NAS 2021: Fewer students, logistics may come in way of survey

With the Ministry of Education scheduling the massive nationwide National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 on Friday, states are concerned about student attendance and logistics that might hamper the survey.

The NAS, being implemented on a rolling process every three years, aims to assess learning loss among school students, with this year’s edition especially looking to assess disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to school students’ learning abilities.

Expected to cover 123,000 schools and 3.8 million students across 733 districts in 36 states and Union territories, NAS 2021 will be conducted in language, mathematics and EVS for classes three and five. Class eight students will be assessed for language, mathematics, science and social science, while class 10 students will have an additional subject of English apart from the four subjects. The test will be conducted in 22 mediums of instruction. However, states are concerned about the logistics and timing of the survey.

“The survey is being held at a time when most states still have voluntary offline attendance till classes eight. Several students and their parents are still wary of offline classes. At such a time, the survey may not yield the potential results the government is expecting. Also, while some states are witnessing climate issues like heavy rains, others are still reeling under festival-induced absenteeism,” said a teacher at one of the sample schools in Gujarat.

On Thursday, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia too requested the Centre to postpone the survey. “Whose achievement will it test when most children are not even coming to school?” Sisodia asked in a tweet.

On its part, the Ministry of Education has appointed over 180,000 field investigators, over 123,000 observers, 733 district-level coordinators and district nodal officers along with 36 state nodal officers in each state and UT for the survey. The Centre aims to use the findings to diagnose learning gaps of students and determine interventions required in education policies, teaching practices and learning.

For this, the Ministry of Education has also developed a NAS-2021 portal through NIC in consultation with the NCERT, CBSE, UNICEF, DDG (Stats) and NITI Aayog.

To be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) as assessment administrator for Grade 3, 5, 8 and 10 students, the survey will cover not only state government schools but also government-aided schools, private unaided recognised schools and central government schools.