new delhi childrens basic reading ability has dropped to pre2012 levels reversing the slow improvement achieved in the intervening years while the basic maths skills have declined to 2018 levels nationally this emerged in the annual status of education report aser 2022 released on wednesday according to which the decline in learning outcome has reversed to the levels of a decade agoread also3 more kids go to school but are they learning lessenrolment of children in the 614 age group in government schools seems to have improved in the last four years despite several instances of prolonged school closure especially because of covid19 during which massive dropouts were found to be temporary but the ability to read texts and solveoverall enrolment figures increase despite school closures during covid pandemicnew delhi despite school closures during the pandemic overall enrolment figures have increased from 972 in 2018 to 984 in 2022 big turnaround during this period is the rebound of enrolment in government schools the government school enrolment in this age group which saw a steady decline fromdrops are visible in both government and private schools in most states and for both boys and girls the annual education status report for rural india showed that 439 of class i children cannot read a letter while only 12 children read a complete word similarly 376 of the children in class i cannot read numbers 1 to 9 states showing a decline of more than 10 percentage points from 2018 levels include those that had higher reading levels in 2018 such as kerala from 521 in 2018 to 387 in 2022 himachal pradesh from 477 to 284 and haryana from 464 to 315the annual status of education report 2022 revealed that the percentage of children in class iii in government or private schools who can read at class iilevel dropped from 273 in 2018 to 205 in 2022 large drops are also visible in andhra pradesh from 226 to 103 and telangana from 181 to 52while the maximum drop in reading abilities have been seen in states like kerala himachal pradesh and haryana the drop in arithmetic levels has been seen in tamil nadu mizoram and haryanathe aser is a nationwide citizenled household survey that provides a snapshot of childrens schooling and learning in rural india the 2022 report is the first fieldbased basic nationwide aser after a gap of four years it comes at a time when children are back to school after an extended period of closure in the wake of covid19 pandemicthe aser reading test assessed whether a child can read letters words a simple paragraph at class i level of difficulty or a story at class ii level of difficulty the test was given one on one to all children in the age group 5 to 16 in sampled households each child was marked at the highest level that she or he can reach comfortablythe percentage of children in class iii in government or private schools who can read at