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Chandigarh best among UTs in National Achievement Survey 2021
Chandigarh performed highest among all UTs in all subjects, except EVS in Classes 3 and 5, where it came second; city’s scores for all subjects also higher than the national average
Chandigarh has outperformed all Union territories (UTs) in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021, organised by the Union ministry of education, whose results were made available on Thursday.
Chandigarh’s scores for all subjects surveyed are also higher than the national average.
However, compared to NAS 2017, the scores for all subjects were slightly lower in the latest edition of the survey.
As many as 5,726 students from 106 Chandigarh schools, including seven central government, 52 government, seven government-aided and 40 private, had appeared for the NAS exam that was held in November 2021.
Conducted nationally by the Union ministry of education once in every three years for Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10, it was last held in 2017, and thereon postponed from 2020 to 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As per the ministry, NAS is a nationally representative large-scale survey of students’ learning. “National Achievement Survey gives a system-level reflection on effectiveness of school education. Findings help compare the performance across spectrum and across population in order to find the desirable direction for improvements,” the ministry website notes.
The exam was conducted in language, mathematics and EVS for Classes 3 and 5, language, mathematics, science and social science for Class 8, and language, mathematics, science, social science and English for Class 10.
While overall rankings haven’t been calculated in the NAS report, individual scores for each class and each subject have been released, and Chandigarh has performed the best among all UTs in all subjects, except EVS in Classes 3 and 5, where the city came second.
Discussing the results, UT education secretary Purva Garg said, “We are studying the report in detail. I have asked State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) to also examine the report for any gaps at our end, based on which teacher-training material will be developed.”
Speaking about how the percentages had come down slightly for some subjects as compared to NAS 2017, Garg added, “Although we will have to study the report in detail, the main reason appears to be Covid. The shift from offline classes to online learning has been hard for some students.”
