The Annual Status of Education Report 2012 has revealed the standard of school education is not up to the mark in rural India, and claimed over half the children in these areas were at least three grade levels behind in reading and arithmetic abilities.
The report, prepared by Pratham, claimed of all Class 5 students only 46.8 per cent could read a Class 2 text. Though 2012 was the year of arithmetic in India, only 53.5 per cent Class 5 students could solve a Class 2 arithmetic problem.
In government schools the situation is worse. “In government schools the percentage of Class 5 children able to read a Class 2 text had fallen from 50.7 to 41.7 in 2012,” the report claimed.
For all Class 5 children, the major decline in reading levels (five percentage points or more) between 2011 and 2012 is seen in Haryana, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala.
Even private schools in Maharastra and Kerala show a decline in reading ability.
On arithmetic, the report said in 2010 seven out of 10 (70.9 per cent) Class 5 children were able to solve simple two-digit subtraction problems with borrowing, but this has declined to six out of 10 (61 per cent) in 2011 and five out of 10 (53.5 per cent) in 2012.
Barring Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, every major state in the country has shown a substantial drop in arithmetic learning levels.