Opinion

From Data to Action: Why India’s Student Assessment Moment Matters

The release of the ASER 2024 report signalled more than a story of learning recovery—it marked a turning point in India’s assessment ecosystem. At the all-India level, 48.8 percent of Grade 5 students can now read a Grade 2-level text, up from 42.8 percent in 2022 and close to 2018 levels. In arithmetic, 30.7 percent of Grade 5 students can solve division problems, compared with 25.6 percent in 2022—the highest in the past decade. These improvements, especially in government schools, suggest that India’s long-running learning crisis can indeed be reversed. But this kind of data also shows that measurement alone is no longer enough— turning it into improvement is now the frontier.

This progress sits within a rapidly evolving student-assessment architecture. From ASER’s citizen-led household surveys to school-based evaluations, state assessments for foundational learning, and the establishment of PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), India is investing heavily in generating robust evidence on student learning. The National Education Policy 2020 set this direction, calling for “transforming assessment for optimisation of learning” and for regular, transparent reporting of outcomes. The PRS India 2024 notes that while most states now conduct some form of large- scale assessment, few have yet built strong feedback loops to turn data into classroom change.

That is the challenge ahead. Measurement is no longer the bottleneck; meaning-making is. Assessment results often remain buried in reports or dashboards—teachers seldom receive timely, actionable feedback. Without assessment literacy and local capacity to interpret findings, even the best data risk becoming decorative rather than diagnostic.

The policy implications are clear:

* Invest in assessment literacy at state, district, and school levels so data become actionable.

* Link large-scale assessments to local planning and teacher professional learning within the same academic cycle.

* Design public disclosure of learning outcomes that empowers improvement—not comparison—making data usable for schools, communities, and policy-makers alike.

* Keep equity at the centre: adapt assessment design and feedback to multilingual, multi-board, and diverse-context classrooms.

Assessments must serve as mirrors of learning, not merely tools of audit. India’s next leap depends less on how much we test than on how intelligently we use what we test. If we succeed, the true measure of reform will not be the data we publish—but the learning that follows.

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Author - Pooja Nagpal , Doctoral Researcher - University of Sydney

 

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