‘Enrolment in govt schools up in 2022’

Patna: Despite prolonged closure during the pandemic, enrolment of children in 6-14 age group in the government schools in Bihar has increased by 4.1% from 78.1% in 2018 to 82.2% in 2022, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 launched on Wednesday.
When compared to other states, the reading ability of Class VIII students, who can read the Class II text, in Bihar remained steady at 69.7% in 2022, up from 69.5% in 2018.The percentage of Class V students who know division has increased slightly from 29.9% in 2018 to 35.6% in 2022. While Bihar leads the way with 58% of Class VIII pupils who can do division. Manipur comes second with 53.7% in this category.

The report also indicated that Class VIII enrolment in Bihar has increased dramatically over time, with more girls enrolling than boys. The percentage of students of both government and private schools who took paid tuition classes increased significantly from 61.6% in 2018 to 71.7% in 2022. It included 71.6% of pupils in government schools and 72.4% of students in private schools.
"Bihar is a high tuition state. Over 70% of students in Bihar were taking tuition in 2022, as compared to only 10% of children in Himachal Pradesh and 15% in Maharashtra. It is very much possible that this supplemental help in the form of tuition helped restrict learning loss in the state," the report stated.
"Tutoring seems to have been a tradition in several states such as West Bengal and Bihar, where the percentage of students going to private schools was low and about 70% of them were going to tutors. In these states, many young people in villages made a living by tutoring children. It suggests that in the post-pandemic period, private tutoring spread and grew in other states as young educated people prepared for and waited for jobs," it said.
A national field-based ASER was undertaken after a four-year hiatus. The 2022 data reflects both the learning gap experienced during the pandemic and the recovery that occurred when schools reopened.
The report was based on a survey of 6,99,597 children from over 19,060 villages in 616 districts, covering 374,554 households.
Although 92.4% of schools still do not have computers for students, this figure has decreased from 96.6% in 2018.
Electricity connection in 92.5% of schools is up from 69.5% in 2018. Physical education classes have also been allocated weekly in 70.7% of upper primary schools and 49.0% of primary classes. There were no such provisions earlier.