The survey attempts to gauge the improvement in children’s learning by assessing student abilities in language and mathematics. Photo: Mint
New Delhi: A significant proportion of students in class 3 are still unable to read and understand simple text or do basic maths such as addition and subtraction, according to the findings of the National Achievement Survey 2014 by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The survey attempts to gauge the improvement in children’s learning by assessing student abilities in language and mathematics.
In language, students are tested for their ability to read and understand text and to listen to and recognize words. In mathematics, students are required to perform basic functions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and geometry.
The survey was done based on information gathered from a sample of more than 104,000 students in 7,046 schools across 34 states and Union territories.
Two in three students were able to listen to a passage and understand it. Only three in five students were able to read a passage and understand it.
According to the survey’s findings, while two in three students were able to solve problems relating to simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, geometry and measurement, the number of students who could perform division was slightly more than one in two.
In most states, there was no significant difference in the quality of learning between boys and girls. Madhya Pradesh was the only state where girls lagged behind boys in the learning outcome in language. In Kerala, girls outperformed boys in both language and mathematics.
The rural-urban divide also seems to have been bridged with most of the Indian states showing no significant disparity between rural and urban students.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), prepared by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation, has been highlighting the worsening of the quality of the Indian education system.
The report, released last month, had pointed out that the quality of learning, measured by reading, writing, and arithmetic, had either shown no improvement or actually worsened in the nine years of the United Progressive Alliance government’s rule.
