Can smartphone savvy be used to help India's teens fill in education gaps?

In Focus by The Hindu

This year’s Annual Status of Education Report or ASER, ‘Beyond Basics’, surveyed over 34,000 young people aged between 14 and 18, in 28 districts across the country, to get an inkling into: what are the young people of India currently doing? What are their basic maths and reading abilities like? And how do they navigate the digital world through smartphone use?

The results were perhaps not very surprising given that ASER, which is brought out by the NGO Pratham, has been flagging concerns about reading and numeracy levels among primary school children. It showed that about 25% of these teens could not read a second standard text fluently in their regional language and over 50% struggled with a fourth standard-level division problem.

It also showed however, that over 85% of these teenagers were enrolled in an educational institution, and that digital awareness skills are high – nearly 90% had access to a smartphone and knew how to use it.

What do these results indicate about the education system in India? How is the country doing with regards to the Nipun Bharat Mission which aims towards foundational literacy and numeracy? Will the gaps in education hurt the employment prospects of young people and how can they be fixed? Can their ease with digital devices be harnessed towards bettering their education? Tune in to find out.