The performance of school students in all the classes in four southern states — Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu — has come down in most subjects barring English in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 compared to the last assessment four years ago. The only uptick is that the scaled scores out of 500 in most subjects have been above the national average. However, most Class X students in the four states scored below the basic levels in Science.
A detailed analysis of the state-wise report card shows that the Class III scores in Language in Kerala came down from 349 to 342. In Maths, the score declined from 340 to 313, and in Environmental Studies, the decrease was from 346 to 318. The same trend is seen in the scores of Classes V, VIII, and X. Students in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have shown similar downward results. The national average for Class III in Language stood at 323, 306 in Maths and 307 in EVS.
Around 34 lakh students in 1.18 lakh schools in 720 districts across the country took part in NAS 2021 in one of the most extensive exercises of its kind carried out by the Department of School Education and Literacy in the Union Ministry of Education. The last NAS was carried out in 2017. English was the only subject where Class X students performed better in all the four states. In Karnataka, the English score of Class X students went up to 283 from 269; in Kerala, it jumped to 300 from 263, Tamil Nadu saw a rise from 249 to 275, and in Andhra Pradesh, it increased to 291 from 274.
A further breakdown of the results showed that 32 per cent of Class VIII students in Tamil Nadu performed below the basic level in the Language, 26 per cent in Mathematics, and 24 per cent in EVS. In Class V, 40 per cent of the students performed below basic in EVS, 39 per cent in Mathematics and 27 per cent in Languages. Science and Social Science became a big challenge in Class VIII as half of the students struggled below the basic level in the two subjects.
In Class X, an astonishing 85 per cent of students performed below par in Science. A similar trend was witnessed among Class X students in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, where 75 per cent and 74 per cent of them scored below the basic level.
