JOIN USThe assessment was conducted for classes five, seven and eight for 2008-09 by the Karnataka Schools Quality Assessment Organisation (KSQAO), a wing of the Department of Public Instruction.
Nearly 23 lakh students from all over the State participated in the competency assessment and the entire process from administering the tests to evaluation of the results took three months.
Competencies assessed
The Commissioner of the Department of Public Instruction, Kumar Naik said, “The students were assessed for 30 competencies including first, second and third languages, core subjects such as Maths and Science and extracurricular areas.”
The percentage scored in the assessment by Kannada medium students of class eight was 51.24 as against 51.88 of English and 64.37 of Urdu medium schools. Even Marathi, Telugu and Tamil medium students scored higher with over 55 per cent each.
Bagalkot district has emerged as the number one district for the learning levels of students in government and aided high schools of Karnataka. Students of Bagalkot topped the class eight competency in Kannada and English medium with the overall percentages of 69.29 and 78.29.
Bagalkot also topped the State for competency in Marathi medium while Dharwad topped the state for Urdu and Telugu medium.
Uttara Kannada district was second in Kannada while Raichur district was second in the English medium for the State. The competency of the students was also assessed for media such as Urdu, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.
The overall learning percentage of students that tool up the competency test for the Kannada language for Class five and seven was 78.60 per cent and 74.56 per cent respectively. Chikkaballapur district fared the worst for the Kannada language with the test estimating the proficiency of students at 34.93 per cent while Yadgiri district fared the worst for English language with a percentage of 38.38.
Girls fare better
Much like the results of SSLC and PUC, girls fared better in the thirty competencies that were assessed. The overall percentage of the girls of Class eight stood at 59.17 while it was 54 per cent for the boys.
Over 11.5 lakh boys and 11 lakh girls were assessed from about 56 thousand schools in the state.
During the release of the report, Minster Primary and secondary education minister Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri said, “Every year the districts that are top and bottom are usually there and thereabouts. It is the responsibility of the officials from the department of education to ensure better performance.”
He warned the officials that failure and slacking will not be tolerated and action will be taken against them. “You have been given excellent facilities but if there is lack of performance, action will be taken against you,” he said.