FINDINGS OF THE NATIONAL Achievement Survey (NAS) 2017, commissioned by the Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) last November which assessed learning attainments of 2.5 million classes III, V and VIII children in 110,000 government and government-aided schools in 700 districts of the Indian Union, have come as a shock to educationists in Tamil Nadu. The NAS report confirms that learning outcomes in Tamil Nadu’s 53,000 government and government-aided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education (TNSBSE) are abysmal.

NAS 2017 was conducted by field investigators who visited a representative sample of schools from the state’s 30 districts and administered age-appropriate tests to children of classes III, V and VIII. According to the survey, children’s learning outcomes in government and aided schools in this state — which prides itself for its academic and scholastic tradition — decline as students’ progress from primary to high school. With the exception of Tamil language in which students of all three classes scored consistently high, this declining trend is evident in all the other four subjects tested — environmental science (EVS), maths, science and social studies.

 In Chennai, the state’s administrative capital, the 1,014 class III students tested in math averaged 58.86 percent. However, the average math score of 1,026 class V children dropped to 44.53 percent and of 1,076 class VIII students to 31.19 percent. Surprisingly, class VIII students in Madurai district outperformed Chennai counterparts with a 32.53 percent average in math and 32.65 percent in science as against Chennai’s 29.81 percent. 

Although educationists in the state expressed disappointment, they are unsurprised by the poor learning outcomes of students in Tamil Nadu’s 53,000 government and aided schools. According to them, the undemanding samacheer kalvi or common school curriculum (introduced by the DMK government in January 2010 for classes I to X) and poor quality of prescribed textbooks, are primarily to blame for deteriorating learning standards over the past eight years. Moreover, there is unanimous agreement that the examination system which rewards rote memorisation rather than critical thinking and analytical skills, is responsible for students lacking deeper understanding of their subjects. 

The silver lining of this dismal condition of primary-secondary education in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) — a state which is widely perceived to be a land of math and science geniuses — is that, following severe criticism from educationists and academics about declining standards in schools affiliated with TNSBSE (confirmed by NAS 2017), the state government has initiated a complete revamp of the TNSBSE syllabus which will be implemented in phases from this academic year (2018-19). Informed academics credit Tamil Nadu’s strong and committed bureaucracy and in particular the curriculum reforms committee chaired by M. Anandakrishnan, former vice chancellor of Anna University, for undertaking this exercise despite the political turmoil in the state after the sudden demise of chief minister J. Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016.

Other contributory factors for the steep fall of academic standards in TNSBSE affiliated schools according to the small minority who monitor the big picture, are the automatic promotion of students in classes I-VIII decreed by the RTE Act, 2009, mounting teacher vacancies, deficient infrastructure and regular deployment of teachers for non-academic government work (census, election duty etc). 

Academics in Tamil Nadu have welcomed NAS 2017 which has highlighted the poor performance of a representative sample of primary-secondary students in state board affiliated schools. They regard the survey as a timely wake-up call for politicians who constantly bend and twist education laws to suit their political convenience. There’s emerging unanimity in the state’s academia that the neta-babu brotherhood should leave education to educationists, if Tamil Nadu is to regain its reputation for education excellence.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)