No-fail till Class 8 may be reviewed

POLICY FALLOUT House panel tells govt provision responsible for fall in learning levels

NEW DELHI: Young India’s math and reading standards are falling, and the provision under the Right to Education (RTE) Act of not failing students up to Class 8 is to blame.

The government may reconsider the policy after a parliamentary standing committee on human resource development ( HRD) headed by Congress leader Oscar Fernandes made these observations in a report. “The committee would like the department (of higher education) to rethink its policy of automatic promotion up to Class 8,” the panel has said.

The idea behind the “no-failing” policy was to minimise the number of school dropouts. But learning outcome surveys conducted by the government and independent education think tanks have shown a fall in students’ ability to read and solve math problems since the policy was introduced on April 1, 2010.

Between 2010 and 2012, the percentage of Class 5 students unable to read Class 2 texts went up from 46.3% to 53.2%, according to the Annual Status of Education Report ( ASER) conducted by Pratham, a nonprofit group.

The math problem is more acute. In 2010, 29.1% of Class 5 students were unable to solve simple two- digit subtraction problems that involved carryovers. By 2012, this has risen to 46.5%.

Many schools across the country have also recorded increased absenteeism and raised questions about the policy’s impact on the preparedness of students to handle the pressures of competitive exams from Class 9.

“There’s a risk that we may create a generation that can hold up school certificates but may not have even the most basic learning,” said Rohini Srivastava, a math teacher at a secondary boys’ school on Minto Road in New Delhi. It’s a challenge parents, teachers and policy makers across India are waking up to. “With the

MANY SCHOOLS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT POLICY’S IMPACT ON THE PREPAREDNESS OF STUDENTS TO HANDLE PRESSURES OF EXAMS

new policy, I had thought I would no longer need to worry about my son’s academic performance,” said Devika Rani, mother of a Class 9 student. “I was so wrong. All that changed was the nature of the concerns teachers had, and that I now share.”