11% Of Class III Children Lack Basic Math Skills, 37% Have Limited Skills, Reveals Study

• Tamil Nadu had the highest number of students (29%) lacking basic numeracy skills, followed by Jammu & Kashmir (28%), Assam, and Gujarat (18% each).

Foundational literacy skills

These included oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, decoding, reading comprehension, and oral reading fluency with comprehension.

Outcome

• In English, 30% of the respondents showed limited knowledge and skills
• 15% could not complete the most basic grade-level tasks
• Only 20% could successfully complete the most basic grade-level tasks
• In Hindi, 21% of the students lacked the most basic skills
• 32% had limited skills
• Only 22% had sufficient skills
• The proportion of students lacking basic skills was 21% in Kannada, 17% in Malayalam, 17% in Marathi, 20% in Bengali, 19% in Odia, and 42% in Tamil.

The report said the findings will set the baseline for National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy scheme launched last year nationally to enable students at the end of Class 3 to attain foundational skills by 2026-2027. “The Study also aims to establish reading proficiency benchmarks for fluency and comprehension for each of the languages [20]…being assessed under the study and proficiency benchmarks for numeracy.”

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that it is the “first of its kind study in the world and aims to set benchmarks for reading with comprehension in 20 Indian languages”.