Analysing the findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of 2014, education experts felt that the performance of students is poor due to a weak foundation, due to which their concepts may not be clear, as well as a lack of student-friendly study material in rural schools.
Analysing the findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of 2014, education experts felt that the performance of students is poor due to a weak foundation, due to which their concepts may not be clear, as well as a lack of student-friendly study material in rural schools.
The ASER survey has shown that despite improvement in the facilities provided by the rural schools of India, the students' performance has not gone up.
Weak foundation could be the reason, says Pratham co-founder
Farida Lambay, co-founder, Pratham, said, "It is true that a child can concentrate and perform well in his/her studies when the school infrastructure is good. But here, despite good infrastructure, the performance of students is not improving, which shows that something is amiss. The reason behind this could be that their basic foundation might not have been good."
RTE norm to blame
The environment where children study definitely has a psychological affect on them and impacts their performance. Some education experts blame the norm of the Right to Education Act which requires the child to be admitted in an age-appropriate class. Some experts feel that the lack of pre-schools might have weakened the performance of students in primary and upper primary as their basics were not clear.
Not encouraged to practice at home
According to Lambay, another reason could be that students in rural areas may not be practising at home as they could be the first generation to receive education. She feels that the government needs to hold workshops for parents to educate themselves so that they can help their children to study at home.
Swati Popat Vats, President Early Childhood Association, cited the reason of poor performance of children to be the absence of pre-primary schools. "Interest in education starts from early years. One cannot develop interest in education at the age of 6. According to the early childhood policy of the Indian government, a 3-year-old should be subjected to play-based learning, and once the child turns 5, reading, writing and number work should start. That is the time when you start making a connection with your brain. Almost 98 per cent of the brain develop in early age. The brain is not getting that foundation in an early stage and so we see dropouts."
Remedial coaching for grades missed a must
Vats also felt that the organization should also calculate the number of dropouts who started their schooling early as part of their next report. Echoing the sentiments of Vats, Rupali Goswami, programme manager, Save the Children, India, said, "The students who are given admission in grade appropriate to their age after their migration is one of the reasons why they are performing badly in upper classes as these children might not be provided remedial coaching on syllabus of grades they never went to."
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