Telangana: Staggering 82% students from Classes III to V cannot read Class II level text

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 paints a grim picture of reading levels and arithmetic skills of the school children in Telangana

Hyderabad: At a time when Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, who is also Education Minister, is boasting about the Young India Skills University and tie-ups with international institutions for skilling, students’ learning skills present a gloomy picture in the schools.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024 report released on Tuesday exposed the wide gap between teaching and learning in the schools.

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As per the report, among students from Classes III to V, 82 per cent of children cannot read the Class II level content. Another concerning figure emerged that 51 percent of children cannot do at least subtraction.

The students’ learning worsened as they transitioned to the upper primary level with 53.6 per cent of them from Classes VI to VIII being unable to read the Class II level text.

Even more alarming is that 65 per cent of students from Classes VI to VIII failed to perform a simple division, a fundamental math skill expected by the end of primary school. The report also exposed the failure of the FLN programme, which was introduced to improve foundational literacy and numerical skills among students.

The survey report, which covered nine districts with 5,306 households released by Pratham, an NGO, has painted a grim picture of reading and arithmetic levels of the school children. Among Class III children, 7.8 per cent cannot even read a letter, only 26.5 per cent can read letters but not words or higher.

Further, only 41.3 per cent are able to read words but not Class I level text or higher, 18.3 per cent can read Class I level text but not higher, and 6.2 per cent can read Class II level text. Much more alarming is that State students fared poorly than their counterparts from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in the survey.

In fact, the percentage of Class III students who can read the Class II level text dropped from 19.9 per cent in 2014 to 6.3 per cent in 2024. Similarly, is the case with Class V and VIII students.

Another startling data that has come to limelight is 1.6 per cent out of the total Class VIII students surveyed cannot read even a letter and only 7.7 per cent can read a letter but no words.

As for Arithmetic, 2.1 per cent Class VIII students cannot even recognise numbers from 1 to 9, 2.6 per cent can recognise numbers up to 9 but cannot recognise numbers up to 99 or higher.

Further, 19.6 per cent students can recognise numbers up to 99 but cannot do subtraction, while 34.6 per cent can do subtraction but not division and 41.1 per cent can do division.