ASER 2022: Proportion of school students taking private tuition classes up since pre-Covid years

New Delhi: The proportion of students taking private tuition classes after school has increased by more than four percentage points over the pre-COVID-19 levels across the country, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 launched on Wednesday.

The increase in certain states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, is up to eight percentage points.

The crucial report has pointed out that over the last decade, rural India has seen small but steady increases in the proportion of children in Classes 1 to 8 taking paid private tuition classes.

"Between 2018 and 2022, this proportion increased further among students in both government and private schools. Nationally, the proportion of children in Classes 1 to 8 taking paid private tuition classes increased from 26.4 per cent in 2018 to 30.5 per cent in 2022. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, the proportion of children taking paid private tuition increased by eight percentage points or more over 2018 levels," the report said.

ASER is a nationwide, citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of children's schooling and learning in rural India. The first ASER was conducted in 2005 and repeated annually for 10 years. ASER 2022 is the first field-based "basic" nationwide ASER after a gap of four years. It comes at a time when children are back in school after an extended period of school closure.

"Tutoring seems to have been a tradition in several states such as West Bengal and Bihar, where the proportion of children going to private schools was low and nearly 70 per cent children were going to tutors. Large numbers of young people in villages earned a living by tutoring children in these states. It appears that in the post-pandemic period, the practice of private tutoring may spread and grow in other states as young educated people prepare for, and wait for jobs," it said.

The report has pointed out that the all-India level incidence of tuition went up from about 25 per cent in 2018 to 30 per cent in 2022, but there is a lot of variation across the states.

"Bihar and Jharkhand are high tuition states -- 70 per cent children in Bihar and 45 per cent in Jharkhand were taking tuition in 2022 as compared to only 10 per cent children in Himachal Pradesh and 15 per cent in Maharashtra. It is entirely possible that this supplemental help in the form of tuition was successful in restricting the learning loss in these states.

"Tuition could also be behind the lower learning loss in math as compared to reading -- anecdotally we know that tuition is used more for subjects like math and science rather than for reading," the report said.