In this Class 5 maths lessons, how numbers start to add up to hope

“How did you get that?” asks Neha Sharma, mathematics teacher, class 5A, Delhi government’s Veer Savarkar Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya.

“When you add 4 to 6, you get 10. So when you add 4 to 22, you get 26,” he responds.

Neha Ma’am beams proudly. She has many reasons to — indeed, so many that one may lose count.

For, barely six months ago, when The Indian Express began tracking her class, Siddharth was struggling. Indeed, most of his class were. Their families hit hard by Covid’s economic distress, their education derailed, an assessment in mid-March was grim: Neha’s pupils were far behind their grade level. Of the 38, 16 could not do subtraction and simple division — skills that are usually taught in class 3 or earlier.

Siddharth couldn’t subtract if it involved borrowing. Keerti could only do simple division. But it was Harish (all names changed to protect identities) who presented a unique challenge: he couldn’t even identify one-digit numbers, something he should have been able to do in pre-school.

This reflected a national trend: as per the latest National Achievement Survey (NAS), academic performances in schools across the country, including in the national capital, slipped below levels recorded in 2017, except in Punjab and Rajasthan.

The Indian Express returned this month to find that after the four months of “focused foundational” learning through the Delhi government’s Mission Buniyaad programme, additional months of hand-holding for those who need special help and a scaled-down syllabus, the report card looks a lot different – and impressive.

In the first-term exams held in November, 24 students in Neha’s class scored over 50 in the 60-mark paper; 12 scored between 41 and 50; and two scored between 30 and 40.

The journey to this has been carefully calibrated.

After four months of numerical concepts, at the end of July, the class was divided into two groups: Level 1 or L1, where students who were found to be ready to move on with the class 5 syllabus, with the most advanced skill being solving division sums; and L2, where students who were not yet at grade level and still needed time with the basics.

Only two of the 38 students — Siddharth and Harish — were identified as L2. This meant that both boys continued having one hour of Mission Buniyaad classes every day before joining their classmates for the rest of the day.

In the last week of November, Siddharth joined the rest of his classmates for full-time regular classes.

Apart from Siddharth’s academic progress, Neha is happy with his social and emotional well-being.

“On Children’s Day, we had a special Assembly in which everyone was made to participate, especially those children who were in L1 at that time or didn’t participate or mix with other children. Siddharth played an animal in a skit on saving trees. He also had a few lines to say about how trees are important for animals too,” she says.

Harish, on the other hand, is still far behind the rest of his classmates – he has been identified as having special learning needs. He can only count from 1 to 10 but while he was struggling with this in April- May, Neha says, it’s now easier.

But some challenges, exacerbated during the pandemic, endure. While Harish’s father is a daily-wage worker, Siddharth’s family is supported by his mother’s anganwadi job, and Keerti’s father is a fruit vendor. Neha knows all these families are vulnerable to sudden distress and, in many ways, haven’t yet emerged out of the Covid shadow.

Indeed, she is aware that the solid ground forged through months of hand-holding and encouragement is a shaky one, especially in the case of those who come from difficult family situations such as Siddharth and Harish.

Siddharth who has opened up gradually over months of school and interaction with his teachers and peers, comes from a home where his father’s alcoholism results in domestic violence. The two pandemic years of being away from school in such a household had eroded his confidence, pushed him into a shell.

“I haven’t yet been able to connect with his father,” says Neha, “but I have a good relationship with mother. His home situation has not changed though. It won’t change and we can’t change it either.”

Another challenge for Neha has been to try to get Harish’s father to come to school regularly. She hasn’t had much success here, too, since his parents often don’t respond to her calls or messages. Bur she is pushing ahead. Harish goes for therapy and takes classes with the school’s special educator three days a week. He also goes to a special resource centre in a Lajpat Nagar school.

“At least now he’s able to count till 10,” says Neha. “The special educator told me that we can’t put pressure on him. The more we do that, the less he’ll want to come to school. So I don’t push him.”

Keerti, in contrast, has a relatively strong family support system with them sending her for regular tuition classes. No surprise that she is breezing through the scaled-down curriculum for the grade. Along with two other students, she got a perfect 60/60 in her first-term maths exam.

Now, as Neha ma’am handholds the class through their final phase of class 5, she is optimistic. Does she worry that the slower pace of teaching, the reduced syllabus, may lead to her students not being sufficiently ready for class 6?

“Not really. class 5 has been about consolidating what they already knew or were supposed to know at this level…For example, the patterns chapter I am teaching now began with simple patterns we had introduced in Mission Buniyaad. That got them interested. Most of my students are in a comfortable zone now with fractions, numbers, factors and multiples, HCF and LCM… This is not ‘ratne waale maths’ our main focus is to make concepts clear to children,” she says.

This is significant given that class 6 is the gateway to secondary schooling and all advanced concepts are predicated on getting the basics right, say experts.

Shailendra Sharma, Principal Advisor to the Director of Education, says this “gradual and gentle” approach will continue into the next year as well when these children move on to class 6. “If there is any child who has not been regular or is re-joining school after a gap or is not yet at class level, we will continue providing learning support. We will also continue with a reduced syllabus for next year as well, with more activities,” he says.

What that means, for Neha Ma’am and her students, is a New Year fraught with challenge — but also infused with hope.