The Annual Status of Education Report, or ASER, is the largest citizen-led annual survey of children in rural India. Facilitated by Pratham and conducted every year since 2005, the survey seeks to understand children’s status of schooling and basic learning in India. Each year, almost all rural districts in the country are surveyed with the support of volunteers from local organizations and institutions such as your organization. ASER reaches over 600,000 children (aged 3 to 16) annually through 25,000volunteers.

Over the years, ASER has become a vital policy input, both nationally and internationally. For example, the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) chapter on education defines mastery of basic learning as an explicit objective of primary education. In addition to this, with the New Education Policy coming out soon, it will be important to continue our focus on children’s basic learning levels, as we have been doing previously.

ASER 2018 has been scheduled for the months of October – November in all rural districts of Pondicherry, beginning with a 5 or 6-day state-level training, followed by a 3-day district-level training and field work over the following weekend. Full participation of master trainers and volunteers in these training is mandatory. After the training, 30 randomly-selected villages will be surveyed in each district. In each sampled village, 20 households will be randomly chosen. In these 20 households, all children in the age group of 5-16 years will be assessed on basic reading and arithmetic, as well as the application of these skills in some everyday tasks.

TYCL had facilitated the ASER survey in Pondicherry. Around 40 student volunteers from various college in Pondicherry were trained for the survey. And the trained volunteers were surveyed 30 villages across the Pondicherry. Mr.Francis Kulandai Raj(Puducherry Youth Helpline Fellow, TYCL), Ms. Anitha & Mr. Arun has coordinated and facilitated the entire program.