Levels of comprehension of students in rural Telangana were pretty bad in English and mathematics with a majority of them unable to even do subtraction and addition or read simple sentences in English.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2016, released on Wednesday, revealed that a large number of high school students were also unable to read second or third grade books. One positive aspect though, is that Telangana has improved on several parameters and has been doing much better than other States in the country.
The ASER-2016 covered 589 rural districts across India. The survey was carried out in 17,473 villages, covering 350,232 households and 562,305 children in the age group 3-16 years.
The study revealed that 34.6 per cent of students from class 6 to 8 cannot even read class 2 books, while 57.2 per cent of children cannot even do division. The learning levels are more or less the same for children from classes 3 to 5. Surprisingly, Ranga Reddy district, which is almost part of the State capital now, finds itself at the bottom in most aspects.
For example, among children of class 3, 4.4 per cent cannot even recognise numbers 1-9, while 9 per cent can recognise numbers up to 9, but cannot recognise numbers up to 99 or higher. Similarly, 44.5 per cent can recognise numbers up to 99, but cannot do subtraction, 37.4 per cent can do subtraction, but cannot do division, and only 4.7 per cent can do division.
Similar is the problem noticed in English. Among the children of class 3, 12.1 per cent cannot even read capital letters, 9.2 per cent can read capital letters but not small letters, 21 per cent can read small letters but not words, 27.7 per cent can read words, but not sentences, and only 30.1 per cent can read sentences.
At the national level, the proportion of children in class 3 who can read at least class 1 level text has gone up slightly from 40.2 per cent in 2014 to 42.5 per cent in 2016. The Telangana State, however, improved by more than 7 per cent here. In almost all the States, there is some improvement in the arithmetic levels of children enrolled in government schools in class 3 compared to 2014.
Telangana along with Andhra Pradesh saw an increase of 5 per cent or more since 2014. Telangana is also one of the few States where the levels of reading English in private schools has also improved.
Enrolment in government schools continues to be high, the report says, but the presence for private schools seems to be high given the backwardness of the region. It says 59.6 per cent of students were enrolled in the government schools. Adilabad, Khammam, Medak and Mahabubnagar have the least private schools compared to other ‘prosperous’ districts like Karimnagar and Warangal where private schools’ presence was higher.
