‘Only 53% students have learning ability for Marathi in primary schools’

PUNE: Barely 53% of standard V students at primary schools in the state have appropriate learning abilities for Marathi language, revealed a survey conducted by the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training (MSCERT). The survey also stated that only 50% of the std V students have the ability to learn mathematics.
Standard V students at primary schools in Mumbai city were found to have less than the average 53% learning ability for Marathi language and students at schools in Mumbai city as well as Mumbai suburbs and in Pune were found having less than the average 50% learning ability for mathematics, the survey stated.
The MSCERT, which is an apex institute of the state mandated for providing academic support and inputs for improving quality of primary education, released here on Monday the results of the state-wide survey on learning abilities of std V students for the year 2013-14.
The focus was on key learning aspects such as hearing, reading, vocabulary, working grammar and writing for language (Marathi) and numerical understanding, problem solving, measure, general maths, geometry and information analysis for mathematics.
The survey was part of an annual exercise to determine learning abilities of students at primary level and work out measures for further improvement. It was carried out under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan by the DIETs and DTEd students.
A total of 64,515 std V students across the state were tested for Marathi language learning abilities and 65,030 students were tested for mathematics. They were from 2,937 randomly selected government-run, local self governing bodies-run, such as schools run by municipal corporations and municipal councils and private unaided primary schools.
Of these, 2,386 schools were located in the rural areas and the remaining 551 in the urban areas. A total of 1,769 schools were government or local self governing bodies-run and 1,168 schools were private unaided institutions.
All students, who were part of the survey, were given papers of 50 marks each for Marathi and mathematics. The Marathi paper had 44 objective type questions and a six-mark writing skill question while the mathematics paper had 50 objective type questions,” an MSCERT official said.
For mathematics, the survey revealed that students from 18 districts ended up with more than average score in the tests. In numerical abilities, six out of 10 questions were solved correctly and in numerical applications, eight out of 14 questions were solved right.
However, the extent of providing correct answers in additions and substractions, multiplication and division is gradually going down, the survey revealed. In fractions, only two of the five questions were solved correctly and in measures, only three of the six questions were solved correctly.
Overall, there wasn’t much difference in the learning abilities of boys and girls in mathematics.