Rural Survey: 32% of 18-year-olds not in school, 25% of teens struggle with grade 2 reading

Only 5.6 percent of surveyed youth report taking vocational training or other related courses currently.

The percentage of rural youth not enrolled is 3.9 percent for 14-year-old youth and 32.6 percent for 18-year-olds, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham Education Foundation.

The ASER 2023 ‘Beyond Basics’ survey was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states, reaching a total of 34,745 youth in the age group 14-18 years. One rural district has been surveyed in each major state, except Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where two rural districts have been surveyed.

Overall, 86.8 percent of 14-18-year-olds are enrolled in an educational institution. There are small gender gaps in enrollment, but notable differences are visible by age.

Further, most of the young people in this age group were enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream. In standard 9th or higher, more than half are enrolled in the Arts/Humanities stream (55.7 percent), followed by STEM (31.7 percent) and Commerce (9.4 percent).

However, females are less likely to be enrolled in the STEM stream (28.1 percent) than males (36.3 percent).

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Only 5.6 percent of surveyed youth report taking vocational training or other related courses currently. Youth at the college level are the most likely to be taking vocational training (16.2 percent).

Most youths are taking short-duration courses (of 6 months or less). A higher percentage of males (40.3 percent) than females (28 percent) report doing work other than household work for at least 15 days during the preceding month. Among both males and females, most youth who are working in activities other than household work tend to be working on family farms.

A little over half can read sentences in English

For nearly two decades, ASER reports have consistently pointed to the fact that many children in elementary school need urgent support for acquiring foundational skills like reading and basic arithmetic.

With this year’s focus on an older age group, it is important to understand the level of basic skills among youth as well as their preparedness for tasks that go “beyond basics”. Surveyed youth were given five types of tasks: basic reading, math and English abilities; application of basic skills to everyday calculations; reading and understanding written instructions; and financial calculations that need to be done in real life.

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About 25 percent of the 14-18 age group still cannot read a standard 2nd-level text fluently in their regional language. More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems. Only 43.3 percent of 14-18-year-olds can do such problems correctly. This skill is usually expected in standard 3rd and 4th.

A little over half can read sentences in English (57.3 percent). Of those who can read sentences in English, almost three-quarters can tell their meanings (73.5 percent).

Across enrollment categories, females (76 percent) do better than males (70.9 percent) in reading a standard 2nd-level text in their regional language. In contrast, males do better than their female counterparts in arithmetic and English reading.