Page 60 - EW February 2023
P. 60

Special Report










         COGNITIVE & AFFECTIVE SKILLS STUDY 2022

         INDIA'S SNOWBALLING





         SEL SKILLS DEFICIT










         Released last December, CASS 2022 indicts the country’s
         1.48 million government and private schools for failure
         to sufficiently develop children’s social and emotional
         learning skills, positive attitudes, beliefs and values






         Summiya Yasmeen



         A                  LTHOUGH MAINSTREAM MEDIA      India’s 1.48 million primary-secondary, especially govern-



                                                          ment, schools.
                            reports at the fag end of the aca-
                            demic year 2022-23 and on the eve
                                                             While ASER 2022 is focused on children’s learning out-
                                                          comes evaluated on the basis of out-of-school field testing,
                            of the new school year gloss over the
                                                          another report released in December indicates that India’s
                            learning, psychological, social and
                            emotional disequilibrium suffered
                            by India’s 260 million school-going
                                                          and emotional skills and positive attitudes.
                            children during the 82-week Covid   260 million school-going children are not acquiring social
                                                             A  research  survey  titled  Cognitive & Affective Skills
                            pandemic lockdown, two authorita-  Study in Schools Across India (CASS 2022), released in
         tive recently released reports paint a dismal picture of K-12   the national capital on December 5 by the Delhi-based Cen-
         education in post-pandemic India.                tre for Science of Student Learning (CSSL, estb.2015),
            The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022   an educational research organisation that “builds capacity
         of the reputed Pratham Education Foundation released in   for diagnostic student learning assessments and research-
         Delhi on January 19, reveals a precipitous decline in chil-  es how children learn,” indicts the country’s 1.48 million
         dren’s reading capability to 2012 level (79.5 percent class   government and private schools for failure to sufficiently
         III children cannot read class II texts) and drop in basic   develop children’s social and emotional skills, positive at-
         arithmetic learning (74.1 percent class III children can’t do   titudes and provide them a “nurturing school climate”.
         simple subtraction sums). This poor academic score card   Yet while ASER 2022 drew media headlines, CSSL’s
         of school children in rural India has prompted anguished   important study of the psychological and emotional well-
         newspaper and television reports and analyses from educa-  being of children — a precondition of high academic learn-
         tion pundits lamenting steadily falling learning outcomes in   ing outcomes — has attracted little media or academic at-

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