Mumbai: BMC school students up their lingual, numerical skills

Even in Std II as many as 276 per cent of students studying in BMC schools scored low on preschoollevel linguistics and 316 per cent scored low on preschool mathematicsIdentifying this gap early on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC Education Department implemented the pilot project of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy FLN assessments in 2024 as per the centrersquos NIPUN National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy guidelinesThis initiative in academic year 202425 tested Std II students for their linguistic and mathematical literacy identified learning gaps and rapidly improved student scores with remedial practice tests The tests showed great progress as only 027 per cent of students scored low on a higherlevel Std II syllabus linguistic test while only 007 per cent of students struggled with mathematicsThrough the project the students took up four tests mdash the first tested them for the knowledge imparted in Balwadi preprimary the second tested them on the knowledge imparted in Std I the third pretest checked them for the knowledge imparted in Std II and the fourth posttest assessed them for their retention of the Std II syllabusOver 30000 BMC school students took part in this study and took up simple tests on the third Saturday of every month which are typically lsquonobag daysrsquo for studentsAs per officials basic reading comprehension and vocabularybased tasks were easiest for the students across most mediums of instruction On the other hand grammarheavy and extended writing or comprehension tasks appeared tougher for studentsStudents from Gujarati Tamil and English mediums recorded the highest linguistic scores 87 to 93 per centWhen it came to mathematics the studentsrsquo scores showed consistent improvement where the number of low scorers went down from 316 per cent to 089 per cent in the first two tests and the number of low scores dipped to only 007 per cent by the end of the fourth testThe officials analysed that for the Std II students simple addition number identification patterns and currency were the easiest concepts to tackle whereas operations related to word problems reasoning tasks and operations with borrowing were the most difficult As a result these concepts became the focus of the intervention phase between the testsAs per officials these tests were a crucial learning curve for teachers alike ldquoOur teachers utilise FLN for analysing the results shifting to targeted remediation by grouping students and identifying learning gaps For instance a student who is struggling with linguistics may not be able to solve word problems in mathematics either These tests helped us analyse these nittygritties of learningrdquo said Deputy Education Officer Sayli Surve30000No of students took part in academic year 202425FLN in all schoolsThe FLN initiative was limited to Std II students in all BMCrun schools across all language mediums in academic year 202425 However in 202526 the civic body has begun assessing the current batches of Std II Std III and Std IV students alongside the younger Std I students after their firstterm once they settle into the academic year Completing the pilot project with second graders the BMC is now to run the same exercise with over 90000 students across all schools