BackGovernment schools in Maharashtra fare better than private: ASER
According to Annual Status of Education Report , Maharashtra students fare better than national counterparts when it comes to reading performance
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Mumbai: The performance of government schools is better than that of private schools, according to Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) which was released on Wednesday.
Maharashtra fares better at national level when it comes to performance of children as far as reading is concerned, however, the result stands poor in arithmetics, mentions the report. Maharashtra education minister Vinod Tawde released the state report here. Farida Lambay, co-founder of Pratham NGO and Usha Rane, director content and training at the organisation were present.
ASER report is facilitated by Pratham. The ASER 2016 survey was conducted across Maharashtra in 33 rural districts, 973 villages and 19,430 households. It was conducted by 11 NGOs, 23 colleges and various universities in the state. As many as 26,393 school children participated in the survey.
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In 2016, the percentage of children enrolled in grade III in government schools in the state who can read Grade II level text is 41.2% and the percentage of children enrolled in Grade III in private schools who can read Grade II level text is 38.8%. The performance of Grade-III children in government schools who can read Grade-II level text is better than performance of Grade III children in private schools, the report stated.
It shows that reading levels in higher grades have also increased. In 2014, the percentage of children enrolled in Grade V who can read a Grade II level text was 53.5%, it has increased to 62.5% in 2016, the report said.
Rane said, “Many times we are criticised for selecting low number of sample survey. But our number of samples are actually more than the sample size of National Sample Survey. Hence, we are trying to get the picture closer to reality." Some of the reports are a cause of concern as 25% students from Grade VIII who could not read Grade II level text.
We still have to work more," she said. “In 2014, the percentage of children enrolled in Grade V in government schools in Maharashtra who can read Grade II level text was 51.7%. In 2016, the percentage has increased by 11% to 62.7%," the report said. As far as national figures are concerned, in 2014 the percentage of all children enrolled in Grade V in government schools who can read Grade II level text was 42.2%. In 2016, the percentage has decreased by 0.6% at 41.6%, stated the report. In 2016, the percentage of all children in Grade I who can read letters or more is 60.7%, however nationally the percentage stands at is 53.9%.
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