Road maps for better learning in schools

45 teachers, trainers attend workshop

February 17, 2019 08:05 am | Updated 08:05 am IST - KOCHI

A two-day post-National Achievement Survey (NAS) workshop, which concluded in Kochi on Saturday, outlined road maps for designing novel learning activities for elementary schoolchildren and formulating better ways to assess their progress with a view to enhancing the quality of learning and addressing gaps in performances in government and aided schools across Kerala.

Organised by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), it brought together 45 teachers and trainers from across the State, officials of Samagra Shiksha Kerala, District Institutes for Education and Training, and the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

They discussed the results of NAS (which assessed competency-based learning outcomes of 2.2 million students from 1,10,000 schools across all districts in India in 2017) for Kerala and each of its districts, based on the State and district report cards produced by the NAS in 2018. The teams analysed the performance reports of elementary school students in languages, science, social science, and mathematics to identify concepts that children in each district had trouble understanding.

Specific activity-based recommendations that emerged from discussions — such as promoting reading of books other than text books to improve reading skills and tweaking pedagogy to accommodate multilingualism that is fast emerging as a prominent feature in classrooms in some districts — will soon be incorporated into ‘action plans’ for each district.

“Each district has specific problems,” said P.K. Jayaraj, consultant with Samagra Shiksha Kerala. For instance, students drop out after a few months in Wayanad, while in Ernakulam, schools with high numbers of migrant children need specific attention, he added.

Participants are expected to communicate these suggested activities to their teams in each district so as to enhance learning outcomes in elementary schoolchildren in these areas. “The NCERT brings with it experience and knowledge of such activities from other States, and the workshop included discussing such activities to see how they can be improved specifically for Kerala,” said A.P. Kuttykrishnan, State Project Director, Samagra Shiksha Kerala. These will complement the activities of the government such as Ganitha Vijayam, to develop basic mathematics skills, and science parks to improve science education and practical applications of theories, he added.

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