Government’s scheme to slot students draws mixed reactions

NEW DELHI: Delhi government’s scheme to improve learning levels in government schools, ‘Chunauti 2018’, shows confusion persists over its implementation. But teachers

NEW DELHI: Delhi government’s scheme to improve learning levels in government schools, ‘Chunauti 2018’, shows confusion persists over its implementation. But teachers believe it will work in the long run.

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Launched late June, the scheme divides children into groups on the basis of who can read and write Hindi, English and solve mathematical problems. The division was done after a baseline assessment of the students which found that 74% out of 2,01,997 children in class 6 could not read a paragraph from their Hindi textbook and 46% could not read a story of class 2 level.

The government says the figure is equally high for other classes as well. So till class 9, students have been divided into groups.

The ones who can read are called “Pratibha” and the ones who cannot are “Nishtha”. In class 9 there is another group called “Vishwas” which includes those who are out of school and have failed twice in the class.

The intervention comes with the introduction of “Pragati-1” books. The government describes Pragati books as supplementary material which will help Nishtha groups read to understand syllabus of their class.

These are thin books like workbooks provided for each subject. The books have one page of text explaining the lesson. “We have already completed teaching from Pragati-1 books. We are now waiting for the Pragati-2 books ,” said Sonika, an English teacher at Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in central Delhi.

She added that once a lesson from the book is over, it is used for revision twice a week. Children are taught from the NCERT syllabus in the remaining four days of the week.

“This is a novel start to a problem which was not addressed for many years. But the government first needs to remove confusions relating to syllabus and assessment.” said a school teacher in Sunder Nagri.

Few teachers believe that the intervention will be successful with a focus on language.

“If a student knows how to read and write in Hindi, automatically improvement in other subjects will show. Take mathematics for instance. Once a student can read the question of the problems then he or she will also be able to solve it,” said a mathematics teacher.

But teachers say the most difficult part of this scheme has been explaining the division to parents and students.

“Parents ask us to shift their children to the first few sections. It is difficult to tell them why this has been done,” said a social science teacher.

He adds that the division has also psychologically affected some students.

Akshay, a 7th standard student of Government Boys Senior Secondary School in Molarbandh, said, “I know how to read and write Hindi but still my teacher has shifted me here. I don’t like being in this class.”

Educationists had warned that Chunauti 2018 would have psychological effects. “Children are being labelled and it violates the Right to Education Act. Children cannot be termed as slow learners by testing them on lesser known set of books. (It)is extremely dangerous and fascist,” said Janaki Rajan, educationist and teacher at Jamia Milia Islamia.