National Achievement Survey 2024 to be held in December

Survey to cover nearly five million students across 792 districts belonging to Classes 3, 6 and 9 this year

The National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2024, which is a large-scale assessment to obtain information about the learning achievements of school students will be taken up on December 4, 2024.

Senior officials in the Ministry of Education told The Hindu that the survey will cover nearly five million students across 792 districts belonging to Classes 3, 6 and 9 this year. In the 2021 survey, students of Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10 were covered.

“While the last survey in 2021 (which was delayed by a year due to COVID) covered 3.7 million schoolchildren in State government-run, government-aided, private unaided and Central government schools, and occurred across 720 districts, the 2024 survey has been expanded to cover nearly 5 million children in 792 districts in 36 States/UTs,” an official said.

The official further said that the plan to administer the survey to students of Classes 3, 6 and 9 students is aligned with the new National Curriculum Framework.

“Class 3 marks the end of the foundation stage (which is till Class 2), Class 6 is the culmination of preparatory stage (which is till Class 5), and Class 9 marks the end of middle stage (which is till Class 8),” the official explained.

The 2024 NAS survey will be conducted in 26 languages. Six languages — Kashmiri, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri have been added to the already existing basket of 20 languages (Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, English, Garo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Khasi, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Mizo, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu) in which the survey is conducted, officials said.

The survey conducts random sampling to select schools and students to prevent bias. Students of Class 3 are expected to answer 45 multiple choice questions (MCQs) designed until the Class 2 level, with weightage of 15 marks each for language, maths and environmental science, in 90 minutes.

“For instance, Class 3 students are expected to read small texts with comprehension, read and write numbers up to 999, solve for addition and subtraction of three-digit numbers, carry out simple division and multiplication tasks, read time correctly using a clock and so on. Based on analysing the answer sheets, we calculate district average performance, State and national average performance in NAS,” the official said.

Similarly, Class 6 students have to answer 51 MCQs in the same time, with slightly more weightage of 18 marks each for maths and environmental science, and 15 marks for language.

For Class 9, the test is slightly lengthier, incorporating questions from Classes 6, 7 and 8. In 120 minutes, students willl have to attempt 60 MCQs, with 20 marks weightage each for maths, science, language and social sciences.

The competency-based assessment co-relates the performance of students with contextual variables and generates district-level report cards.

In NAS 2021, it was observed that scores declined as students transitioned to higher classes, from Class 3 to Class 10. The national average of language score fell from 64.6% in Class 3 to 52% in Class 10, and mathematics scores dropped from 61.2% in Class 3 to 44% in Class 10. “Also there was a drop in learning outcomes between NAS 2017 and NAS 2021 as the last survey was conducted in a COVID year. We are hoping to observe learning recoveries in the latest survey results which should hopefully be out sometime in February next year,” the official said.

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