Survey conducted to assess learning levels of 25 lakh school students

New Delhi, Nov 13 : The learning level of over 25 lakh students from across the country was assessed on Monday through National Achievement Survey (NAS), described officially as the largest-ever in the country.

The survey results would be used to understand the efficiency of the education system and to design classroom interventions, a Human Resource Development Ministry statement said.

"NAS results will help guide education policy, planning, and implementation at the national, state, district, and classroom levels for improving the learning levels of children and bringing about qualitative improvements," it said.

It said district-wise learning report cards would be prepared using a specially-designed software. 

"Subsequently, analytical reports will be prepared. The analysis will reflect the disaggregated and detailed learning levels. The whole process will begin immediately and will be completed within three to five months."

The statement said that students from across 700 districts from all 36 states and Union Territories were covered by the survey. 

"The National Achievement Survey is the largest-ever in the country and is amongst the largest in the world," the statement said.

Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said the NAS was a "transparent and credible exercise done under third-party verification". 

It was conducted for Classes III, V, and VIII in government and government-aided schools. 

The survey tools used multiple test booklets with 45 questions in Classes III and V related to language, mathematics, and 60 questions in Class VIII in Mathematics, Language, Sciences, and Social Sciences. 

"More than 1.75 lakh trained field investigators from outside the government education system were engaged to conduct the learning assessment in the country," the statement said. 

"To ensure fairness, a monitoring team was constituted comprising observers from inter-ministerial departments drawn from the state governments, national and state observers from education departments and multi-lateral organisations."

This monitoring team observed the conduct of the survey in all the districts, it said.