Nearly 80% students found learning at home during the pandemic "burdensome" and felt that they learnt better in school with help from peers, according to the government's survey of more than one lakh schools across the country.
The Ministry of Education on Wednesday released its National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 report, which assesses the health of the school education system in the country through a survey of children’s learning competencies at Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10. The survey is conducted every three years, and the last one was held in 2017.
Nearly 34 lakh students of 1.18 lakh schools in 720 districts from government, government-aided and private-unaided schools participated in the exercise.
The survey recorded perception of sampled students on remote learning during the pandemic and found that 78% students found it burdensome and one that had too many assignments for them. Nearly the same percentage of students (80%) also felt that learning was better in schools because of the help they received from their classmates. As many as 24% students said they had no digital device at home. Though 45% students found the experience "joyful", 38% also said that they had difficulties in learning.
The report also evaluated competencies of students in subjects such as mathematics, languages, and environmental studies (EVS) for Classes 3 and 5; language, mathematics, science and social science for Class 8; and language, mathematics, science, social science and English for Class 10. It found that out of a score of 500, students across various classes performed better in languages but lagged behind in subjects like mathematics and science.
For example, in Class 3, students scored the highest in languages (323), followed by EVS (307), and mathematics (306). In Class 5 too, students were better in languages (309), when compared to mathematics (284) and EVS (283). Class 8 students scored 302 in English, whereas in mathematics they scored 255, and in science 250. In Class 10, students scored 277 in English, 220 in mathematics and 206 in science.
It also shows that across various subjects and classes, SC, ST and OBC students performed worse than general category students. For instance, while general category students in Class 8 scored an average of 260 marks in mathematics, SC students scored 249 marks, ST scored 244 marks and OBCs scored 253 marks.
The survey was conducted via an OMR (optical mark recognition)-based achievement test comprising multiple-choice questions along with questionnaires in 22 different languages. This nationwide survey was administered by the Central Board of Secondary Education in one single day at the same time.
