Reverse the learning loss of India’s young

Anew government survey released on Wednesday evening confirmed what a raft of non-official reports and studies have been indicating: Learning levels were hammered by the Covid-19, with school closures disproportionately impacting students in rural areas.

The National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021, the first such exercise conducted since 2017, found that the national average percentage, the average of scores across four subjects, for Class 3 was 59%, which declined by 10 percentage points to 49% in Class 5. It further dropped to 41.9% in Class 8 and 37.8% in Class 10. In all subjects, average scores were lower than 2017. The average performance of schools in rural areas was “significantly below” those in urban areas in the same regions, and the performance of students from scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) categories was much lower than that of students from the general category. This report – and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey and Azim Premji University’s field studies – make it clear that the distress wrought by Covid-19-affected students from marginsalised sections the worst. That online classes were a poor substitute for physical learning was confirmed by a quarter of the students in the NAS survey who said they didn’t have access to digital devices, and nearly 40% who said they had problems studying at home. To address this, policymakers will have to make school shutdowns the last possible response to future waves of Covid-19 and recalibrate the education system to ensure that weaker students are not left behind. Reversing the learning loss must be at the core of the national consciousness.