New Delhi: Reflecting poor quality of
school education, about half of the children in Class-V in
rural areas are unable to read text of Class-II while a
majority of them are unable to do simple divisions, a report
said today.
The `Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2009`,
prepared by Pratham, said the percentage of rural children in
Standard-V reading the text of Standard-II level has declined
from 56.2 per cent in 2008 to 52.8 per cent in 2009.
This means about 50 per cent of children in rural
areas are at least three grade level behind where they need to
be, said the report prepared on the basis of the study carried
out in 575 out of 583 rural districts in India.
The study covered 16,291 villages, 338,027 households
and 6,91,734 children. Pratham has been bringing out the
report annually for the last five years.
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Punjab are the states where
the reading competence level of children has increased. At
Standard one level, the percentage of children who can
recognise letters or more is 69 against 65 in 2008. Nearly 30
per cent of the kids are unable to recognise numbers, it said.
The situation is worrying in Mathematics as only 36
per cent of kids at Class-V have the ability to do division,
the report said.
PTI
