ASER 2024 surveyed 649,491 children in 17,997 villages. Its headline is genuinely good news: of Class 3 children in government schools can read a Class 2 text, up from 16.3% in 2022 and above the pre-pandemic 2018 level. It is the highest reading figure since ASER began.
It is also a sentence that needs reading twice. The improved number means roughly three in four children in Class 3 still cannot read a text two years below their grade. Learning recovery and learning adequacy are different bars.
The device findings are where education and digital life meet. Around of 14–16-year-olds have a smartphone at home, and personal ownership climbed from 19% to in two years. Access is close to solved.
What the access is used for splits: . The categories overlap — this is not a zero-sum split — but the ordering is consistent, and it is the hinge into the next module.