Government and government-aided schools will focus on plugging learning gaps, which were detected after the first summative test but could not be addressed because of the prolonged summer vacation, once in-person classes resume on Monday.
The schools had conducted the first summative test before the summer vacation started on May 2.
The state secondary education board had announced in mid-June that the schools that could not conduct the first summative test owing to the early start of the summer vacation would have to hold the exams from June 28.
But schools like Multipurpose Government Girls’ School, Alipore; Sakhawat Memorial Government Girls’ High School and Sanskrit Collegiate School, which managed to conduct the first summative test before May 2, are getting ready to address the deficiencies that were detected during the evaluation of the scripts.
“It emerged that the students of classes IX and X failed to write long questions. Many of them could not complete the answers. Even if they completed the answers, they lacked the standard,” said Shampa Nayak Saha, headmistress of Multipurpose Government Girls’ School, Alipore.
Students in the government and aided schools are assessed through a combination of three summative and three formative tests.
The second summative test is scheduled for July.
Usually, the summer vacation in government and aided schools starts on May 18 and continues for 18 days.
A teacher at Sanskrit Collegiate School said they had plans to focus on addressing the gaps from early May, but could not because of the early start to the summer vacation.
The state government this year had ordered schools, except the ones in the hill districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, to go into summer recess on May 2 citing the extreme heatwave conditions.
“A further extension of summer vacation, till June 26, delayed the start of the exercise,” the teacher said.
Debabrata Mukherjee, headmaster of the school, said it emerged from the assessment of the scripts that some students of Classes V to X were not being able to write answers coherently.
“Answers lacked clarity. Writing skill has suffered. We have identified some such students and decided to call their parents for discussions. The school wants to plug the learning gaps so they could be prepared for the second summative test,” said Mukherjee.
“The absence of in-person classes for almost two years has left many children lagging in terms of learning and teachers should begin from where the students are stuck instead of only focusing on the syllabus,” economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee had said in February while speaking at the release of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 for rural Bengal.
The report, based on a survey conducted among students of government schools, had revealed a significant drop in children’s ability to read letters, paragraphs and do arithmetic compared with 2018.
Saugata Basu, general secretary of the Government School Teachers’ Association, said a prolonged summer vacation only worsened the situation.
Papia Singha Mahapatra, headmistress of the Sakhawat Memorial Government Girls’ High School, said if teachers did not put in an extra effort, students would not be able to make up for the lost time.
“There has been a change in the behavioural pattern of the students which is getting reflected in their performance. This problem has to be fixed at the earliest,” she said.
