653 schools in Pune Zilla Parishad found to have students with poor learning levels

In all, the Pune Zilla Parishad runs 3,452 schools with around 2,40,000 students.

The assessment was done under the Nipun Bharat Mission or National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy, which was launched by the Union Education Ministry under National Education Policy 2020.

“We have found that students in 653 schools have poor learning levels and there is no improvement in their reading and writing abilities. However, in some schools we have found that children have good learning levels and have shown improvement in their reading and writing skills,” Pune Zilla Parishad CEO Ayush Prasad told The Indian Express.

Regarding the ‘poor-performing schools’, the CEO said that they have stagnated at a bad level and their overall learning level is poor.

Under the Nipun Bharat Mission, the Pune Zilla Parishad had undertaken an eight-week-long drive to improve the foundation of learning and numeracy among students from classes 1 to 5. “The drive was conducted from December 15 to February 15. After that for one week, we conducted an assessment of their reading and writing abilities. During the assessment, we found 653 schools to be poor performing,” Prasad said.

Prasad said that prior to the drive, the officers conducted a baseline assessment of schools and students so as to categorise them into Levels 1, 2 and 3; with level 1 being the lowest learning level and level 3 being the age-appropriate level. The tools for assessment were standard tools developed and used nationally.

He said that the Pune District Institute for Education Training had designed the eight-week-long plan for each class consisting of teaching curriculum, classroom activities and other related things. “The teachers were expected to report activities on the Acharya Vinoba Bhave App. The App became a repository of teaching and assessment practices around the district that could be used by other teachers.

During the drive, the teacher taught the students the learning skills, in addition to the regular curriculum. The end-line survey was done by the teachers of other schools – a cross-assessment,” he said.

As a corrective measure, the zilla parishad has now launched an intensive child-wise action plan. “As part of this, we will be deputing teachers from other schools to these 653 poor-performing schools in a bid to improve the students’ abilities to read and write,” Prasad said.

Prasad said 80 per cent of students are in Level 1 in these 653 schools. “In Level 1, the students are poor in both reading and writing abilities. Level 2 is an intermediary level while in Level 3 a student of a particular age is able to solve the question given to him,” he said.