Tamil Nadu has the highest number of students who lack basic numeracy skills, followed by Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, and Gujarat, a study by the NCERT revealed. Furthermore, at least 37% students of class 3 are in the category that says “learners have limited knowledge and skills and they can partially complete basic grade-level tasks”, it said.
Beside these states, the other spectrum includes students from West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar who either have or developed knowledge and skill, and can complete complex grade-level tasks, the study suggested.
According to an official statement, this was revealed in the national report on benchmarking for “oral reading fluency with reading comprehension and numeracy 2022” conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The survey further highlighted that in eight languages, more than a quarter of the children of class 3 assessed for oral reading frequently performed below global minimum proficiency. 42% of the children studying in Tamil lack basic reading skills with a boy reading 16 words per minute correctly against girls’ 18, on average, the report said.
In addition, the survey showed that children reading in Khasi, Bengali, Mizo, Punjabi, Hindi and English demonstrated the highest level of oral reading proficiency, it added. The survey further noted that its objective was to provide reliable and valid data about class 3 students to know what they are capable of doing in foundational literacy and numeracy and the extent of learning outcomes being achieved.
In numeracy, students were tasked with the identification of numbers, addition, and subtraction. Overall, 11% of the respondents could not complete the most basic grade-level tasks, while 37% partially completed basic grade-level tasks, and 42% successfully completed the task, it said. Furthermore, it revealed that only 10% were found to have developed superior skills.
With inputs from PTI.
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