NEW DELHI: The government is roping parliamentarians to improve quality of learning in government schools falling in areas represented by them.
The Union Human Resources Development ministry is in the process of sending out detailed report cards of a massive competency test of class 3, 5 and 8 students, carried out by the NCERT, of each constituency to the respective MPs and urging them to come up with strategies to help tackle the issue of poor quality education in schools.
The biggest such survey, which was conducted in November, 2017 and whose report has recently been compiled, showed that while learning indices of students in Rajasthan, Karnataka and Chhatisgarh are the best in the country, Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand fare the worst.
“We are writing to Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs, chief ministers and governors of every state to share with them so that they also help come up with suggestions and strategies on this crucial issue—MPs can also carry out random checks in the schools in their areas,” sources in the HRD ministry said.
As per the survey, Rajasthan and Karnataka performed the best in the survey; 75 per cent of class 3 students surveyed in Karnataka could answer a mathematics question and 78 per cent, an English language one.
Similarly, among class 5 students in the state, 67 per cent could answer a mathematics question and 70 per cent, an English language question. Class 8 students in Rajasthan performed the best with 57 per cent of those surveyed answering a math question, and 67 per cent, a language one.
The survey also showed most of the north-eastern states perform very poorly with only 39 per cent of the class 5 students surveyed in Arunachal Pradesh being able to answer a mathematics question and only 43 per cent an English language one.
In the same state, among class 3 students surveyed, only 49 per cent could answer a math question and 51 per cent an English language one.
“The idea behind carrying out such a survey was to see the learning outcomes in our schools and the results are hardly surprising,” said an official in the school education and literacy department of the ministry. “Now we want the input to be used by policy-makers at all levels for planning and designing interventions to improve learning outcomes at the district, state and national levels.”
He added that the ministry will soon start conducting workshops for this purpose.