At a glance
India's largest citizen-led household survey of children's schooling and learning in rural districts, run by Pratham's ASER Centre. ASER stands for Annual Status of Education Report. It records whether children are enrolled in school and whether they can read a simple text and do basic arithmetic. Pratham started it in 2005. The survey now runs every other year. ASER 2024, released in January 2025, covered 605 rural districts, and preparation for ASER 2026 has begun.
ASER 2024 is the latest nationwide report. Pratham has announced ASER 2026, a nationwide survey normally carried out between September and November, with the report usually out by mid-January (as of October 2026).
Scope and findings
What ASER measures and what ASER 2024 found
ASER records children’s schooling and tests basic learning in the home; the 2024 survey also looked at digital skills among older children. Key findings from ASER 2024, for rural India.
Enrolment
Whether children aged 3 to 16 are enrolled in pre-school or school, and in which type of school.
Basic reading
Whether children aged 5 to 16 can read letters, words, a Std I level text, and a Std II level text.
Basic arithmetic
Whether children aged 5 to 16 can recognise numbers, do a subtraction problem, and do a simple division problem.
Digital access and skills
Whether children aged 14 to 16 have and can use a smartphone, what they use it, and whether they can complete simple digital tasks.
Households and schools
Information on household characteristics and parents’ schooling, and a visit to one government school with primary sections in each sampled village.
Enrolment
98.1% of children aged 6 to 14 were enrolled in school in 2024, close to 98.4% in 2022; the share of 15 to 16-year-olds not enrolled was 7.9%, compared with 13.1% in 2018.
Pre-school
Pre-primary enrolment of three-year-olds rose from 68.1% in 2018 to 77.4% in 2024, and of five-year-olds from 58.5% to 71.4%.
Std III reading
In government schools, 23.4% of Std III children could read a Std II level text in 2024, compared with 16.3% in 2022 and 20.9% in 2018.
Std III arithmetic
33.7% of Std III children could do at least a subtraction problem in 2024, compared with 25.9% in 2022; in government schools the figure was 27.6%, compared with 20.2% in 2022.
Std V
In government schools, 44.8% of Std V children could read a Std II level text in 2024, compared with 38.5% in 2022 and 44.2% in 2018; nationally, 30.7% could do a division problem, compared with 25.6% in 2022.
Std VIII
In government schools, 67.5% of Std VIII children could read a Std II level text in 2024, compared with 66.2% in 2022; 45.8% of Std VIII children could do basic arithmetic, compared with 44.7% in 2022.
Smartphones, ages 14 to 16
89.1% had a smartphone at home and 82.2% said they knew how to use one; of these, 57% had used it for an educational activity in the previous week and 76% for social media.
Source: ASER Centre, Pratham Education Foundation (ASER 2024, January 2025), and the Press Information Bureau (4 February 2025).
