The Union government’s national foundation literacy and numeracy survey to gauge the extent of learning loss among class 3 students begins today (March 23) in 296 schools in Delhi. This diagnostic survey, conducted by the education ministry and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will involve face-to-face interactions of class 3 students with specially-trained field investigators to assess their foundational learning levels and gauge the extent of learning loss with repeated school closures because of Covid-19. It will be conducted till Friday (March 25). The survey will be conducted among 10 students from class 3 in every school. The nationwide survey is expected to cover 1.5 lakh students. The initiative comes at a time when field surveys in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal led by Pratham Education Foundation have revealed worrying levels of learning gaps, especially among children in lower primary grades. For example, in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, the percentage of children in Class 3 who could read a Class 2 textbook dropped to 12.3 per cent and 27.7 per cent respectively in 2021, down from 29.8 per cent and 36.6 per cent in 2018. “. this is not an examination but a diagnostic survey. This is not an individual student performance rating or certification. This is not an individual school performance or rating… This survey has very healthy objectives and therefore the actual status, true information/ data must be shared… Data gathered through (the) survey would give us true reflection of the ground realities of the FNL level of students learning,” read the Delhi State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) instructions to schools selected for the survey.
