Learning Outcomes At The Elementary Stage

PREAMBLE

Why this Document

The literature on Education for All’ (EFA), in the last three decades emphasised on quality of education. It has been considered in terms of enrolment, retention and achievement. It further included desirable characteristics of learners, learning processes, facilities, learning materials, contents, governance and management and learning outcomes. Improving the quality of learning has consistently been in focus under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). and the Right to Education (RTE) Act. All the National Curriculum Frameworks (NCF) developed by the NCERT and other important government initiatives have also included quality as a prime goal. It envisaged that all children learn the basics and have opportunities to acquire the transferable skills needed to become global citizens. This demands setting goals that are clear and measurable. Thus, it is imperative that within a system of education, the national and state educational bodies need to be informed about how well the system is doing to make rational decisions by administrators, planners and policy-makers. Various Assessment Surveys at the National and State level (NAS/SLAS) are some of the initiatives in this direction. In addition to these, different stakeholders at the school and community level also play a crucial role towards quality improvement in education.

As per the recent Global Monitoring Report (GMR)-2015, impressive gains in access to education have occurred in developing countries including India, but improvement in quality still remains a concern. In India, different achievement surveys such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) reported wide disparities in students’ achievement of basic skills across states, which was also affirmed by the National Achievement Survey (NAS) of Class III, (MHRD, 2014).

Reports of Joint Review Missions for SSA in the past few years also mentioned that the learning levels of children are not up to the desirable level in spite of all the efforts made by the States/ UTs in terms of timely provision of teaching-learning and resource materials, teacher deployment and regular monitoring. These report a decline in outcomes of reading ability as well as numerical and mathematical ability which is a major concern at present. Keeping this in view, quality, as measured by learning outcomes to be achieved by all, especially for literacy, numeracy and essential life skills is crucial. The focus of the Twelfth Five Year Plan for basic learning as an explicit objective of primary education and the need for regular learning assessments to make sure that quality goals are met. It is also in consonance with the recommendations of GMR-2015 and the SDG. Thus, monitoring of quality through assessments of learning