The Economic Survey has acknowledged a gaping lacuna in government data regarding the impact of the pandemic on education, especially on 25 crore schoolchildren who have not entered a classroom in almost two years.
“It is difficult to gauge the real time impact of repeated lockdowns on education sector because the latest available comprehensive official data dates back to 2019-20. This provides the longer time pre-COVID trends but does not tell us how the trend may have been impacted by COVID-19 induced restrictions,” said the Department of Economic Affairs in its annual Survey.
Instead, it took the unorthodox step of extensively citing non-governmental survey data such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) conducted by the NGO Pratham to show that enrolment and learning have both suffered during the lockdowns.
ASER’s 2021 report showed that the number of children aged 6-14 years who are not enrolled in schools doubled from 2.5% in 2018 to 4.6% in 2021, said the Survey. ASER also found a significant shift from private to government schools, fuelled by the financial distress of parents, free facilities and families migrating back to villages. About 6 in 10 rural children did not receive any learning materials or activities during the pandemic, it said.
The digital divide has exacerbated the inequity in access to education, said the ASER report, noting that non-availability of smartphones and connectivity issues prevented a majority of rural students from accessing online education. About 6 in 10 rural children did not receive any learning materials or activities during the pandemic, it said.
“Government data to corroborate these observations is not available,” said the Survey, noting the lack of comprehensive official data. “Thus, policy makers have taken into account alternate sources. We are aware that such data has limitation but in the interest of being up to date this data has been included,” it said.
