Introduction

The quality of education provided to children at primary level should be the finest. This is mainly due to the fact that the education they receive at the primary level provides them with the base for their further studies. If they’re given poor quality education in the beginning, they won’t be able to grow to be successful in later stages of life. There have been many discussions all through the country because parents and teachers felt that the quality of education at the primary level has dropped due to various reasons. The Delhi government took note of this and introduced many reforms that should be implemented in schools. These reforms are being implemented and reviewed regularly. A policy was drawn this week to improve this situation.

Chunauti 2018: The Policy

The policy was called “Chunauti 2018” and consisted of the following instructions:

• Schools had to conduct Summative Assessment for all the subjects.
• If students from classes 7, 8, and 9 score less than 33 percent in these summative assessment tests, they were to be given another assessment which would contain five questions based on various subjects and application-based questions.
• There were certain levels introduced for each subject. Hindi and English had previously had five levels – beginner, letter, words, paragraph, and story. A new level called advanced story was introduced to these subjects. Mathematics has five levels – beginner, number recognition – I, Number recognition – II, division, and subtraction.
• The assessment was carried out between 14 to 16 July this year and the result of class 6 students have been successfully updated by the schools. For classes 7, 8, and 9, the data entry would be completed by the end of the month.

Result

Saumya Gupta, Education Director, said that there has been a significant improvement in the performance of students. As much as 25-30 percent of students who had difficulty in reading basic levels of a language were able to read advanced levels of the same language with ease after going through the program. Most of the students were in the basic story reading level before the new policy was introduced; they have reached advanced story reading levels now. There have been significant improvements in mathematics as well where students in class 6 are effortlessly solving division problems. Gupta believes that they need to work consistently and tirelessly to be more successful.

She further said that the results of these students would be thoroughly documented and their progress would be updated every week. A list displayed in the school would also showcase the number of students excelling in a particular subject and level.

In order to achieve the deadline of 14 November, which was set by the education department, teachers will be reviewing the reports every Saturday. The deadline was set to improve the basic reading, writing, and mathematical skills of students under the Nishtha Group.

Will these reforms prove to be successful in the long run? Only time will tell.