The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education today released the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 report which assesses the health of school education system in the country by conducting comprehensive evaluation survey of children’s learning competencies at classes III, V, VIII and X with a cycle period of three years. It reflects the overall assessment of school education system. The last NAS was held in 2017.

The NAS 2021 was held on 12.11.2021 at all India level and covered (a) Government Schools (Central Government and State Government); (b) Government Aided Schools; and (c) Private Unaided Schools. Subjects covered are Language, Mathematics & EVS for class 3 & 5; Language, Mathematics, Science & Social Science for class 8 and Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Science and English for class 10. 

About 34 lakh students of 1.18 lakh schools in 720 districts from both rural and urban areas have participated in NAS 2021. The National Report Card has been released and placed in the public domain on nas.gov.in. It will enable analysis of results and remedial action at the appropriate levels.

The objective of NAS 2021 is to evaluate children's progress and learning competencies as an indicator of the efficiency of the education system, so as to take appropriate steps for remedial actions at different levels.  It will help to unravel the gaps in learning and will support state/UT governments in developing long term, mid-term and short-term interventions to improve learning levels and orient on differential planning based on NAS 2021 data.

The achievement tests along with the questionnaires, i.e., pupil questionnaire, teacher questionnaire and school questionnaire were developed and translated in 22 different languages by NCERT. This nation-wide survey was administered by the CBSE in one single day at the same time. The survey was managed through the technology platform designed and developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

In order to capture student attainment of Learning Outcomes at the end of Classes III, V, VIII and X, an OMR based achievement test comprising of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs) was conducted. It assesses competencies and skills achieved by the students at different levels of school education through meticulously developed and field-tested items.

The report is based on the performance in all subjects through disaggregation by gender (female, male), Area (Rural and Urban), Management of schools (Government, Government aided and Private unaided) and Social Groups (Schedule Caste (SC), Schedule Tribe (ST), Other Backward Communities (OBC) and General.

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MJPS/AK