The education department has blamed the ‘No-Detention’ policy of the Right to Education act as the reason for students’ poor performance in the recently conducted Baseline Test.
Baseline Test, which is a part of the Punjab government’s Padho Punjab, Padhao Punjab initiative, is an exam conducted to assess the minimum learning level of students. While the test was conducted in March this year, results came out recently.
As per the statement, 85 percent students did not know curved surface area concept, 80 percent could not get Pythagoras theorem, parallel lines, and cube edge right, 70 percent could not solve rational numbers, 78 percent could not solve number line and multiplication of algebra, and 65 percent could not solve fractions and so on. On an average, a measly 37.30 percent of the students of Class IX was found to be satisfactory in math.
Further. 70 percent students of Class X failed to answer 11 of 24 questions in math. Seventy percent student could not solve rational numbers, 79 percent could not find out the area of circle and volume of the cube, 80 percent could not do factorization of algebra and 70 percent failed in Pythagoras theorem. On an average, the results of just 45.04 percent students of Class X were found to be satisfactory in math.
The results of other subjects also indicated the poor performance of the majority of the students.
Krishan Kumar, Punjab’s Secretary School Education, blamed the no detention policy and said “We were doing very good till we had board exams for Classes V and VIII. Even teachers hesitated to get posting in senior secondary schools knowing they have to teach basics to Class IX and X students. Baseline tests under ‘Padho Punjab, Padhao Punjab’ aims to fix accountability by identifying weak areas of students.”
