Reading & Comprehension Ability Poor in Rajasthan: NCERT Survey

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) survey paints a gloomy picture of Rajasthan. According to the survey, the state scores poorly in two major fields -reading and comprehension. It says that 42% students of Class V in government schools could not read and comprehend an unseen English passage of Class IV. However, there is some good news as well. The survey states that Rajasthan has fared better than the national average learning outcome of Maths after years. It says that 49% of students were able to solve Class IV Mathematics puzzles. Despite this Rajasthan is not in the list of top 10 states in the both the learning outcomes.

What is most disturbing is the fact that Rajasthan is amongst the highest spenders when it comes to spending on each student. But the state stood among the last five in all learning outcomes - reading, comprehension, and Mathematics. It spends Rs 17,500 on each student studying in government schools whereas private schools spend Rs 5,500 on each child. Private schools are much ahead in learning the outcome.

According to NGO Pratham, even after spending three times the amount per student in government schools than private schools, the learning outcome in government schools is almost half to that of the private schools. The disturbing part is that Rajasthan again is among the top states that spend 89% of its total budget on teachers' salaries leaving bare minimum for teacher learning material and enhancing infrastructural facilities.

The study points out that students find it difficult to tackle questions based on unseen texts in reading comprehension sections. The study recommends that students should be given unseen texts to practise. While for Mathematics, it recommends that teachers need to develop conceptual understanding and require re-teaching of the concepts. The report also points out that gender gap in learning levels is fast shrinking with no major difference reported between boys and girls in reading comprehension. However, in Mathematics, the mean learning score of girls and boys was 247 and 245, respectively, on the scale of 400.

An area which requires urgent attention of the government is the tribal section which scored worst in reading category in all parameters with 222 out of 400. The big surprise was that barring tribal students the other three social categories - SC, OBC and general scored higher than the national average. Survey was carried out by using subject-wise multiple tests and questionnaires to access the learning achievements data and background information.It is intended to study the achievement level of students in different subjects at different grade levels.

Source: Mithilesh, City Journalist - Kota, CollegeDekho