Reading skills among Nagaland students above national level: ASER report

The Variance: Proficiency levels among students in private schools increases but shows decline in govt school

Morung Express News
Dimapur | January 16


While the proficiency levels in basic arithmetic of Nagaland students made for poor reading in the recently released Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) - 2018 report, they however did very well in terms of reading skills.
Nationally, the report stated that only 50% Class V students and 75% of Class VIII students could read Class II level texts. By comparison, in Nagaland, 61.4% of Class V students and 83.6% of Class VIII students could read Class II level texts.


The report indicated that reading levels also improved in the state over the years, especially in private schools. It informed that 39% of Class III students in private schools of the state could read Class II level texts in 2018. This was a marked increase from 33.7% in 2012, 17.6% in 2014 and 27.1% in 2016.


Government schools however showed a declining trend in reading proficiency levels. From 12.8% of Class III students in government schools who could read Class II level texts, that percentage dropped to 4.6% in 2014, 7.9% in 2016, and 7.4% in 2018.


Thanks to private schools, the weighted average showed an overall increase in proficiency levels from 20.5% in 2012 to 22.6% in 2018. It may be noted however that the intermediary years of 2014 and 2016 witnessed massive drops in the weighted average reading proficiency levels at 9.1% and 15.6% respectively.


The ASER report informed that the above criteria regarding reading assessment is its highest level. “This figure is a proxy for grade level reading for Class III,” it added.


Meanwhile, batch-wise progress of students over the years held a steady level in terms of their reading proficiency, the report found.


It showed that 46% of students in a Class IV batch in 2008 could read Class II level texts. This increased to 61% when they reached Class VI in 2010 and 88% when they reached Class VIII in 2012. A similar study of a more recent batch showed that 24% of students in a Class IV batch in 2014 could read Class II level texts. The percentage increased to 68% when they reached Class VI in 2016 and 83% when they reached Class VIII in 2018.


The end percentage of students in these batches who passed the reading grade level also maintained a high average, consistently varying between 88% and 83%.


This was the 13th such report published by the non-governmental organisation, which sent its volunteers to 15,998 government schools across the country to collect the data. Tests were conducted on 5,46,527 students in the age group of 3-16 across 596 districts in rural India.