And for a Friday based on 34 lakh students from 1.18 lakh schools participation, the National Achievement Survey 2021 has just been released. Some thoughts.…. some musings…..
Everything in India is so huge that the world is surprised to know that an All India survey of 3.4 mn students in 720 districts of the country, was done on the same day at the same time using the digital technology platform developed by NIC ( National Informatics Centre ). Ofcourse supported by a massive organisation of Central and State Govt Education personnel in lakhs. No other developing country can ever imagine doing such a survey at such a scale. The achievement tests and tools were developed and translated in 22 different languages as wide apart as Punjabi and Malayalam by NCERT. The evaluation covered only classes 3, 5, 8 and 10, but in all rural, urban, Govt and Private schools and subjects including local language, Maths, Science and social studies with English only for 10th standard.
Impact of the pandemic – not surprising that private and international schools have done better than state and Govt schools – 25% of sampled schools suffer from lack of parental support, 28% of sampled students lack access to digital devices at home etc.etc. The results of the survey need very careful analysis and education experts will opine solutions and actions. It will vary from state to state and within a state from district to district and almost school to school. All of us must support every effort – post pandemic – to get children back to schools, providing students intensive support they need to recover what they have missed and ensuring the teachers have the training and teaching resources they need. All states have planned LRPs ( Learning Recovery Plan ), developing course modules, study materials and planning various activities to help bridge the gap and recover learning loss and help recoup studies.
For a developing country like India, with all the global challenges and volatility, it is not easy. But let us all support the entire school education recovery process, the involved way, the innovative way, the SEEGOS way.