The first Annual Survey of Education Report, (ASER), an independent, citizen-led effort was designed to assess and understand the current state of learning in Indian schools. It aims to go beyond the usual demographic information about enrollment and attendance by evolving data about more meaningful indicators such as levels of skill in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This survey of rural schools was conducted by Pratham in conjunction with hundreds of NGOs all over the country and included nearly 6 lakh children in 2.4 lakh households from 12,000 villages in 525 rural districts. AID-India conducted the survey in its blocks in TN and helped in the co-ordination of the survey in other blocks as well.    

ASER has generated a wealth of data, and a report containing the summary of the findings is available here . For a longer discussion of the findings, go here .  

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Contributed by Anu Mandavilli