B'luru class X pupils’ maths, science avg below state’s

Class X students in Bengaluru perform better in English, but fail to make the cut in core subjects such as Mathematics, Science and Social Science, according to a National Achievement Survey (NAS) conducted earlier this year.

A total of 5,406 students across 158 schools in Bengaluru North and Bengaluru South were covered in the NAS conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in February 2018. A majority of these students were drawn from private schools.

Students were administered test booklets comprising questions in Mathematics, Modern Indian Language, English, Sciences and Social Sciences. The city students could not surpass the state average — percentage of students who answered correctly — in Mathematics (38.33%), Science (38.04%) and Social Science (45.83%).

Karnataka’s average in English is 42.36%. This was easily surpassed by students in Bengaluru North at 51.08% and Bengaluru South at 49.67%.

In a more worrying result, more than half the city students surveyed scored below 35% in Mathematics and Sciences, and the NAS called them “students at risk”.

Class X students in Bengaluru were pipped by their counterparts in Sirsi and Chikkodi across subjects.

Karnataka is behind Andhra Pradesh (40.94%) and Assam (39.52%) in Mathematics, which experts say points to the larger problem of schools lacking qualified teachers.

This was the second cycle of NAS for Class X, which covered 1.5 million students from over 44,000 schools in 610 districts across India, making it NCERT’s largest survey of academic achievement for Class X students.

The Education department will react after going through the NAS findings, a senior official said.