National Achievement Survey for Students of Class III

The HRD Minister today released the National Achievement Survey for the Class III students. The survey which was conducted on over 1 lakh students spread over all but one state, involving over seven thousand schools and fourteen thousand teachers. Dr. M. M. Pallam Raju said that the results show that about 65% of the children were able to listen and respond correctly and about 86% of the students were able to recognize a given picture. In mathematics, 70% of the kids were able to handle simple multiplication and 84% students were able to handle data relevant to their context.

The survey conducted by NCERT assessed students’ abilities in two subjects, Language and Mathematics. In Language, they were judged on listening, recognition of words and reading comprehension and in Mathematics, numbers, basic operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, money, measurement and data handling through a child-friendly test administered in 16 languages.

In Language, 14 states scored significantly above the national average, of which the high performers were Tripura, Daman & Diu, Puducherry and Mizoram. 15 states scored significantly below the national average, of which the low performers were Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and Haryana.

In Mathematics, 14 states scored significantly above the national average, of which high performance was in Daman & Diu, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka and Dadra & Nagar Haveli. 12 states scored significantly below the national average, of which the low performers were Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir.

Gender wise, no significant difference between the performance of boys and girls in Language was found. The only exception was Madhya Pradesh, where the boys showed better performance and in Kerala and Puducherry where the girls did better. Similarly, performance in Mathematics of both boys and girls was also by and large same with the sole exception of Kerala, where girls did better.

On performance by Rural-urban criteria in Language, no significant difference in the performance of rural and urban students was found, except for Maharashtra and Dadra and Nagar Haveli where rural students did better and in Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Tripura and Daman & Diu where urban students did better. As far as Mathematics was concerned, no significant difference between rural and urban children’s performance was found in 27 states/UTs out of 34 where the tests were conducted. Releasing the report, Dr M.M. Pallam Raju said that quality is the main issue for our education system and the results of the survey indicate that the state of learning of foundational levels is not dismal as projected. He said that the Centre has helped states to appoint about twenty lakh teachers to scale up quality.

The Secretary of the Department Mr. R. Bhattacharya said that the NCERT has specified the indicators for quality. Speaking on the occasion, the representative of the UNICEF said that it is encouraging to see that students have scored well and there is no significant difference in learning on demographic issues.

Courtesy : PIB