ASER Survey Shows Reading Skills Of Tamil Nadu Students Affected By Pandemic
Update: 2023-01-20 12:00 IST
The results of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2022) survey, which were revealed on Wednesday, clearly showed the impact of the pandemic and lengthy school shutdown. ASER survey showed a decline in children's basic reading and math skills at the State and federal levels. According to the survey report, this reversed the gradual advances made in the interim years and returned the results to their pre-2012 levels.
After 2018, the survey went back out into the field in 2022, recruiting 30,737 kids from 920 villages spread throughout 31 districts of the State.
In 2018, only 10.2% of Class 3 students in public and private schools were able to read texts at the Class 2-level. By 2022, this figure had fallen to 4.8%. One of the States with the lowest reading proficiency rates was Tamil Nadu. Additionally, the percentage fell nationally, from 27.3% in 2018 to 20.5% in 2022.
The results of the study showed a comparable decline in fundamental reading skills among Class 8 students nationwide and among Class 5 pupils in Tamil Nadu who could read a Class 2-level text. Regarding basic mathematics, just 11.2% of the students in Class 3 and 14.9% of those in Class 5 were able to perform subtraction and division, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Ennum Ezhuthum Mission was started by the Tamil Nadu government to address issues with foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) among elementary school students after the lengthy shutdown of schools. The survey's results, which showed that almost 90% of schools had teachers with FLN training, made this clear.