India has made noteworthy improvements in increasing the student participation in schools in the recent years. But still, the primary education system is faced with the challenge of poor quality of the education, which has been haunting the system for long. The statistics published by the government is restricted to data on quantitative measures such as enrolment ratio, the condition of the school infrastructure, etc and lack qualitative data.

Pratham an NGO has taken the initiative to prepare a qualitative statistics to measure the quality of education. They have conducted a pan India survey on determining the reading and basic mathematical capabilities of the school going students in rural India. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham, the only one of its kind in India is a path breaking initiative based on the scale and comprehensive coverage. The survey covers rural India and evaluates the learning progress of students between class 1 and 8.

The structure of the survey conducted by Pratham

The survey was conducted based on four basic tests, with increasing difficulty in each level to assess thearithmetic competence of students. The students were asked to take each test only after clearing the lower level. The different levels of the tests that were administered includes identifying randomly chosen numbers between 1 to 9, identifying randomly chosen numbers from 11 to 99, numerical problems involving subtraction of tow digit numbers with borrowing, and division of three digit number by single digit number problems.

The results of the survey

The result of the survey that was conducted in 2010 indicated a low standard of education in rural India. The survey indicates that just 37 per cent of the students in class 3 were able to recognize numbers up to 100. More over just 27 per cent of the students were able to reach the next level, which is subtraction.

The result of the test of number recognition

The percentage of students who were able to perform the test of number recognition (from 11 to 99) in class 3 was 35.6 in the year 2005. It had increased to 38 per cent in the next year, i.e. 2006. But during 2007 it suddenly had decreased to 33.7 per cent. 2008 marked the highest in the 5 years with 45 per cent. The next year witnessed a drop by 10 per cent with the percentage dropping to 35.1 per cent. In 2010, it has increased to 36.9 per cent.

The result of performance all the tests in the class 3

The percentage of students who can perform all the tests in the class 3 was 15 per cent in the year 2005. It had increased slightly by .2 per cent and reached 15.2 per cent in 2006. The percentage dropped to 11.2 per cent in 2007 and to 10.8 per cent in 2008. The year 2009 also recorded a drop with 10.6 per cent. In 2010 the per cent of students who can perform all tests was 9.4 per cent reaching an all time low during the five years.

The result of performance all the tests in the class 8

In class 8 the per cent of students who can perform all the tests was 69.8 per cent in the year 2005. In 2006 it had increased to 75.8 per cent and then in the next year, i.e. it had reduced to 71.6 per cent. In 2008, the percentage was 65.6 per cent, reaching an all time low with in four years. 2009 showed a slight increase with 68.7 per cent. In the year 2010 it was 67.4 per cent.

The major area of concern as per the survey

The major concern is that the percentage of students reaching the highest level of the test has decreased since 2005. In the year 2005, 15 per cent of the students in class 3 were able to perform all the tests, but in 2010, only 9 per cent of the students were able to perform all the tests. This indicates that efforts to increase the enrolment rate do not automatically translate into improved learning in students.

The state wise disparities as observed by the survey

Another major observation made by the survey is that there exists a wide level disparity between states. In the case of states such as Kerala and Nagaland, 98 per cent of the students from classes 1 to 2 were able to recognize numbers, but in the case of students from Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar only 70 per cent of the students were able to recognize numbers. The ability of students to solve higher tests of subtraction or more in classes 3 to 5 shows a wide variation from 84 per cent in Mizoram to just 40 per cent in the case of Utter Pradesh. More than 70 per cent of the students in the classes 3 to 5 from states such as Punjab, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim were able to solve arithmetic problems such as subtraction and division. In that sense these states formed the top five among all the states surveyed. On the other hand in the case of states such as Utter Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Assam, Gujarat, Daman and Diu and Rajasthan less than fifty per cent of the students in the same class who were surveyed were able to solve subtraction or more.

Efforts by different states

Many of the states in India have taken steps to improve the level of learning by implementing various programmes. But in most of the cases, the steps that were taken has not transformed into improvement in learning of students. An exception to this is the state of Punjab, which has demonstrated significant improvement in level of learning when compared to the results of previous surveys. The new policy of the central government that ensures primary education to all has to strike a balance with ensuring that basic learning outcomes are achieved.

In addition to ensuring improvement in the enrolment rate in schools, the central government should take appropriate steps to ensure that quality of education and the learning of students from the schools are also improved.