7.1% of class 3 students in Karnataka cannot even read letters: ASER report

ASER-Rural 2024 report reveals alarming literacy and numeracy levels among class 3 students in Karnataka, sparking concern for education.

Among children in class 3 in Karnataka, 7.1% cannot read letters, 19.3% can read letters, but not words and 36.2% can read words but not class 1 level text or higher. As many as 4.8% cannot recognise numbers from 1 to 9.

These are revelations made by the Annual Status of Education Report-2024 (ASER-Rural), a nationwide rural household survey that reached 649,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India and was released on Tuesday (January 28, 2025). In Karnataka, the survey was conducted in 30 districts, 900 villages, 17,702 households and 1,20,336 children from the age group of 3 years to 16 years.

The report reveals that around 21.5% of class 3students can read class 1level text but not class 2 level text and 15.9% can read class 2 level text. Only 32% of government school and 37.8% of private school children in class 5 can read class 2 level text, and 1.2% of class 8 students do not even know letters.

Among the children in class 3, 16.3% can recognise numbers up to 9 but cannot recognise numbers up to 99 or higher, and 53% can recognise numbers up to 99 but cannot do subtraction. Around 22.4% can do subtraction but cannot do division, and 3.5% can do division.

The report also said that only 23.9% of class 3 students in government schools were able to perform numerical subtraction. Though the results improved compared to the 19.6% during the previous survey, this is lesser compared to their private counterparts where they reported 31.1%, by maintaining the same results which were reported during 2022.

To test their numerical skills, children were expected to do 2-digit by 2-digit subtraction. The report also revealed that only 19% of government school children in class 5 and 35% in class 8 can do divisions, which is 25% and 43%, respectively, among private schools.

The percentage of class 3students who can read class 2 level textbooks has slightly increased, both at government and private schools. According to the survey report, in government schools, it almost doubled from 7.7% in 2022 to 15.4% in 2024 and in private schools, it has increased from 11.7% to 17.2%.