National Achievement Survey: From ‘low-performing’ to ‘improved’, Yavatmal takes a leap in 5 yrs

According to the report, a graph on the performance of students from classes III and V in languages, mathematics and environmental studies showed significant improvement.

The MTAS report showed that a total of 63 per cent of Class III students from Yavatmal schools can now read printed scripts on classroom walls such as poems and charts; which was 54 per cent in 2017. The number of students able to solve simple addition and subtraction sums have also increased to 50 per cent, from 45 per cent in 2017. For Class V students, the performance graph in languages has seen more improvement against mathematics, which showed a marginal improvement in certain tasks. Class V students who can read text with comprehension have considerably increased to 62 per cent in the MTAS report, from 49 per cent in 2017. However, students who can read and write numbers bigger than 1,000 have dropped to 30 per cent, from 50 per cent in 2017.

The performance of the students in different subjects is measured in mean units. For Class III, it has increased to 63 from 59 (in 2017) in languages, and to 58 from 53 in mathematics in the MTAS report. For Class V, it has risen to 62 from 49 in languages, and to 46 from 41 in mathematics.

Vikas Garad, deputy director of State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT), said, “10 LPDs were identified across India in NAS 2017, and Maharashtra’s Yavatmal was part of the list… We have been taking efforts at the local level to improve learning outcomes, and there is an improvement in the MTAS report already. This will now be followed by an End-Term Assessment Survey, scheduled to be held in March. That report will decide whether Yavatmal continues to remain in the list of LPDs.”

Other districts in the list of LPDs include Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirapalli, Telangana’s Adilabad, Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli, and Punjab’s Muktsar among others.

After Yavatmal was declared a LPD, SCERT and the District Institute of Education and Teachers (DIET) started working on improving the learning process for the students. Dr Ramesh Raut, district coordinator for Yavatmal DIET, said, “We appointed block-level coordinators, which was essentially a network of proactive teachers, to prepare a roadmap for improved outcomes in the MTAS. Innovative teaching techniques were designed on how to improve Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) capabilities of the children, through educational games; and question banks were prepared to take practice tests of students to retarget efforts…”