The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)

Abstract

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is a national citizen-led rapid assessment of children's ability to read simple text and do basic arithmetic. ASER is designed and facilitated by the Indian nongovernment organisation Pratham, and has been conducted every year since 2005 by partner organisations in every rural district of India, reaching more than 600,000 children annually. The assessment differs from most other international and national large-scale assessments in several key respects, such as the use of household rather than school-based sampling and the focus on simple tools and indicators that are easy to administer and understand. All ASER metrics, measures and processes are intended to engage ordinary citizens in thinking about and acting to improve basic learning outcomes in India. By conducting a massive national survey each year, ASER has demonstrated that it is possible to use simple, reliable and scientific methods of sampling and assessment on a large scale for high impact at a very low cost. Key to this aspect of ASER has been its ability to mobilise over 25,000 volunteers each year. ASER has been responsible to a large extent for putting the issue of learning on the agenda in India. More recently, the model has been adapted for use in several African and Asian countries. Taken together, these initiatives reached more than a million children in 2012.

Multilingualism and multiliteracy in primary education in India: A discussion of some methodological challenges of an interdisciplinary research project

“…As India does not take part in international tests aimed at ranking countries in terms of their educational performance, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which was introduced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) 3 , there is no recent information about India's performance by comparison with most other countries (Banerji, Bhattacharjea and Wadhwa, 2013). The only comparisons available are those found in the BRICS Joint Statistical Publication (Ramos, Surinov, Anant, Jingzhe and Lehohla, 2017), which compares Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South-Africa.…”

“…Understanding the causes of these differences is extremely challenging because learning outcomes depend on the interplay between social, economic, demographic, linguistic, cognitive and pedagogical variables, which are difficult to disentangle. In the Indian context, concerns have been raised for many years about the learning outcomes of primary school children (see Banerji, Bhattacharjea and Wadhwa, 2013). The complexity of the issues makes it difficult to advise governments, teachers or parents on what needs to be done to improve learning in primary schools in India.…”

How to Improve Teaching Practice? Experimental Comparison of Centralized Training and In-classroom Coaching

“…In South Africa, for example, a striking 78 percent of students still cannot read with meaning after four years of schooling (Mullins et al 2017). 1 Such low levels of reading proficiency have also been documented in South Asia and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa (Banerji et al 2013, Bold et al 2017. Since reading is a gateway to future learning, addressing these shortcomings should be a policy priority.…”

Evaluación Ciudadana de Competencias Básicas de Lectura y Aritmética y Análisis de Factores Asociados en Yucatán, México

“…En este rubro sobresale la experiencia de las denominadas evaluaciones ciudadanas de aprendizajes (Citizen Led Assessment) que se han aplicado en diversos países en vías de desarrollo de África, Asia y América Latina y que son reconocidas como experiencias valiosas para fomentar la evaluación formativa de competencias básicas de lectura y aritmética así como para fomentar la participación ciudadana en la educación en las temáticas de evaluación educativa (Banerji, Bhattacharjea y Wadhwa, 2013;Report, 2016).…”

“…Esto implica, por un lado, que los objetivos de estas evaluaciones (el para qué) buscan alinearse con demandas ciudadanas específicas de cada país donde se llevan a cabo. En el caso de India, por ejemplo, la organización civil Pratham generó esta metodología, en primer lugar, para poder valorar sus propias intervenciones extra-escolares relacionadas con alfabetización (Banerji, Bhattacharjea y Wadhwa, 2013), mientras que en México los objetivos de las evaluaciones del proyecto MIA tienen que ver con incrementar la participación social en educación y posicionar la discusión sobre los aprendizajes en el contexto de reformas educativas más orientadas a políticas de evaluación docente (Vergara-Lope y Hevia, 2016).…”