SHOCKING! '74% of class 6 students in govt schools cannot read Hindi textbook'

New Delhi: Delhi`s Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia, who also holds education portfolio, revealed on Tuesday that 74 per cent students of class 6 studying in the government schools could not read a paragraph from Hindi textbook and 46 per cent could not read a simple story of class 2 competency.

The startling facts came out in the results of a baseline assessment of class 6 students conducted by Delhi government`s education department under its "Chunauti-2018" programme. The programme aims at enabling students of government schools, especially Class 9, to overcome the adverse effects of the "no detention policy".

"74 per cent students of 6th standard could not read a paragraph from their own Hindi textbook. 46 per cent could not read a simple story of standard 2 level competency and 8 per cent could not identify letters," Sisodia tweeted from @Minister_Edu twitter handle.

"Similarly, in Maths: 67 per cent children could not do simple three digits by one digit division. 44 per cent children could not do two digits subtraction with borrowing and 5 per cent children could not recognise single digit numbers," the Deputy Chief Minister tweeted.

Sisodia said that in basic English 75 per cent children could not read a story of class 2 competency and 13 per cent children could not identify letters.

The idea behind "Chunauti 2018" is that by the year 2018, all class 9 students in the academic year 2016-2017, regardless of their learning levels at this point, will be trained and mentored to successfully appear for Class 10 examinations in 2018.

Following the launch of "Chunauti 2018" on June 27, a baseline assessment of all class 6-9 students of government schools was conducted. This was done to mark the starting point of the proposed intervention by determining the current learning level of children and track the progress periodically.

The assessment was conducted by the school teachers between July 14 and 16.

As many as 2,01,997 students of class 6 from 1,011 government schools were assessed.

Later, an official statement said that based on these results the children are being re-organised in two groups -- Nishtha and Pratibha.

"While the focus in Nishtha group will be to build basic reading, writing and numeracy skills of children in next couple of months, Pratibha will proceed with grade specified curriculum," the statement said.

"As soon as children of Nishtha group learn to read, the grade specific curriculum would be introduced to them as well so that they can participate in learning activities more confidently," it added.