Another one lakh students can read following Delhi government's drive

An additional one lakh students learned to read "advance stories" following the Delhi government's "Reading Mela" campaign, a government statement said on Friday.

The Directorate of Education submitted to Education Minister Manish Sisodia the results of the campaign launched on Teachers' Day (September 5) this year.

Based on the final assessment by the school teachers, 46 per cent of children in Class VI can now read an advance story (having an excerpt of about 100 words from the text book of Class VI) compared to the baseline, which was 25 per cent, the statement said.

For classes VII and VIII, the number has increased to 64 per cent and 68 per cent, respectively, from 52 per cent and 55 per cent.

The statement added that 8 per cent of students in Class VI, 5 per cent in Class VII and 4 per cent in Class VIII could not even identify a letter of the alphabet, which has now been reduced to 2 per cent, 1 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively.

Sisodia has now initiated talks with the Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCDs) to take this reading campaign to primary classes in MCD schools as well.

The purpose of the reading campaign was to ensure that every student from classes VI to VIII is able to read Hindi fluently by Children's Day (November 14).

The campaign was focused on around 3.6 lakh students out of the total 6.3 lakh students enrolled in government schools.

Those students, who scored more than 33 per cent marks in each of the five subjects with pen and paper test, were not included.

--IANS

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