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More girls in school, but boys better at maths: ASER survey

ASER is the autonomous research and assessment unit of Pratham Education Foundation.

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When it comes to basic arithmetic, boys seem to hold a substantial advantage over girls. Nationally, 50 per cent of all boys in the age group of 14 to 16 can correctly solve a division problem, as compared to 44 per cent of all girls, found out the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018. ASER is the autonomous research and assessment unit of Pratham Education Foundation.

While this gender gap exists at national-level in solving mathematical problems, several states showed otherwise. Girls in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are doing better than boys in arithmetic, said the report released on Tuesday.

In all other parameters, girls continued to outperform boys, says the report. This year's ASER report reached out to 596 districts, 3,54,944 households and 5,46,527 children in the three to 16 age group. The survey took into account three major aspects: School enrolment and attendance; basic reading and math abilities; school facilities with sports infrastructure.

For the first time in 2018, the number of children in the six to 14 age group, who are not enrolled in school, fell below 3 per cent and stood at 2.8 per cent.

"In 2006, the all India proportion of girls in the age group 11 to 14, who were out of school, stood at 10.3 per cent," says the report. "In that year, the out-of-school figures for girls (age 11-14) in nine major states stood above 10 per cent. In 2018, the overall proportion of girls, in the same segment, fell to 4.1 per cent. This figure is more than 5 per cent in only 4 states. Further, in 2008, nationally, more than 20 per cent of the girls in the 15 to 16 age group were not enrolled in school. In 2018, this figure has decreased to 13.5 per cent."

Reading abilities of children have also shown gradual improvement. The percentage of Standard III children, who can read Standard II level text, increased from 21.6 per cent in 2013 to 27.2 per cent in 2018.

However, the percentage of children being able to solve arithmetic problems remained nearly stagnant. Percentage of children in Standard III, who can solve maths problems, went up from 27.6 per cent in 2016 to just 28.1 per cent in 2018.

There isn't much of a gap in reading and arithmetic abilities in the 14-16 age group — figures for both boys and girls stood at around 77 per cent. However, girls outperform boys in many states such as Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.

The survey also looked at schools. "Nationally, in 2018, four out of 10 government primary schools surveyed had less than 60 students," said the report. This number witnessed a gradual increase from 26.1 per cent in 2009 to 30 per cent in 2011, 33.1 per cent in 2013, 39.8 per cent in 2016, and finally 43.3 per cent in 2018.

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