HYDERABAD: The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024, released on Tuesday, has revealed that Telangana has achieved near-universal level enrollment for certain age groups. Only 0.5 per cent of children aged 6-14 in rural areas are not enrolled in schools.
This positions it among the best-performing states in access to education. Overall, Telangana has registered 73.5 per cent average enrollment in schools in 2024 against 75.5 percent last year.
This success in access contrasts with challenges in foundational learning outcomes, which remain significantly below desirable levels.
Districts like Karimnagar, Medak, Nalgonda and Warangal recorded zero non-enrollment, while Adilabad had the highest rate at 1.5 per cent. Government school enrollment stood at 59.8 per cent for children in the same age group, with Adilabad leading at 73.8 per cent and Khammam at 70.4 per cent.
Nizamabad reported the lowest government school enrollment at 47.9 per cent. Across India, more than 95 per cent of children aged 6–14 are enrolled in schools.
However, challenges continued in foundational literacy and numeracy, according to the report. Among students in Classes III to V, only 18 per cent could read a Class II-level text, while 49 per cent could perform basic subtraction.
In Classes VI to VIII, the report found, only 46.4 per cent of students could read a Class II text, and 34.7 per cent could do divisions.
Medak consistently performed poorly, with the lowest reading and arithmetic levels across grades, while districts like Mahbubnagar and Rangareddy showed better arithmetic skills.
Southern states, including Telangana, generally performed better in literacy and numeracy compared to other regions, the report said.
It also said that the digital literacy showed another kind of challenge. In Telangana, 96 per cent of households reported smartphone availability, but only 78 per cent of the children could bring one to complete digital tasks and 73 per cent could use it independently.
There was also a small but noticeable gap between boys and girls, with boys generally more comfortable using smartphones on their own.
When given simple tasks like setting an alarm or looking up information online, the success rates were fairly high, but things changed as to safety and security.
More than 80 per cent of students reported using social media, but only 67 per cent knew how to block or report a user, and just about 60 per cent could change a password.
More importantly, the report reaffirmed that Telangana had been lagging behind in “computers in schools” and “student computer usage”. The availability of computers improved from 9.3 per cent (2010) to 14.1 per cent (2022) but dropped to 9.0 per cent in 2024, compared to the all-India average of 27.4 per cent of schools having computers available for children in 2024.
The report found that school facilities in Telangana had improved in areas like electricity, which is available in 91.1 per cent of schools. Toilets for girls are usable in 73.7 per cent of schools and libraries are there in most of the institutions, though only 56.8 per cent of them actively engage children.
Drinking water was not available in 15.8 per cent of schools and only 60.4 per cent had designated playgrounds, a broader issue across the country, where sports infrastructure has not seen much progress since 2018.
Student and teacher attendance in Telangana, at 73.5 per cent and 85.5 per cent respectively, is consistent with national averages, though multi-grade classrooms remain common and pose challenges to effective learning.
