A comprehensive quality enhancement programme for students of Classes I to VII will be launched in around 190 schools in Ernakulam as part of the State-wide initiative by the General Education department in Kerala.
The key objective of the project is to improve the reading, writing and basic Mathematics skills of learners in the primary classes. In the first phase of the project, children in Classes I to IV will be equipped with the necessary skills for reading and writing. Titled ‘Samagragunamenma Padhathi’, the project is expected to be rolled out within a month.
Department officials stated that the aim is to ensure the basic reading and writing abilities of the children. The focus will be on how to help them avoid mistakes while reading/writing a word or a sentence. The authorities have developed learning modules as part of the project. The process of including new areas into the modules is progressing and the project will be launched after making necessary amendments, they said.
Effect of pandemic
The decision to implement a project on stepping up the comprehensive quality of the students seems part of the inferences gathered from studies which showed a decline in the foundational skills in reading and arithmetic after schools remained closed for around two years following the pandemic crisis.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 had found that Kerala was among the States that showed a decline of more than 10 percentage points from 2018 levels. The percentage of reading skills in Kerala dropped from 52.1% in 2018 to 38.7% in 2022, it said.
The quality enhancement programme will try to identify the gaps in the reading, writing and basic arithmetic skills of the students and initiate corrective measures as per the learning modules prepared by experts.
