TN: students comes to school, but learn nothing

Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 shows that, Tamil Nadu is edging closer to attaining 100% enrolment and children are joining school earlier even in rural areas, but the reading and arithmetic skills of students continue to remain poor.

Tamil Nadu has shown further improvement in student enrolment compared to last year, with the percentage of children not in school going down from 0.9% in 2011 to 0.6% in 2012

Less than 45% of children in Class 1 can identify alphabets in their mother tongue, while only 3% of Class 2 students can read their Tamil textbooks. ASER 2012 does not find significant improvement in reading skills of students compared to last year.

Less than 50% of Class 1 students can recognize numbers 1 to 9. By Class 5, only 13% know division, only 16% of Class 3 students can do simple subtraction. The difference in arithmetic skills among children going to government and private schools is only around 10%.

          Tamil Nadu has been ahead of most other states while introducing reforms in school education. It’s paid off in enrolment rates, but the latest survey tells the story that, Children are coming to school but learning nothing. The survey also says that, teachers in government schools don’t insist the children to study. They consider teaching a profession that pays well. Whether a child learns or not depends on whether the teacher is interested. There is nobody to question them about the progress of the child. Private school teachers are more committed because the management holds them accountable. In rural and semi-urban areas, there is no distinction between private and government school teachers. Many small private schools recruit teachers with a poor academic record for low salaries. They are not qualified to handle children. Every fortnight primary and upper primary government school teachers attend training to implement reforms. Many attend only because the education department insists on it. They chat, giggle, sleep or complain about losing a weekend.

Is Right to Education a wrong one?

          With Right to Education Act mandating that all children be promoted up to Class 8, parents have nothing to gauge the progress of their child. Only in high school, do teachers find that the child can’t even read a paragraph, or do solve simple arithmetic problems.

Parent’s mentality:

          In urban and in big private schools, educated parents question the teacher when the child does not study well. In rural areas, the parent thinks the child is not intelligent enough to cope with the syllabus.

TAMIL NADU: Students comes to school but learn nothing
Can the govt act now at least? The future generation is virtually lost
ENGLISH COMPREHENSION
Close to 17% of Class 8 students can’t read and understand small letters
Class	I	V	VIII
Can’t read or write	58	5.2	2.1
Reads Capitals	15.8	9.8	4.1
Reads small letters	19.6	27.9	17
Reads simple words	5.6	33	30
Reads easy sentences	0.9	24	46
READING
Only 22.5% of Class 8 Students can read Class I texts
Class	I	V	VIII
Can’t read	56.6	3.3	0.6
Can read letters	29.6	6.6	1.6
Reads letters	9.9	26.6	10
Reads std I texts	3	33.6	22.5
Reads std II texts	0.8	29.9	65
MATHS
Basic arithmetic functions stump most kids
Class	I	V	VIII
Can’t read nos	46	2.4	0.8
Can recognise 1-9	33.8	5.8	1
Can read 10-99	17.9	39.3	20.8
Can subtract	1.9	39.6	40
Can divide	0.3	13	37.4