About 65 percent of Class 3 children are able to listen and respond to language correctly and 86 percent are able to recognise a given picture, Human Resource Development Minister M.M. Pallam Raju said here Friday.

 

 "About 65 percent of the children were able to listen and respond correctly and about 86 percent of the students were able to recognize a given picture," he said citing a survey. "In mathematics, 70 percent of the kids were able to handle simple multiplication and 84 percent were able to handle data relevant to their context," he said.

 

 The survey was conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on over one lakh students in all but one state, involving over 7,000 schools and 14,000 teachers. The survey assessed students' abilities in two subjects – language and mathematics.

 

 "In language, 14 states scored significantly above the national average. However, 15 states scored significantly below the national average, of which the low performers were Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Haryana," Raju added.

 

 Gender-wise, no significant difference between the performance of boys and girls in language was found. The only exceptions were Madhya Pradesh, where boys showed better performance, and in Kerala and Puducherry, where girls did better.

 

 Similarly, performance in mathematics of both boys and girls was also by and large same with the sole exception of Kerala, where girls did better. "Quality is the main issue for our education system and the results of the survey indicate that the state of learning of foundational levels is not dismal as projected," Raju said.

 

 He said the centre has helped states appoint about 20 lakh teachers to scale up quality. On performance divided on the basis of the criteria of rural and urban area, no significant difference was found in the performance of rural and urban students. The indicators for quality was specified by the NCERT.