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IMPHAL, May 29 : The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2008 was launched today by the ASER team in Manipur to know if the children are in the schools and learning. It appealed to individuals, organizations, institutions and businesses to join this national effort to create this year’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER).

The ASER is a unique large scale effort undertaken by citizens of India to understand and to help in improving the status of elementary education in the country. ASER is an annual effort and it will go on until December 2010 the deadline for achieving quality universal elementary education as declared by the government of India.

ASER Manipur 2008 is conducted by the people of Manipur with the help of ASER centre (Assessment Survey Evaluation Research), New Delhi, which is facilitated by PRATHAM. Dedicated volunteers (NGOs, institutes or individuals) carried out the survey in their respective districts last year and all nine districts of the state in 223 villages, 5,232 households and 11,046 (age 3-16 years) children in the state have been covered.

Some of the key findings in ASER 2008 are with 40.3 percent of 3-4 age children, pre-school enrollment in the state is very low. Proper attention should be given to ensure none of the child in that age group are being neglected from the educational privilege. And around 63.7 percent of children (6-14 age) more than half of the children in the state are enrolled in private school, while 2.6 percent of children (age 6-14) are out of school in Manipur. In India as a whole the drop out rate is 4.3 percent for age group 6-14.

Talking to media persons in this regard ASER Research associate Mohit Anand maintained that India has almost 200 million children (age group 6 to 14) living in over 1 million habitats. One of India’s major goals in this decade is to ensure that all thses children are enrolled in school, attending regularly and learning. The government of India has launched Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - a massive nation wide program to ensure that this happens by 2010. And to support this ambitious plan, since 2004, every Indian citizen pays three percent educational cess towards the universalisation of elementary education in the country.

He further noted that ASER is the largest and uniquely participative household survey on elementary education in India ever done by people outside the government. It is facilitated by Pratham and is executed by local groups in each district. ASER is funded by contributions from institutions and individuals. In 2007 ASER reached over 720,000 children in 16,000 villages in 567 rural districts in India. More than 20,000 volunteers from NGOs, colleges and universities, youth and women groups participated in this effort. Since 2005 each year the entire ASER effort from start to finish takes only 100 days.

As citizens of India every year it is important that we “take stock” and assess how far we have come and how far we still have to go in order to reach the 2010 goals. ASER is the nation-wide effort by citizens to take stock of the situation and plan ahead he said.

Over the last three years ASER has created major national policy impact by bringing the issue of basic learning in the centre of discussions on elementary education. ASER has become an important policy input at the national level. It is referred to in the Planning Commission’s Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan 2007-12. ASER 2006 report was also presented to the Prime Minister.