Gurgaon: Forty percent of youngsters in 14-18 age group in rural Haryana cannot calculate time, and around 45% of them could not measure length, a survey has found.
The 2023 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Beyond Basics survey, released on Wednesday, underscored the alarming gap in learning capabilities among adolescents in rural areas of the state.A total of 1,472 students from 1,200 households across 60 villages of Sirsa were surveyed for a week last year. The government has been running a foundational literacy and numeracy programme, focusing on basic arithmetic skills and language knowledge for students in classes 1 to 3, but there is no equivalent initiative for adolescents. For the survey, students who could at least do subtraction were asked to carry out some basic financial calculations. In this test, only 19.4% could calculate repayment, 54% could apply discounts, and 71.8% could manage a budget.
The more startling finding was that 40% of the students surveyed could not clear the basic arithmetic test, which included questions on identifying numbers, simple subtraction and division.
The principal of Government Senior Secondary School in Ghamroj-Alipur Anand Bala told TOI she noticed some Class 9 students could not read alphabets or do basic mathematics. “If a 15-year-old cannot read or write the basics, it’s a matter of concern,” she said. Bala said she started evening classes to help those who were lagging behind.
Anubhooti Bhatnagar, founder of NeoFusion, an NGO that works to lower the drop-out rate of students, suggested that government and non-profits should work together. “In most places, students at the age of 14 and 15 are sent back to primary or middle school if they don’t know the basics. This makes them either quit studying or nurture an inferiority complex,” she said.
In Haryana, learning levels in Hindi and mathematics rose between 2014 and 2018, but it was among the states to see the sharpest decline in foundational skills during the pandemic. “Our internal surveys and the National Achievement Survey by the Centre had mapped the impact of Covid-19. ASER findings also highlight the same. We are working on finding a way to bridge the gap,” said a senior official in the Haryana education department.
The 2023 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Beyond Basics survey, released on Wednesday, underscored the alarming gap in learning capabilities among adolescents in rural areas of the state.A total of 1,472 students from 1,200 households across 60 villages of Sirsa were surveyed for a week last year. The government has been running a foundational literacy and numeracy programme, focusing on basic arithmetic skills and language knowledge for students in classes 1 to 3, but there is no equivalent initiative for adolescents. For the survey, students who could at least do subtraction were asked to carry out some basic financial calculations. In this test, only 19.4% could calculate repayment, 54% could apply discounts, and 71.8% could manage a budget.
The more startling finding was that 40% of the students surveyed could not clear the basic arithmetic test, which included questions on identifying numbers, simple subtraction and division.
The principal of Government Senior Secondary School in Ghamroj-Alipur Anand Bala told TOI she noticed some Class 9 students could not read alphabets or do basic mathematics. “If a 15-year-old cannot read or write the basics, it’s a matter of concern,” she said. Bala said she started evening classes to help those who were lagging behind.
Anubhooti Bhatnagar, founder of NeoFusion, an NGO that works to lower the drop-out rate of students, suggested that government and non-profits should work together. “In most places, students at the age of 14 and 15 are sent back to primary or middle school if they don’t know the basics. This makes them either quit studying or nurture an inferiority complex,” she said.
In Haryana, learning levels in Hindi and mathematics rose between 2014 and 2018, but it was among the states to see the sharpest decline in foundational skills during the pandemic. “Our internal surveys and the National Achievement Survey by the Centre had mapped the impact of Covid-19. ASER findings also highlight the same. We are working on finding a way to bridge the gap,” said a senior official in the Haryana education department.