ASER Centre
Evidence for actionANNUAL STATUS OF EDUCATION REPORT: KEY DOCUMENTS
Overview
ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) is the largest annual household survey carried out by citizens of India to understand whether children are enrolled in school and whether they are learning.
Read more:
ASER: Frequently Asked Questions
Rukmini Banerji, Suman Bhattacharjea & Wilima Wadhwa (2013).The Annual Status of Education Report. Research in Comparative and International Education, Special Issue on 'The Globalization of Assessment: A forum on international tests of student performance' (Vol 8, No.3, 2013).
Know the difference between ASER and NAS: ASER and NCERT's National Achievement Survey compared: 2017 edition
History
By 2004, enrollment levels in primary school in India were already above 90%, but there was no information available on scale about the outcomes of primary education. Pratham's long experience of working with children suggested that although children were in school, they were not learning well. And so the idea of ASER was born.
Read more:
Banerji, R. (2017). “When Schooling doesn’t mean Learning”. Stanford Social Innovation Review.
To know more about the process that led to ASER, check out the following link: Village report cards for schooling and Learning
‘Basic’ ASER over the years
The ASER survey collects data on children’s schooling (age group 3-16) and foundational learning (age group 5-16) from almost every district in the country. This ‘basic’ ASER model was conducted annually from 2005-2014. In 2016 an alternate-year model was initiated, where the ‘basic’ ASER survey (2016, 2018) alternates with smaller surveys focusing on different aspects of education (2017, 2019).
Read more on the Basic ASER survey:
Trends Over Time: 2006 to 2014 | 2012 to 2018
Alternate-Year ASER Findings
The smaller, alternate-year ASER surveys typically visit 1 or 2 districts per state to collect data that complement ‘basic’ ASER findings.
ASER 2017 ‘Beyond Basics’ explored themes related to older children (age 14-18).
ASER 2019 'Young Children' explored topics related to education and learning outcomes in the early years (age 4-8).
ASER 2020 should have been a nationwide ‘Basic’ ASER, but COVID-19 disruptions provided the context for ASER’s first phone-based survey, exploring the provision of, and access to, remote learning (age 5-16).
ASER across the world
ASER’s citizen-led, household-based assessment model has been adapted for use in several countries across Asia, Africa and the Americas, leading to the formation of the People's Action for Learning (PAL) Network in 2015, a south-south partnership of organizations working across three continents.