By Felix Anthony

Miao: Christian schools were among private schools in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh that took part in the first National Achievement Survey conducted across India on February 5.

The survey aimed at finding the level of learning outcome among students.

Tenth grade students of Newman Educational Society were among about 2 million students from private schools across India who took part in the survey.

The society that functions under the Miao diocese in Arunachal Pradesh has 46 schools under its care.

P. Mossang, Block Resource Officer from Miao, opening the survey, explained to the students from Newman School Neotan the importance of this survey in the field of education for the years ahead. “A sincere survey will help the Government design appropriate interventions for the improvement in quality learning for the coming years,” he said.

The teachers from the private schools in the district also took this survey.

The survey, the largest such exercise in the world, was conducted successfully, claims a press release from the federal Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Federal Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said the survey is a transparent and credible exercise done under third party verification.

The survey was conducted for grades 3, 5 and 8 in government and government aided schools.

The survey tools used multiple test booklets with 45 questions in grades three and five related to language, mathematics and 60 questions in grade eight in Mathematics, Language, Sciences and Social Sciences.

The competency based test questions developed reflected the Learning Outcomes developed by the NCERT which were recently incorporated in the Right to Education Act by the federal government. Along with the test items, questionnaires pertaining to students, teachers and schools were also used.

The survey assessed the learning levels of more than 2.5 million students from 110,000 schools across 700 districts in all 36 states and Union Territories. More than 175,000 trained Field Investigators from outside the government education system were engaged to conduct the learning assessment in the country.

To ensure the fairness of the survey, a monitoring team was constituted which consisted of observers from inter-ministerial departments drawn from the state governments, National and State Observers from Education Departments and multi-lateral organizations. This monitoring team observed the implementation of the survey in all the districts, on the Day of Assessment.

The district wise learning report cards will be prepared based on a software especially designed for this. Subsequently, analytical reports will be prepared. The analysis will reflect the disaggregated and detailed learning levels. The whole process will begin immediately and will be completed within 3-5 months.

The inferences will be used to design Classroom interventions percolated to all the schools in the districts for implementation. The findings of the survey, will also help in understanding the efficiency of the education system. NAS results will help guide education policy, planning and implementation at national, state, district and classroom levels for improving learning levels of children and bringing about qualitative improvements.