42% of Class 1 students in TN not able to identify numbers: ASER

CHENNAI: As much as 42% of Class 1 students in the state are not able to identify numbers 1 to 9 while 59.1% of them are not able to read even letters and 53.1 are not even able to read English capital letters, reveals Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2022.

The alarming figures cited in the report reflect the sorry state of affairs in the school education sector. Tamil Nadu is regarded as a forerunner in the field of education in India, however, the ASER report points out that the state is the worst performing state in terms of learning outcomes in the primary and upper primary class categories.

The report reveals that only 25.2% of Class 5 students can read class 2 texts while only 51.3% of class 7 students can read class 2 texts. Only 4.8% of class 3 students in the state are able to read class 2 texts, and the figure is the lowest in the country.

Similarly, only 25.5% class 8 students are able to identify 11 to 99 numerals, and a mere 28.6% of the students are able to do subtraction.  Only 57.8% of class 8 students can read simple English sentences like ‘What is the time?’, and it is worse in case of class 5 students, as only 24.5% of them are able to read simple sentences in English.

The state’s performance in 2022 has decreased significantly compared to the figures in 2018. As per 2018 ASER report, at least 25.4% of class 5 students were able to do division but the latest report reveals only 14.9% of class 5 students can do division. States like Bihar, Jharkhand , Meghalaya and Sikkim have shown improvement in the category over 2018 figures while Tamil Nadu has reported a decline of almost 10%.

Academicians have also expressed concern over the scenario. “Despite the schemes launched by the state government, it will take a long years of dedicated efforts to recover the lost learning,” said Tamil Nadu Graduate Teachers’ Federation general secretary, P Patrick Raymond.

The ASER 2022 report has been published by Pratham Education Foundation after carrying out a survey across the country. In Tamil Nadu, 920 villages in 31 districts were covered under the survey and 30,737 students in the age group of 3 to 16 were surveyed. Basic reading, arithmetic and their English ability were assessed in the survey.

However, the state school education department officials are not ready to accept the figures. “We are not aware of their sampling methods used in the survey. We don’t know which government schools in which districts they have covered. We need to examine the report thoroughly to ascertain its genuineness,” said a senior official of the school education department.