Srinagar, Nov 12: The students from around 3676 government and private educational institutions across J&K on Friday participated in the National Achievement Survey (NAS)-2021 conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The students of class 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th participated in the assessment survey which was done through offline mode in collaboration with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) J&K.
The National Achievement Survey (NAS) is a nationally representative sample-based survey of students’ learning undertaken by the Ministry of Education, Government of India (GoI).
“NAS gives a system level reflection on the effectiveness of school education,” an official said.
The official said the findings will help to compare the performance across spectrum and across population in order to find the desirable direction for improvement. The assessment was done on the basis of MCQ type papers and students had to fill their answers through OMR sheets.
“The students of class 3rd and 5th did not fill the OMR sheets but they were provided the MCQ paper to mark the right option of the answer. Later the OMR sheet of each student will be filled by the field investigator as per the options marked by the students on the paper,” an official from SCERT said.
“Only the students of 8th and 10th filled the answers on the OMR sheets,” he said.
The survey was conducted to assess the learning outcomes of the students and to determine the impact of the prolonged closure of schools due to Covid19 pandemic. The students were assessed in English, Mathematics, Science and Language subjects. NAS-2021 was conducted to assess students’ learning and give a system level reflection on the effectiveness of school education.
The Union Ministry of Education (MoE) informed that around 1.82 lakh field investigators, 1.23 lakh observers, 733 District Level Coordinators and District Nodal Officers besides 36 State Nodal Officers and 1,500 Board Representatives were deployed across the country for smooth conduct of the survey.
“NAS 2021 is designed to identify learning gaps of students and in determining interventions required in education policies, teaching practices and learning,” an official said.
Last time the NAS was conducted in 2017 by NCERT and was later scheduled in 2020 but was delayed due to covid19. “So the survey was conducted this year and was handed over to CBSE,” the official said.
The official said the findings of NAS-2021 will help in diagnosing systematic understanding of the consequences that prolonged closure of schools have had on student’s learning in terms of their socio-emotional and cognitive development.