CHENNAI: At a time when the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) are highlighting low literacy and numeracy levels among primary school children in Tamil Nadu, the Elementary Education Directorate is launching an ‘open challenge’, inviting officials, alumni and others to visit 4,552 participating schools to assess firsthand students’ proficiency in Tamil, English and Mathematics.
The initiative began with a social media post by K Valarmathi, headmaster of T Pudhur Panchayat Union Primary School in Anekollu, Krishnagiri district, on November 4, 2024, challenging School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi to visit the school and assess students’ learning.
Expressing confidence in her students’ abilities, she wrote, “There are 33 students in my school. They can read English and Tamil fluently and perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The minister should come to our school and inspect their learning outcomes,” she said.
Taking up the challenge, Minister Anbil Mahesh visited the school, where students impressed him by reading Tamil and English texts fluently and solved arithmetic problems with ease. Subsequently, he asked more teachers to give him similar challenges.
Following this, headmasters and teachers from 4,552 primary schools submitted requests to their respective district education officers (elementary) to inspect their schools in November. The school education department has given these schools 100 days to prepare their students, which ends in April this year.
With the preparation period nearing completion, the school education secretary has directed schools to invite district-level officials including the district collector and education officers along with local representatives to assess students’ reading and arithmetic skills.
“Tamil Nadu has over 35,000 primary schools, including 29,000 government schools and 6,000 government-aided schools. Of these, 4,552 schools have voluntarily stepped forward to take part in the challenge,” said PA Naresh, director of Elementary Education.
He added that the initiative aims to challenge the perception that learning outcomes in Tamil Nadu’s primary schools are low. The department expects participation to grow, with more than 10,000 schools likely to join by June.
According to the latest ASER in January 2025, only 12% of Class 3 students in TN could read a Class 2-level text, while only 27.7% could do basic subtraction. However, Poyyamozhi refuted the findings.