20 pc of Class III students can’t read Class I text: Survey

Around 45 per cent (pc) students in Class II and 20 pc in Class III are unable to read a Class I-level textbook in different schools of Khurda district, revealed a latest study.
For representational purposes. (File Photo)
For representational purposes. (File Photo)

BHUBANESWAR: Around 45 per cent (pc) students in Class II and 20 pc in Class III are unable to read a Class I-level textbook in different schools of Khurda district, revealed a latest study.The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2019 on ‘Early Years’ released recently also found that around seven pc children are not able to answer comprehension questions of Class I.

The survey, conducted to look at the progression of children’s ability levels over the first three years of primary school, revealed that 23.1 pc children in Class I, 10 pc in Class II and 7.3 pc in Class III can not even read letters.

Similarly, around 65 pc children can not recognise numbers up to 99 in Class I, while 38 pc students are unable to identify these numbers in Class II. Nearly 18 pc children in Class III can not recognise these numbers.

The ability to do numeracy tasks is also not encouraging as around 45 pc in Class III of the district are unable to do numeric addition or substraction. The report stated that only 22.2 pc children can do numeric addition in Class I and 48.2 pc can do it in Class II. Only 67.3 pc children in Class III can do numeric addition.

Likewise, just 16.2 pc students in Class I, 36.3 pc in Class II and 51.3 pc in Class III can do numeric substraction correctly.

As per the report, less than 65 pc children in the age group of 7 to 8 years have the ability to identify emotions correctly. Only 61.6 pc children at the age of 7 year and 68 pc at the age of 8 year are able to identify all emotions such as happy, sad, angry and afraid correctly.

The ability to identify emotions is an important part of social and emotional development of children. Only 35.9 pc children have the ability to identify emotions at the age of 4 years, while 48.4 pc and 53 pc children have this ability at the age of 5 and 6 years respectively. Facilitated by Pratham, the ASER focuses on children’s schooling status, basic learning and physical infrastructure of schools across the country. The ASER-2019 was conducted in one district of the State where a total of 60 villages, 1,159 households and 1,252 children were covered.

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