Achievement levels of AP students fall after Covid

Tirupati: The National Achievement Survey-2021 (NAS) of ministry of education, Government of India which is a large scale survey of students' learning revealed that there was a drop of 7 to 11 per cent in the achievement of students of all grades of all subjects between 2017 and 2021.

It is a nationwide survey conducted to assess the learning outcomes and health of the education system. Further, it indicated a drop in average marks from Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10 for which the study was conducted. For instance, the average marks in mother tongue of Class 3 students are 57 whereas it is 47 in Class 5, 49 in Class 8 and 39 in Class 10. The study observed very poor performance in mathematics both at national and AP state levels in Class 10 as the students secured an average of 32 per cent only.

Significantly, AP students have done better in English than in their mother tongue as they scored an average of 49 per cent marks in English as against 39 per cent in Telugu. Another interesting fact was that both Class 8 and 10 students have scored poor average marks of 35 and 37 in social studies at national as well as at AP state levels. The NAS results revealed a significant drop in achievement from Class 3 to Class 10 in mathematics as it fell from 54 to 32 in the state. Other important observations include better performance by urban students compared to rural students. SC, ST, BC students' performance is poorer than OCs.

Girl students performed slightly better when compared to boys. Commenting on the survey findings, former DEO of Chittoor district Dr K Panduranga Swamy felt that the education system was badly hit by the Covid pandemic for two years which might have resulted in the poor achievement levels of students. It may be recalled that the survey was held in November 2021 whereas the previous survey was held in 2017-18.

As such, AP lags behind in all classes in all subjects when compared to the country. The performance in some other states was better than AP. For instance, Punjab, Rajasthan and Chandigarh out performed in all classes. In AP the survey was not done in three erstwhile districts Chittoor, Kadapa and Nellore for various reasons. The NAS-2021 has covered 3.40 lakh students in 11,800 schools of all managements in 720 districts across the nation. It focussed on competency based assessment in mother tongue, maths, environmental studies, science, social studies and English.

Dr Swamy said that the objective was to evaluate children's progress and learning competencies as an indicator of the efficiency of the education system. It helps in taking appropriate steps for remedial action at different levels. It will also help to resign the professional development programmes for teachers based on the shortcomings, he felt.