Patna, (Bihar Times): The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)-2008 on Bihar reveals that in some spheres the children of Bihar have done better than the children of educationally developed states like Kerala and Karnataka.

According to Rukmini Banerjee of ASER in arithmetic, the students of Standard V showed their learning level was above the national average and while it was 44 in Kerala it was 52 in Bihar. The children in Bihar were more prompt in telling time and counting currency notes than the children of Gujarat of the same level. Rukmini was here at the release of survey by the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, on Saturday.

The ASER conducted the survey at 997 village spread over 35 districts and 56,784 children were covered. The children were tested for 3 R’s. It was found that while the national average of enrolment was 75.4 per cent in 2005, it declined to 72.2 per cent in 2008, but in Bihar it was 71.9 per cent in 2005 and 83.6 per cent in 2008. The dropout of the girls in 11-14 years age group has dropped from 20 per cent to just eight per cent now and Bihar stands only next to Rajasthan in this sphere.

Madhav Chavan, the director of Pratham, an NGO said that during summer period Anganwadis be entrusted with responsibility to teach letter and numeric to children who have not started going to schools to make them familiar with it when they are enrolled.

Speaking on the occasion chief minister Nitish Kumar said the state wants to achieve the gigantic task of 100 per cent literacy and all the campaign for this either by the government or by NGOs or other agencies will be continued. He talked about the scheme of Talimi Markaz and Utthan Kendras for the out of school children of Muslims and Mahadalits which were being opened in their respective tolas.

It needs a separate study to know as to why the learning level of the students of Bihar is better than many other states. The quality of teacher and condition of schools in other states are certainly not bad.

Comment

comments...

It’s a really good to know that finally seed sown has reaping fruits. The route of development in any society  is education nowadays and if it is going with same pace it will certainly create a better environment. But it should be kept in mind that only enrolment statistics at school should not be taken into account, but the, different parameter related to development of students. As per ASER(Annual Status of Education Report),they have evaluated students on their education part like mathematics,writing,speaking  Hindi/English, so one can feel the reliability of Report and real progressive development of Bihar.
 
Amit Kumar
Chandigarh

amit.khagaria@yahoo.co.in