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COVID-19 and India's Poorest Children: Where Recovery Stands

COVID-19 closures cut learning, meals and phone access for India's poorest children. Official 2022 to 2026 data shows what has recovered and what has not.

The Pushpa Narendra Foundation

Published · Updated · 5 min read

A group of children standing together in a narrow lane between painted houses.

COVID-19 set back learning, school meals and early nutrition services for India's poorest children. Official data from 2022 to 2026 shows reading levels and school retention recovering. Older girls out of school, unequal phone ownership and stubborn child wasting are still unfinished work. This post replaces our December 2021 version, which was written while closures were still on.

How much learning did children lose when schools closed?

UNICEF said in March 2021 that closing 1.5 million schools in 2020 affected 247 million children in India. The Ministry of Women and Child Development later told Parliament that schools stayed shut for the major part of 2020-21 in most states.

ASER, Pratham's household survey of rural India, captured the loss. In ASER 2022 (released January 2023), 20.5% of Std III children could read a Std II text, down from 27.3% in 2018. ASER said basic reading had fallen to pre-2012 levels. Enrolment held up, but children learnt less.

Who was cut off by the digital divide?

Before the pandemic only 24% of Indian households had internet access, UNICEF noted. Its later research found 42% of children aged 6 to 13 used no remote learning during closures, with girls, the poorest households and children with disabilities facing the biggest challenges.

The gap has narrowed but not closed. ASER 2024 found almost 90% of 14 to 16 year olds had a smartphone at home. Yet 36.2% of boys owned their own phone against 26.9% of girls. UDISE+ shows schools with internet rising from 49.7% in 2022-23 to 67.4% in 2025-26.

What happened to school meals and child nutrition?

Anganwadi centres closed across the country, and workers delivered supplementary nutrition to doorsteps once every 15 days. For school meals, states were advised to provide a food security allowance of grain and dry ration. About 11.80 crore (118 million) children received it in 2020-21, the Ministry of Women and Child Development said in December 2021.

Survey data is mixed. NFHS-6 (2023-24, provisional) put stunting among under-fives at 29.3%, down from 35.5% in NFHS-5 (2019-21), and severe wasting at 5.2%, down from 7.7%. Overall wasting barely moved, from 19.3% to 19.0%. NFHS-5 itself spans the pandemic, so this comparison cannot isolate its effect.

Did child marriage and child labour rise?

The evidence is thinner here. Cases registered under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act rose from 523 in 2019 to 785 in 2020 and 1,050 in 2021, per NCRB data the Ministry of Women and Child Development shared in 2023. The ministry cautioned that higher reporting need not mean more child marriages, since awareness and enforcement have grown too. NFHS-6 found 20.1% of women aged 20 to 24 married before 18, down from 23.3% in NFHS-5.

For child labour we found only global figures. ILO and UNICEF estimated 160 million children in child labour worldwide in 2020 and warned that nine million more were at risk because of COVID-19. Their estimate for 2024 was 138 million. In Asia and the Pacific the share fell from 6% to 3% between 2020 and 2024.

What has improved since 2022?

ASER 2024 (January 2025) found that 23.4% of Std III children in government schools could read a Std II text, up from 16.3% in 2022 and above the 20.9% of 2018. ASER called this the highest since the survey began. In government schools, Std V reading recovered from 38.5% to 44.8% and Std III subtraction rose from 20.2% to 27.6%.

UDISE+, the Ministry of Education's school data system, shows secondary-stage dropout falling from 13.8% in 2022-23 to 7.0% in 2025-26, and secondary gross enrolment rising from 67.6% to 71.7%. The NIPUN Bharat mission, launched on 5 July 2021, aims for every child to attain basic reading and numeracy by the end of Grade 3 by 2026-27.

What is still not fixed?

ASER 2024 found 8.1% of girls aged 15 to 16 not enrolled, with 16.1% in Madhya Pradesh and 15% in Uttar Pradesh. Government-school Std VIII reading, at 67.5%, is still below its 2018 level of 69%. UDISE+ middle-stage dropout edged up from 3.5% to 3.6% in 2025-26. Two cautions: ASER covers rural India only, and the UDISE+ series starts in 2022-23, so it cannot show a pre-pandemic comparison.

How TPNF is involved

The Pushpa Narendra Foundation works with underprivileged girls through the Prajna Project / Samantaa, and runs Udaan, Sakhi and Poshan Shakti. Read more on our education page and the Prajna and Samantaa project page. These programmes are small next to the national picture above. To help, see how to get involved.

Frequently asked questions

How long were schools closed in India? Most states kept schools closed for the major part of 2020-21, per the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Dates varied by state and class, and we found no single official national count.

Did school enrolment fall during the pandemic? Not in ASER's rural data. Enrolment rose from 97.2% in 2018 to 98.4% in 2022. The government-school share of children aged 6 to 14 jumped from 65.6% to 72.9%, then eased to 66.8% in 2024.

Has learning fully recovered? In government schools, ASER 2024 shows Std III and Std V reading and Std III arithmetic above 2018 levels. Std VIII reading is not yet there.

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The Pushpa Narendra Foundation

When a young girl drops out of school due to period poverty or unmanaged anemia, her potential is locked away long before her adulthood begins. At The Pushpa Narendra Foundation (TPNF), we believe education and health cannot exist in isolation.

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