A study carried out by the Centre and the National Council of Educational Research and Training — Foundational Learning Skills (FLS) 2022 — found that a sizeable number of students enrolled in Class III lack basic mathematical skills such as identifying numbers.
The study was carried out on 86,000 students in 10,000 schools across India and concluded that 37% of the students lacked skills like identifying numbers and another 11% lacked the "most basic knowledge and skills".
The study assessed the literacy skills of these students in 20 languages, including English, Urdu, Hindi and other regional languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Odia, and Gujarati. Fifteen per cent of these students lacked basic skills in English language and 30 per cent had "limited skills".
The schools included state government schools, government-aided schools, private recognised, and central government schools. A report by the UNESCO in January 2022 said that only 12.3% of children in the age group of 10-16 years of age are proficient in basic mathematics in India. The report stated that India projected to increase its numeracy skills to 65% by 2025, the current figures were far behind its neighbours like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Here are some highlights from the NCERT study:
34% students are "fairly superior" in English
Of the 86000 students of Class III assessed in the study, 15% lacked the basic skills in the English language, 30% had "limited skills", 21% had sufficient skills, and 34% had fairly superior skills. The skills were tested and graded on the basis of correct words read per minute. For this, 36,803 students across 3942 schools (in rural as well as urban areas) were assessed. Fifty-five percent of students in urban areas participated in the assessment, while the participation from rural areas was 45%. The lowest participation was from Scheduled Castes (12%), followed by Scheduled Tribes 22%, and OBC (29%).
A total of 18% of the students could speak 66 to 70 words per minute correctly.
Regional language has highest takers
Other languages in which students lacked basic skills were: Marathi (17%), Bengali (20%), Gujarati 17%), Malayalam (17%), Tamil (42%) and Urdu 25%). Regional languages had the highest takers in rural areas, such as Assamese (90% in rural areas), Bengali (79% in rural areas) and Bodo (89% in rural areas). Hindi saw a participation of 52% in rural areas. Among social groups, it saw the highest participation from the OBCs (35%). Urdu, on the other hand, saw highest particpation fro urban areas (60%). The samples were taken from states Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tail Nadu and Telangana.
TN and J&K students faired poorest in maths
In numeracy, Tamil Nadu (29%) and Jammu and Kashmir (28%) had the highest number of students with poor numeracy skills and could not complete the most basic grade-level tasks. These were followed by Assam, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. Bihar leads the numeracy skills charts where 18% of students exceeded the minimum proficiency criteria, followed by West Bengal(16%). Odisha, Karnataka and Puducherry ranked next with 14% each.
Why was FLS conducted?
In July 2021, the Ministry of Education launched the National Initiative for Prociency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat in July 2021. NIPUN was aimed to "all children at the end of Grade 3 to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-2027". The NCERT in March 2022 conducted the FLS to strengthen the efforts for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN). The FLS was conducted in 20 languages used as a medium of instruction in various state/UTs. These languages are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, English, Garo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Khasi, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Mizo, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
The conclusions of the study would also set the "baseline for NIPUN Bharat mission", an initiative launched by the Education Ministry of India under National Education Policy 2020. The scheme aims to ensure that every child enrolled in Class III "gains foundational numeracy and literacy".