Bihar has the fastest learners

Mention Bihar and chances are that you would end up talking about lawlessness, corruption, caste, Lalu and Rabri.

Published on: Feb 13, 2006, 03:55:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Mention Bihar and chances are that you would end up talking about lawlessness, corruption, caste, Lalu and Rabri. But something is going right in the classrooms of Bihar. An NCERT survey conducted last year says Bihar's primary class students are the fastest learners.

While six out of 10 students in Bihar's classrooms understood what was being taught, in Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Chhattisgarh the number did not cross five. Even in highly literate Kerala, less than 50 per cent students understood their lessons. The survey reinforces what Prathan, an NGO, found out recently: Bihar’s students are as good as the best.

The national survey was conducted by the NCERT to evaluate the learning skills of Class V students, especially in mathematics and languages. Moreover, the study was meant to cast light on the teaching skills. A detailed questionnaire based on the syllabus was distributed to students in 20 states. The NCERT was in for a surprise - some of the best students were in the ramshackle schools of Bihar.

About 64 per cent of Bihari students followed their lessons as compared with the national average of 52 per cent. About 65 per cent understood their language classes as against the national average of 58 per cent. In mathematics, the percentage was 63 per cent while the national average was just 47. Though Bihari students were much ahead of their counterparts in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal when it came to numbers, they were lagging behind in languages.

Officials say the course correction happened between the two assembly elections when the state appointed 60,000 teachers and utilised grants under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

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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