JOIN USChildren's learning ability deteriorates amid Covid-19
Covid-19 pandemic has affected the learning levels of children severely with only 16 per cent of the grade 3 children in the state schools able to do basic subtraction.
The shocking revealation is part of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey for the year 2020-21. ASER released its report on Monday based on the survey conducted only for Karnataka in the month of March 2021.
In a press release, Pratham, the organisation that conducts the survey, said the reading level of the children has gone down. As per the survey, 66 per cent of the class 8 students are able to read standard 2 text books, a drop from the 70 per cent in 2018. Only 9.8 per cent of the Class 3 students were able to read class 2-level text books. In 2018, this was 19.2 per cent.
Additionally, the percentage of children who are in grade 5 who can read standard 2 textbooks has tremendously decreased compared to 2018 survey. As per the report, only 32.8 per cent of grade 5 students in government schools are able to read grade 2 textbooks. This number was 47.6 per cent during the 2018 survey.
When it comes to recognising numbers, 42.6 per cent of grade 1 children cannot even recognise numbers 1 to 9 and this percentage is 1.1 at the grade 8 level.
As it is mentioned in the survey report, the children in the age group of 5 to 16 were assessed from the government and private schools in Karnataka.
The survey covered 24 districts, 670 villages, 13365 households and 18385 children in total. Of which 2454 are between the age group of 15 to 16 and 14419 were tested on reading and 14396 were tested on Arithmetic.