SCERT’s Survey on Identifying Learning Gaps concludes in Srinagar

SRINAGAR : The State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), J&K Thursday conducted an assessment survey of classes 3rd, 5th and 8th aimed at identifying gaps in the students’ learning resulted due the Covid-19 pandemic.

The School Education Department, in both the divisions, involved all its offices at the zone and the district level to ensure a smooth conduct of the assessment.

Giving details of the assessment survey, Director SCERT, Prof Veena Pandita said that it was important to identify learning gaps created among our children due to the unfortunate school closures following the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

“This will give us a rough idea of how much damage the Covid pandemic has inflicted upon the education system in J&K,” Prof Pandita said and added that once the gaps are identified, the department will conduct special remedial measures to make up for the loss.

Prof Pandita said that online education helped to a large extent in mitigating these gaps but the poor internet connectivity and a large section of students without smart phones in most of the parts of Jammu and Kashmir impeded learning, essentially causing more problems than solutions.

Giving details of the survey, Ghulam Hasan Reshi, Academic Officer, Educational Research Survey and Assessment (ERSA) Wing of the SCERT, Kashmir Division, said the ‘gigantic’ task was pretty challenging.

“We roped in experts available in our own school department, who were earlier a part of many different studies in the J&K, to devise strategies and methodologies on a scientific level,” he said.

Reshi described Hilal Ahmad Wani, a teacher, who works at a High school in Ganderbal, “man behind the mission”.

The next task was to prepare the items to identify the learning gaps and learning levels among the students.

“For classes 3rd and 5th, the assessment was conducted in Language, Mathematics and EVS and for 8th, in Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Science,” Wani said.

Before finalising the sampled list, Wani said, the data was scrutinized by district coordinators multiple times.

Hilal Sultan, a teacher, who is posted at the Directorate of School Education, Kashmir, provided all the technical support including the preparation of OMR sheets.

Academic Officer, Dr Nazneen, said the base reference for learning would be taken as per the NAS 2017 findings.

Senior Academic Officer, SCERT Jammu, Deepak Sharma, oversaw the proceedings of the survey in the Jammu province.