Letter to BS: Talks on entry-level age to primary school needs a conclusion

The Annual Status Education Report (ASER) of NGO Pratham for the year 2019 has once again strongly underlined the existing and yet unaddressed inadequacies in our school education system. 

While linking India's learning crisis to the weakness of pre-primary system, ASER has pointed out the fact that more than 20 per cent of students in Class I are less than six-year-old and children’s performance vis-à-vis

language and numeracy or other cognitive, social and emotional learning tasks are strongly related to their age with older children doing better on all tasks.

Debate on ideal entry-level age to primary school needs to be taken to its logical conclusion. As emphasised by ASER, children between four and eight should be taught basic cognitive skills through play-based activities with a thrust on developing problem-solving faculties and by building memories of children. Addressing the ills plaguing the pre-school and primary school education system is the need of hour.

M Jeyaram, Tamil Nadu

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