Teachers are custodians of Nagaland’s children, says Kevileno Angami

KOHIMA: Commissioner and Secretary of School Education and SCERT, Kevileno Angami, on Thursday, asserted on the important role of education administrators and those involved in the teaching and learning transaction in schools as they are the custodians of the children of the state.

Speaking during a one-day workshop organised by Nagaland Education Mission Society Samagra Shiksha Nagaland (SSN) at Capital Convention Hall in Kohima, Angami said the participants of the workshop were from the school ecosystem, working with the objective of making children educated and capacitating them to learn.

Whether they were from SCERT, DIETs, SSN, school establishments or other organisations, she reminded them of their common responsibility to work towards nurturing children who can become responsible citizens in the state and country.

Angami said that children in the state, particularly from govt. schools, are the product of their inputs — teachers, administration and inputs provided from the system of curriculum, syllabus, textbooks, and from education transactions that take place.

She asserted that they have many dropout rates in the secondary level in schools because of external factors, and reiterated that the mission was launched to build a strong foundation for the children with which they can move forward.

Director of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Keviraleü Kerhuo stated that the National Achievement Survey (NAS) is a nationwide survey of student’s learning undertaken by the Ministry of Education to study and assess the health of the education system.

She said Foundational Learning Study (FLS) aims to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary classes and to ensure that all children attain grade-level competencies in reading, writing and numeracy.

Kerhuo said that NAS and FLS findings provide a comprehensive picture of student’s learning across every state and the country, and understanding of student’s knowledge, skills and performance on key tasks and provides policy planners with information to devise strategy and allocate resources to strengthen poor performance.

NAS, she stated, is the largest, nationwide, sample-based education survey conducted across India while it provides a system-level reflection on the effectiveness of school education.

While apprising how it collects information on relevant background variables such as school environment, teaching processes and student’s home and background factors, she said it covers the whole spectrum of schools including both Central and state governments as well as govt.-aided and private schools across India.

She informed that NAS was conducted throughout the country on Nov. 13, 2017 for classes 3, 5 and 8 in both govt. and govt.-aided schools for subjects including Mathematics, Language, Social Sciences and Science while the same was conducted by NCERT at the Centre.

In Nagaland, the survey was initiated by SCERT, and through this survey, it has helped them to understand the progress towards achieving the learning outcomes and ways to improve the learning levels of children, she informed.

NAS 2021 survey was conducted on Nov.12, 2021, Kerhuo informed, stating that the survey was conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) as assessment administrator for Grade 3, 5, 8 and 10 students of state govt. and govt.-aided schools, private unaided recognised schools and Central govt. schools.

 At the state level, she said NAS 2021 was initiated by the directorate of School Education (DoSE) with Timothy Thong, former joint director of DoSE as the nodal officer. She said the selection of sampled schools was based on UDISE+2019-20 data.

She informed that under the national average, the percentage of students for class 3 was 59%, which declined by 10% to 49% in class 5, adding that this was further declined to 41.9% in class 8 and then 37.8% in class 10.

In the performance recorded, there was a decline in almost all subjects, she said.

She informed that the language score nationally was 62% in class 3, which dropped to 52% in class 5, and to 53% in class 8 while for Science, the score declined from 39% in class 8 to 35% in class 10, while the average performance of schools in rural areas remained “significantly below” than those urban areas in some states and union territories.

 When it comes to social-group wise performance of the scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribe (ST) / Other Backward Classes (OBC), she said that OBC categories remained lower than that of students from the general category.

Looking into gender-wise performance, she asserted that girls performed better than the boys in almost all subjects across the classes, both nationally and at state level.

Meanwhile, she said that the Ministry of Education launched the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat in July 2021, stating that it was announced as a national mission to enable all children at the end of grade 3 to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-2027.

As a crucial step towards strengthening efforts for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), she said a large-scale FLS was undertaken by NCERT in March 2022, adding that In Nagaland, out of 75 schools, 669 students and 146 teachers participated in the survey.

Considering the importance of NAS and FLS in the education system, the plans for effective implementation should be based on their effort, she said the interventions that they give will be crucial to enhance the learning levels of children.

Kelhikha Kenye, deputy mission director, SSN apprised about the exercise for NAS and FLS which was conducted in 2021 -22 all over the country.

He informed that the Education Ministry has come out with reports of both NAS and FLS while apprising about SCERT in the state-level comprising participants from the  NBSE, DoSE and  SSN.

The one-day workshop covered two technical sessions with Veketulu Veyie, senior lecturer, SCERT, who dwelled on FLS 2022-findings and intervention plan; while Lanukala I Jamir, reader, SCERT, discussed NAS 20212 – findings and intervention plan.

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