JHARSUGUDA: Jharsuguda's government schools are witnessing a significant change. In the last two years, the classrooms have become colourful and the students in them, better at learning.
If the Ministry of Education’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is any indication, there has been an improvement in learning outcomes of children in the district’s government schools, be it their ability to read or do basic arithmetic like substraction and division. This is not all. In the overall HSC (Class 10) results of the state, Jharsuguda has improved its rank from 15 in 2023 to five last year.
This turnaround didn’t happen overnight. ‘Udiyan Tara’ (a Sambalpuri term which translates to Rising Stars), a dedicated initiative by the Jharsuguda administration under Samagra Shiksha, has been able to bring about improvement in students’ foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) skills, which are considered the bedrock of a child’s education.
The ASER-2024 of Jharsuguda indicates that 87.7 per cent (pc) of children aged 6-14 are enrolled in government schools. While 63.2 pc are able to read English class books, 54.9 pc can do basic arithmetic. In 2022, the ASER had found out that 53 pc of the students were able to read English at a basic level and 40.2 pc could do simple arithmetic.
Realising the need for FLN improvement, the district administration had in 2023-24 academic session launched ‘Udiyan Tara’ covering all students of government schools. The initiative aimed at bringing students on par with their syllabus through remedial classes and continuous academic monitoring, said collector Aboli Sunil Naravane.
Besides the regular students, teachers also brought long absentees and dropouts back to classes and every student’s gradewise learning capabilities were identified through baseline assessments. “This helped us identify the slow learners in every school and we framed interesting teaching-learning materials and remedial classes and activities for them to improve their learning,” the collector said.
With Sambalpuri being the spoken language, Odia books of different grades were also translated into the local language. The primary focus was on remedial learning. While in the 2023-24 session, remedial classes for slow learners were held for one period every Friday followed by an assessment on Saturday, such classes were conducted every day for two periods after class hours followed by a monthly assessment in 2024-25 session.
A reading festival ‘Pathana Parbana’ for students of Class I to XII was also a part of the initiative. The consistent efforts have paid off with schools posting good learning gains in ASER evaluations.
However, the exercise also brought to fore the gap that exists between the language spoken by the child at home and the medium of teaching in schools.
To address it, the district administration and Samagra Shiksha recently launched a primer in Sambalpuri language for early learners. It will serve as a bridge between children’s mother tongue (Sambalpuri) and Odia language as taught in the textbooks. The idea was to ease students into learning Odia through their own language. The primer will be supplied to 4,459 Shishu Vatikas and Class-I students studying in 517 primary schools in the district.