Survey provides baseline for government’s NIPUN mission to improve basic education
Survey provides baseline for government’s NIPUN mission to improve basic education
According to a survey conducted by the Union Ministry of Education and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), students’ basic education in Hindi is poor, but in some states their performance in regional languages was worse.
About 53% of Class 3 students in 18 states surveyed for Hindi proficiency either lacked knowledge and skills in reading and understanding the language. But proficiency in regional languages such as Kannada, which was analyzed in states such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, was low with 59% of students exhibiting limited or limited skills.
In Assam and Meghalaya, 67% of the students could not perform well in Assamese. In Kerala, 56% of students could not read or understand Malayalam properly, and in Goa 59% of students could not do so in Konkani. In Meghalaya, 61% of the Khasi students could not perform well, and in Manipur 54% were found to be poor.
As far as Urdu is concerned, which was assessed in 13 states, 65% of the learners could not perform well.
The survey divides learners into four categories based on their knowledge and skills – those who are “deficient”, those with “limited” competencies, those with “adequate” abilities and those who are “superior”.
The findings are part of the National Report on the Benchmarking of Oral Reading Fluency with Reading Comprehension and Numeracy, which aims to assess children’s basic learning at the end of Class 3.
The National Education Policy 2022, which advocates a three-language formula, where two languages are native to India, states that the medium of instruction should be in the mother tongue at least till class 5 or preferably till class 8, after which it Maybe taught as language.
The policy also stresses on the importance of basic education.
The survey findings will help the government set benchmarks in 20 languages and numeracy. The government has launched NIPUN as a national mission to enable all children to acquire basic skills at the end of Class 3 by the year 2026-2027 and these benchmarks will provide the baseline for subsequent surveys.
About 86,000 Class 3 students from 10,000 schools were included for the study. The sample included state government schools, government aided schools, private recognized and central government schools.
As far as skills in maths are concerned, the study found that the most basic knowledge and skills in arithmetic were either low or limited in 48% of Class 3 students.
At least 11% of students could not complete the most basic grade-level tasks in numeracy and 37% of learners could only partially complete basic grade-level tasks.
Among the states, Tamil Nadu was the worst performer, with 77% of students either lacking or having only limited numerical skills. This was followed by Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir with 72% students in these two categories, 65% in Goa, 62% in Gujarat and Andaman and Nicobar.
Overall, the 11 states had more than 50% students who either lacked or had limited skills with numbers.