Rural students more aware of election process, equality than urban kids
Chennai: The National Achievement Survey conducted by NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) has revealed that the rural students are more aware of the election and democratic process than the students from Chennai district.
The Union HRD ministry has conducted in November last to assess the level of learning of students of Classes 3, 5 and 8. It was conducted on 22 lakh students from 110,000 schools across India.
A district wise report card showed that the Chennai students have fared poorly in environmental science and social science subjects compared to the students from rural districts like Dharmapuri, Dindigul and Perambalur. Out of 1,214 students studying in class 8 from Perambalur district, 45% of them describe the process of election to the legislative assembly and 53.34% of students explain the significance of equality in democracy.
But, of 1,076 students in Chennai district, only 34.31% knows the election process and 27.92% of them alone explain the significance of equality in democracy, according to the details of the NAS.
Students from backward districts like Dharmapuri (39.39%), Villupuram (43.33%), Dindigul (37.95%) and Thiruvannamalai (40%) know the election process. They are also more aware of the equality in democracy as 53.34% in Perambalur district, 45.81% in Dharmapuri and 43.15% in Dindigul district were able to explain the significance of it. B.Oliver, state head, Pratham Education Foundation, TN said, “The rural students are more connected and their families discuss these issues in their interactions whereas the urban students are occupied with their school and tuitions. Urban students gain their political knowledge only through media.”
P.B. Prince Gajendrababu, general secretary, State Platform for Common School System said the rural students able to understand democracy better due to their critical thinking and they should get equitable access to schools. “Rural students exposed to democratic system at young age as they are living in a close knit society compared to the urban students,” he added.
Chennai students also fare poorly in disaster awareness and preventive measures. Despite having the major disaster like tsunami only around 21.75% students alone in Chennai are aware of preventive actions taken in the event of disasters. The disaster awareness remains more or less same in all the districts.
The students' skills in locating the important and historic sites on India map also remained poor as only around 16% alone correctly located the sites, the study revealed.
One of the positives from the NAS is that the class 3 students from the districts were able to read the simple texts (61.93%) and simple calculations (58.86%).
