Punjab primary students’ learning levels shoot up in 8 months: Report

Eight months after a survey under the Parho Punjab Paraho Punjab project depicted a grim picture of primary education in the state’s government schools, the latest project report has shown drastic improvement in the learning levels of primary-level students.

More than 9.24 lakh students from 12,995 primary schools were evaluated in March as part of the latest survey which found that 71.51% of them passed the basic test in Punjabi, English and mathematics, against 29.85% in August last year.

Subject-wise findings

Only 35.58% children passed the basic test in Punjabi in August 2017, but the figure reached 72.95% in the latest survey, the report says. Similarly, the percentage of students who passed mathematics test rose from 32.40 to 79.43.

The percentage of students who took English test rose from 21.57 to 62.48.

In Punjabi, the improvement was considerable as only 0.20% Class-1 students had cleared the basic test in last August while 55.12% of them got through in March. The figure for Class 2 went up from 2.19% to 63.39% and from 3.40% to 71.90% for Class 3.

Same was the case with mathematics for Class 1 students as 69.50% of them managed to get through against last year’s 0.31%.

In English, the percentage of Class-1 students who could read letters was 18.75 in August last while the figure reached 82.84 in March 2018.

Only 1.83% Class-2 students could read three letter words in August whereas it went up to 69.67% in March this year. Similarly, the percentage of students of Classes 4 and 5 reading paragraph and story in English reached 55.59% from 6.32% and 56.56% from 7.8%.

Project officer Devinder Singh Boha said, “Nearly 1 lakh teachers were given training and it helped. We also worked on the shortage of teachers in village schools.”