Lalitpur, a district in Uttar Pradesh that slightly touches the border of Madhya Pradesh, has recorded a significant improvement in the status of primary education provided in the government schools there.
Aparajitha (one who cannot be defeated), a remedial education programme for government schools, is run by World Vision India, an international nonprofit that works in several states across India. Their objective is to help primary school children up to grade V to improve their reading, writing and comprehension skills.
As per the Annual Survey of Education Report 2016 reports, only 47.8% of grade V rural students could read at least a grade II text. Even though the enrollment had increased to more than 80%, more than half of the primary school student population faced learning crisis.
“There are about 220 days in a school year which means primary school children have a total of 1,000 days by the end of class five to learn,” stated Liju Varkey Jacob, from World Vision, Lalitpur describing on the importance of early years in a child’s life.
Addressing this crisis, Aparajitha reaches 4,300 students in 130 villages in Lalitpur for the remedial classes. Reportedly, “its 3,683 students who enrolled in the financial year 2017 display progress on the programme’s reading scale, as per World Vision data, and the programme is widely accepted in the community.”
As per the reports, these are the major findings of the survey:
- From a zero baseline, within a year 1.55% of enrolled students could read local content (such as newspapers) and understand it
- 2% (up from 1.8%) could read a story and comprehend it
- 4% could read a story (up from 5.1%)
- 8% of students could read a paragraph (up from 7%)
- 5% could read words (up from 16.9%)
- Fewer could only read letters (43.9% v. 32.9%)
- With a decrease from 25.1%, 5.6% could read nothing at all