More than half of the students between the ages of 14 to 18 in rural India cannot solve a simple division problem, the Annual Status of Education Report 2023 released on Wednesday said.
The survey by non-governmental organisation Pratham, titled “Beyond Basics”, was conducted in 28 districts across 26 states, reaching a total of 34,745 children in the age group 14 to 18 years. The survey sought to assess the level of basic skills among the age group.
Overall, 86.8% of the respondents were found to be enrolled in an educational institution. The share of 14-year-olds who were not enrolled in schools was 3.9%, while for 18-year-olds, the number increased to 32.6%.
The survey found that more than half of the children in this age group struggle with problems involving the division of three-digit numbers by one-digit numbers. This is a skill that is ideally acquired by Class four. Only 43.3% of them could solve such problems correctly.
Among those surveyed, 25% could not read a Class 2-level text fluently in their regional language, while over 42% could not read English sentences. Out of those who could read sentences in English, almost 73.5% could tell their meanings.
The report said that female students (76%) performed better than their male counterparts (70.9%) in reading a Class 2 level text in their regional language. However, males in the same age group did better than their female counterparts in arithmetic and English reading.
“Males outperform females across all financial calculation tasks.” the report said. “Those who can do division are more likely to be able to do all these tasks.”
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