In rural Jharkhand, youths in the age group of 14-18 years are more comfortable handling a digital device like a smartphone than applying basic educational skills in daily life situations.

While only 5.4 per cent of those aged between 14 and 16 years and 12.0 per cent aged 17-18 years could calculate simple interest for loan repayment, 88.7 per cent of them all used smartphones. Most of them also used social media, could find videos on YouTube and share them.

This was revealed in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023, released recently by an NGO, Pratham, following its pan-India survey involving interviews with 34,745 rural youths in that age group in 28 districts of 26 states.

In Jharkhand, East Singhbhum district was chosen for the purpose where volunteers personally interviewed 1,113 youths of 988 households spread across 60 villages.

The district has 13 secondary and 5 higher secondary schools per one lakh students but about one-fifth of those aged 14-18 were not enrolled in any school, while 54.1 per cent were found studying in classes up to X and only 22.8 per cent in classes XI and XII, the survey found.

Among those in the 14-16 age group, 57.6 per cent could read standard II level text,
40.7 per cent did basic arithmetic such as dividing a 3-digit number by a single digit
one and 41.1 per cent read sentences in English.

Those aged 17-18 performed little better with these figures reading 63.4, 42.8 and 49.2 per cent respectively.

After asking those aged 14-16, it was found that 38.4 per cent could apply the unitary method but only 25.2 per cent could calculate discount and 5.4 per cent did interest calculation.

Those aged 17-18, however, performed better with these figures reading 41.0 per cent, 34.1 per cent and 12.0 per cent respectively in their cases.

In comparison, 86.6 per cent in 14-16 age group and 92.5 per cent of those aged 17-18 could use smartphones.

Asked those aged 14-16 who used smartphones, 89.1 per cent informed they used social media, 22.1 per cent knew how to make a profile private, 31.4 per cent could block or report a profile and 31.2 per cent could change their password.

Those aged 17-18, were found to be more deft with these figures reading 94.6 per cent, 42.0 per cent, 52.3 per cent and 48.8 per cent respectively.