-14 has decreased from 32.5 per cent in 2018 to 24.4 per cent in 2021, while that for government schools has increased from 64.3 per cent in 2018 to 70.3 per cent in 2021.

In 2020, the drop in private school enrolment was accompanied by more children not being enrolled in school rather than a shift to government schools. A decline in private school enrolment was first seen in 2020, when it fell from 32.5 per cent in 2018 to 28.8 per cent for 6-14-year olds, while government school enrolment remained steady at about 65.

Among the surveyed teachers and headmasters of government schools that have reopened, about 70 per cent said that enrolment in their schools had increased. The reason, 40 per cent said, was that no studies were going on in private schools; 15 per cent mentioned migration; 62 per cent attributed the shift to financial distress; and about 50 per cent ascribed it to the free facilities in government schools. Of course, it is entirely possible that this increase in government school enrolment may get reversed in the future as incomes recover and private schooling becomes profitable again.

There have also been wide variations across states in government school enrolment during the pandemic, with Uttar Pradesh and Kerala seeing maximum increase in such enrolments.

On the other hand, the proportion of children currently not enrolled in the 15-16 age group has been on a decline. In 2010, the proportion of non-enrolled 15-16-year-olds — the age group considered most at risk for dropping out — was 16.1 per cent. This number has been steadily declining: to 12.1 per cent in 2018, 9.9 per cent in 2020 and to 6.6 per cent in 2021.

The survey also found a big increase in children taking paid private tuition classes to supplement their education. At an all-India level, in 2018, less than 30 per cent children took private tuition classes. In 2021, this proportion has jumped to almost 40 per cent, across genders, grades and school types.

With the pandemic forcing schools, households and children to turn to digital learning, smartphones became the predominant source of teaching-learning when schools shut down and moved to a remote model last year, raising concerns about the most marginalised being left behind.

Smartphone ownership has almost doubled since 2018 with phone availability increasing from 36.5 per cent in 2018 to 67.6 per cent in 2021. However, more children in private schools have a smartphone at home (79 per cent) than government school going children (63.7 per cent).

In 2020, ASER found that a smartphone was bought for studies for one out of ten children since the lockdown began in March 2020. In 2021, this proportion had increased to 27.9 per cent. Also, across all grades, 67.6 per cent of all enrolled children have at least one smartphone available at home but 26 per cent of them have no access to it at all.

Smartphone availability is also linked to household economic status. The survey found that with an increase in the parents’ education level (a proxy for economic status), the likelihood of the household having a smartphone also increases. In 2021, over 80 per cent children with parents who have studied up to Class IX or more had a smartphone available at home, as compared to just over 50 per cent children whose parents had studied till Class V or less. However, even among children whose parents are in the “low” education category, over a quarter have bought a smartphone for their studies since March 2020.

On the flip side, smartphone availability did not translate into access for children, the survey found. Despite over two-thirds (67.6 per cent) of all enrolled children having a smartphone at home, over a quarter of them (26.1 per cent) did not have any access to it. The pattern was stronger by grade, with more children in higher classes having access to a smartphone than those in lower grades.

The survey also found that compared to the first year of the pandemic (2020), when children were more dependent on learning support at homes amid closed schools, the same decreased in 2021. The proportion of enrolled children who received learning support at home fell from three quarters of all enrolled children in 2020 to two-thirds in 2021, with the sharpest drops visible among children in higher grades.

Moreover, with schools reopening, learning support at homes has also been on a decline. Among both government and private school going children, those whose schools have reopened get less support from home. For instance, 75.6 per cent of private school going children whose schools have not reopened receive help at home as opposed to 70.4 per cent whose schools have reopened. According to ASER 2021, the reduction in help is driven largely by less support from fathers.

Children’s access to textbooks for their current grade has also improved in 2021 over previous years. Around 91.9 per cent of enrolled children now had textbooks for their current grade, an increase over previous year. Moreover, among enrolled children whose schools had not reopened, 39.8 per cent received some kind of learning materials or activities (other than textbooks) from their teachers during the reference week. This is a slight increase over 2020, when 35.6 per cent children received learning materials in the reference week.

Every year, from 2005 to 2014, and then every alternate year till 2018, ASER has reported on the schooling status of children in the 5-16 age group across rural India and their ability to do basic reading and arithmetic tasks. The sixteenth ASER 2021 followed the same format of a phone-based survey as last year owing to the pandemic.

Conducted in September-October 2021, 18 months after the first lockdown, the survey explores how children in the age group of 5-16 studied at home since the onset of the pandemic and the challenges schools and households now face as schools reopen across states. ASER 2021 was conducted in 25 states and three Union Territories. It reached a total of 76,706 households and 75,234 children in the age group of 5-16 years, as well as teachers or head teachers from 7,299 government schools offering primary grades.