The Union Ministry of Education will be assessing over 35 lakhs students across the country through National Achievement Survey 2021 (NAS 2021) in the phased manner. Over 1.23 lakh schools of 733 districts across the country will be participating today on 12th November 2021.
The ministry stated that the NAS 2021 is conducted to assess the effectiveness of school education across India. The National Achievement Survey is conducted every 3 years to assess the students of Class 3rd, Class 5th, Class 8th and Class 10th respectively to understand the quality of performance of education in the schools and students. The NAS 2021 survey covers all the government, government-aided and private schools. The survey it tries to study learning interruptions, new learning methods adopted during the COVID 19 pandemic and many other initiatives
Many personalities from the political fraternity have urged the government to postpone the National Achievement Survey 2021. Due to the pandemic restrictions many schools are yet to re-open and it may not be wise to conduct the NAS survey 2021 at this point. However, the officials from the union education ministry have not reacted.
National Education Survey requirements
The union education ministry has formulated guidelines for NAS 2021 for the schools. The schools are informed to be prepared according to the guidelines issued by the government.
Guidelines for NAS 2021
- The students and teachers of Classes 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th must be present on the day of assessment
- The NAS survey includes Achievement Tests (AT) and Pupil Questionnaires (PQ).
- The sample size of students to participate in the survey from each school and each class is 30.
- The teachers must be present to take part in the Teacher Questionnaire (TQ).
Procedures involved in National Achievement Survey 2021
The NAS 2021 will be conducted according to the classes based on the parameters mentioned below :
- Class 3rd and Class 5th: Language, Mathematics and EVS
- Class 8th: Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Science
- Class 10th: Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Science and English
The union education ministry further stated that the test would be conducted in 22 regional mediums of instruction such as; Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Mizo, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Garo, Khasi, Konkani, Nepali, Bhutia, and Lepcha.
The union education ministry also stated that nearly 1,82,488 field investigators, 1,23,729 observers, 733 district-level coordinators and district nodal officers separately and 36 state nodal officers in each State and UT, have been appointed for smooth implementation of NAS 2021 across the country. Nearly 1500 board representatives have been appointed in the districts for monitoring overall functioning and ensuring fair conduct of the survey and all the personnel have been provided extensive training regarding their roles and responsibilities.