- Are they studying in school, college, or taking vocational or technical courses?
- Are they working?
- Can they apply basic reading and arithmetic abilities to navigate everyday tasks?
- Are they digitally literate?
- The survey finds that 85.6% of the cohort are enrolled in either school or college. One major worry at the time of the pandemic was that with livelihoods being threatened, older children would drop out of school. That fear turned out to be unfounded.
- However, young people’s foundational literacy and numeracy skills (FLN) need attention. According to ASER 2023:
- 73.6% of 14-18-year-olds can read a Class 2 level text
- 43.3% can do a simple (classes 3/4) division problem
Although there are differences across grades and enrolment status, a sizeable proportion of our youth do not have basic reading and numeracy skills. Students who have progressed in school without these skills are unlikely to acquire them later. NEP 2020 states, ‘The highest priority of the education system will be to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary school by 2025.’ Some would argue that a more holistic approach is needed and that even children who may not be fluent readers can do many other things.
Why should we care whether children can do a division or not if they know how to use a calculator to get the answer? An obvious question then is: does our youth have basic skills to do everyday tasks apart from academic competencies?
ASER 2023 included some functional tasks that youngsters might encounter daily. For example, we asked:
- If three chlorine tablets are needed to purify 15 l of water, how many chlorine tablets are needed to purify 25 l of water? 48.4% could answer.
- The cohort was asked to read the instructions on an ORS packet. 65.1% of youth could answer 3 out 4 questions correctly. These numbers look close to the proportion of youngsters who can do basic maths and read simple text. A positive relationship is observed between these foundational competencies and the ability to do everyday tasks.
All of this points to the importance of foundational skills. NEP’s push to achieve universal FLN by the end of Class 2 is a welcome new direction. However, as previous ASERs have shown, there is a need to improve FLN in higher grades as well.
Apart from the FLN focus, NEP 2020 also stresses the importance of moving from a rote-based system to one that requires students to use critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
A task in ASER 2023 that required critical thinking was one where the youth were shown the interest rates offered by three banks. They were asked if they had to take a loan of ₹20,000, which bank they would go to, and the total amount they would have to pay back after a year. The lowest interest rate offered was 12%. This question was only given to those who could do a subtraction problem (63.3%) in the sample. Of these, only 10.6% – or about 6% of all youngsters in the survey – could answer both parts of the question correctly.
Calculating the interest due involves a percentage problem – about 37% could do that. However, the final answer required them to add interest to the principal to get the repayment amount. This is a simple operation. Yet, few could do both tasks.
Again, one can debate the importance of being able to calculate percentages when there is a calculator on every smartphone. If the same proportion of students who got the discount question correct had gotten the repayment question correct, one could put it down to a lack of academic skills – they don’t know how to calculate percentages. However, adding back the interest to the principal is a simple operation. But many of them couldn’t do it.
We need a reorientation of how we teach so that students can apply the academic concepts and knowledge to real-life situations. The fact that NEP articulates this is a beginning. But it may be time to get into mission mode, just like we did with FLN goals.
India is in a unique position right now.
- The economy has recovered from the Covid shock
- Digital divide between rural and urban areas, which has been narrowing, is giving rise to a ‘digital dividend’
In this scenario, the importance of human capital cannot be emphasised enough. For India to become the world’s third largest economy, the quality of our labour force must keep pace with our developmental needs.