NEW DELHI: More than a quarter of Class III students in Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir lack foundational numeracy skills. Overall, compared to the global benchmark proficiency level, 11% of Indian children in Class III lack basic mathematics skills with states such as Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa and Gujarat among the 12 performing worse than the national average.
Another 37% of children are in the category of learners with “limited knowledge and skills and they can partially complete basic grade-level tasks.” On the other end of the spectrum are the children from states such as West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar who have either sufficient knowledge and skill or even have developed superior knowledge and skills and can complete complex grade level tasks. This was revealed in the national report on ‘benchmarking for oral reading fluency with reading comprehension and numeracy 2022’ of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, which also highlighted that in eight languages more than a quarter of the children of Class III assessed for oral reading frequency performed below global minimum proficiency. 42% of the children studying in Tamil lack basic reading skills with on an average a boy being able to read 16 words per minute correctly while for girls it is 18. Children reading in Khasi, Bengali, Mizo, Punjabi, Hindi and English demonstrated the highest level of oral reading proficiency.
The ministry of education launched the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat in July 2021 as a national mission to enable all children at the end of Class III to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-2027. As a step towards strengthening efforts for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN), a large-scale foundational learning study (FLS) has been undertaken jointly by the ministry and NCERT in March 2022. The study aims to provide reliable and valid data about Class III students to know what they are able to do in foundational literacy and numeracy and the extent of learning outcomes being achieved. The data derived from the FLS Study would help in establishing a baseline for the NIPUN Bharat mission. Selected samples of children from Class III were assessed by a test administrator in a one-on-one setting where each child responded to a set of questions administered orally.
Another 37% of children are in the category of learners with “limited knowledge and skills and they can partially complete basic grade-level tasks.” On the other end of the spectrum are the children from states such as West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar who have either sufficient knowledge and skill or even have developed superior knowledge and skills and can complete complex grade level tasks. This was revealed in the national report on ‘benchmarking for oral reading fluency with reading comprehension and numeracy 2022’ of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, which also highlighted that in eight languages more than a quarter of the children of Class III assessed for oral reading frequency performed below global minimum proficiency. 42% of the children studying in Tamil lack basic reading skills with on an average a boy being able to read 16 words per minute correctly while for girls it is 18. Children reading in Khasi, Bengali, Mizo, Punjabi, Hindi and English demonstrated the highest level of oral reading proficiency.
The ministry of education launched the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat in July 2021 as a national mission to enable all children at the end of Class III to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-2027. As a step towards strengthening efforts for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN), a large-scale foundational learning study (FLS) has been undertaken jointly by the ministry and NCERT in March 2022. The study aims to provide reliable and valid data about Class III students to know what they are able to do in foundational literacy and numeracy and the extent of learning outcomes being achieved. The data derived from the FLS Study would help in establishing a baseline for the NIPUN Bharat mission. Selected samples of children from Class III were assessed by a test administrator in a one-on-one setting where each child responded to a set of questions administered orally.