After the improvements observed with the 2018 Mission Buniyad implemented, the Mission will continue in 2019 as well due to the improvements observed last year were “not to satisfaction”. 35% increase has been observed with the students of classes III-V in Delhi Government Schools, able to do division at their grade level, also 20% increase has been observed for classes VI-VIII. Both the categories also saw an increase of 20% in reading ability of students in Delhi Govt. schools.
This data was collected after a whole year learning assessment which was conducted between December 10-30, 2018, for evaluating improvements of Mission Buniyad and to decide whether this shall be continued or not.
The statement states: “The learning interventions under the current government began with Chunauti 2018 in June 2016, targeting students between classes VI-IX. This was prompted by the high failure rate in Class IX and poor foundational skills in Class VI students. Mission Buniyaad was launched in 2018, covering primary classes as well — including those in municipal schools — to prevent a “learning backlog” resulting in weak foundations in Class VI. Interventions included the creation of specialized supplementary learning material, appropriate teacher training, and creation of Individual Education Plans for those who continued to be behind after the camp.”
The Aim behind the Mission Buniyad was “there should be no child in any class who cannot read his/her textbook or solve basic numerical in Maths”. It aimed at strengthening the foundational learning at primary level since it was observed that the number of children joining Govt. school at Class VI who could read their textbooks was very low. The numbers stood at 25% in 2016; 32% in 2017; and 29% in 2018.
With the results of the assessment conducted in April 2018, it was found that Class III students saw major improvement from 18.6% to 53.9% in performing Grade-level maths, so did Class IV students with improvement from 27.9% to 64.29%. Class VII and Class VIII saw improvement from 56.3% to 75.63% and 62.7% to 80.28% respectively.
In Reading grade-level texts, Class III saw an improvement from 35.9% to 62.52% and in Class IV from 49% to 73.11%, the older classes did not saw quite much improvement, which was for Class VII from 47.1% to 65.43% and for Class VIII from 54.6% to 71.25%.
Talking about Maths only 57.35% of Class VI students can read at their level, and 53.9% of Class III students can perform grade-level maths.
“We will have a meeting sometime next week to decide in what manner and intensity the programme will be carried out this year, and if we need to make any revisions in the supplementary learning material,” said Director of Education Sanjay Goel.