1/3rd of rural teens don't know India's capital

Chennai: In this digital era where entrance exams, recruitment process, courses and various government services are conducted/offered online, more than half of the rural youth in the country have never used computer or internet, reveals the 12th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2017 released on Tuesday.

“Though the mobile phone usage is widespread in the 14-18 age group (73 per cent used the mobile phone within last week), the use of internet and computer was much lower. While 28 per cent and 26 per cent of teens used internet and computers in the last week preceding the survey, 59 per cent had never used computers and 64 per cent had never used the internet,” the survey pointed out.

The 2017 ASER report has made an attempt to look ‘beyond basics’ and explore a wider set of domains beyond foundational reading and arithmetic.

The survey for the Annual Status of Education Report for rural India in 2017 was carried out in 28 districts spread across 24 states including Madurai district in Tamil Nadu. It surveyed more than 30,000 persons in 1,641 villages across the country.

“Even though the mobile usage is as high as 95.3 per cent in Madurai district, the computer and internet usage is very low. Of 59.3 oer cent of the youth participated in the survey have never used the internet and 27.1 per cent have never used the computer,” B.Oliver, state head, Pratham Education Foundation, Tamil Nadu.

The report also showed that 25 per cent of the youth could not read basic text fluently, more than half of them struggled with basic arithmetic operations.
“Though the basic reading and arithmetic skills are better than the national average in Madurai district, it is still deplorable that only 47 per cent of them can do divisions. Even after 8 years of schooling they could not read class 2 level texts and 53 per cent of them alone can read simple English sentences,” he said.
The teens also fared poorly in geography and general knowledge in across the country when they were questioned about the name of India’s capital. “One-third of the students (36 per cent) could not answer the name of India’s capital correctly and only 42 per cent students could point out their states in the India map correctly,” the report noted.

The report said 86 per cent of the youth in the 14-18 age group are still within the formal education system, either in school or in college. More than half of all youth in this age group are enrolled in class 10 or below. Only 14 per cent are not enrolled in any form of formal education. It further said about 60 per cent of the youth in the age group 14-18 years wanted to study beyond class 12.

Professional aspirations are clearly based on gender with males aiming to join the army or police or becoming engineers and females showing the preference for teaching and nursing careers. A 40 per cent of youth said they did have any role models for the profession they aspired to.