‘Class 5 student cannot read class 3 textbook’

More government funds for education has increased enrollment but student’s learning ability has not improved primarily because of lack of creativity among teachers, a United Nations-sponsored study in five states has found.

Updated on: Oct 29, 2011, 02:23:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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More government funds for education has increased enrollment but student’s learning ability has not improved primarily because of lack of creativity among teachers, a United Nations-sponsored study in five states has found.

The study, Inside Primary Schools, has found that learning ability of children in primary schools in five major states were at least two grades below the required proficiency in language and mathematics. In simpler terms, a class 5 student is only equipped to study textbooks meant for class 3.

"Through this report we have tried to find out the reasons for low learning ability of children in public schools," said Suman Bhattacharjea, lead author of the report. The poor learning ability of children had been documented by NGO Pratham through their annual surveys.

The study of 30,000 children in Himachal, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand has come out with some startling facts for education planners.

In class 4, around 40% students were in the age group of 7 to 14 although the age range for the class was 8-9 years.

Around 30% students in class 2 were not able to read more than two alphabets in a word even though they were taught lengthy phrases in class 1. For another 10% children the language of instruction was different from the language used at home.

The study throws a big question at education planners-- formalising the 12th five year plan— that many of their "assumptions are not based on ground reality".

In the year-long study, ability of teachers was also evaluated by asking questions from class 4 textbook. "There were a fair number of teachers who failed to answer the questions correctly," Bhattacharjea said, while emphasising the need to upgrade skills of government school teachers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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