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Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)
ASER, India's largest independent survey of learning, is an annual survey of learning levels among children across India. It is facilitated by Pratham and conducted on the ground with the help of more than 500 local NGOs, colleges and universities.
ASER has been annually testing the reading and arithmetic skills of hundreds of thousands of children all across India since 2005, generating a picture of the status of children’s learning in the country. The findings are disseminated to the government and citizens at the national, state and local level. Pratham also encourages local communities to look for ways to improve their primary education system.
By focusing on learning levels, ASER (which means means “impact” in Hindi) has emerged as a powerful tool of advocacy and reform. Essentially, ASER is changing the paradigm of primary education from a focus on mere enrollment to a focus on the quality of education imparted in schools.
The ASER Center was established in 2008 to institutionalize ASER and ASER-like initiatives that evaluate the quality of output in social sectors. Read more
ASER and the ASER Center are currently being supported by Google.org.
ASER 2008
The Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) 2008 was released on January 13, 2009. This Pratham-facilitated survey has emerged as a powerful tool for advocacy and educational reform in India. This year, the survey was conducted in over 16,198 villages all across rural India. Surveyors tested over 700,000 children and visited over 13,000 schools.
Some of the key findings of ASER 2008 are summarized here
You can access the complete report here
Photo: Two girls taking the reading test for ASER in Chattisgarh
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