Notes

INTRODUCTION
ASER: Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2021 November 17, 2021

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is a citizen-led household survey that provides
nationally representative estimates of children’s schooling status and their foundational reading and
arithmetic skills. In its standard format, the survey reaches children in the age group of 3-16 in
almost all rural districts of India. It is carried out each year by volunteers from partner organisations
like colleges, universities, non-profit organisations, and teacher training institutes, among others

ASER 2021 retains the phone survey format. More than 3000 volunteers across the country spoke to
parents and teachers, aiming to understand how children in the age group of 5-16 have studied at
home since the onset of the pandemic and the challenges that schools and households now face as
schools reopen.

25 states & 3 UTs, 581 districts

17,184 villages covered
75,234 children (age 5-16) reached
7,299 schools surveyed

West Bengal
Dakshin Dinajpur Foundation for Rural Integration Economic and Nature Development (DD-FRIEND),
Balurghat, Dakshin Dinajpur Department of Social Work, Bankura University, Bankura Department of
Sociology Burdwan University, Burdwan Department of Sociology, Kalyani University, Nadia Kajla
Janakalyan Samiti, Purba Medinipur Khardah Public Cultural and Welfare Association, Haora NSS
Unit, Gour Mahavidyalaya, Mangal Bari, Maldah NSS Unit, Jadavpur University, South Twenty Four
Parganas NSS Unit, Jagannath Kishore College, Purulia NSS Unit, Raiganj University, Raiganj, Uttar
Dinajpur

With the pandemic extending into yet another year, field-based survey operations were still not
possible on a national scale. However, after eighteen months of closures, schools in India had
either reopened or were on the verge of doing so. The need to examine what this meant for
households and schools was apparent.

This report uses the ASER 2021 survey data to explore the following areas: • Children's enrollment:
Explores patterns of enrollment and dropout among 5-16-year-olds in rural India. • Paid tuition
classes: Explores the trends in children taking paid tuition classes to aid their studies. •
Smartphones: Reports on whether households have smartphones and if so, whether children have
access to them. • Learning support at home: Examines whether and how families support children at
home as schools begin to reopen. • Access to and availability of learning materials: Reports whether
children received textbooks and additional learning materials or activities from schools, and the
mediums through which they accessed the latter. • Additional areas such as engagement with
learning activities, and challenges of remote learning. • School survey: Explores perceived changes in
enrollment patterns and the reasons for the same; the teaching-learning activities and COVID
prevention measures being followed in reopened schools; and progress in remote teaching-learning
in schools that had not reopened