National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021

The National Achievement Survey (NAS), the large scale survey to understand and benchmark the educational health of the Nation, conducted periodically by NCERT under the aegis of Ministry of Education, assesses and evaluates?country’s education systems and serves to provide fundamental feedback to the key stakeholders involved in the teaching-learning process to understand what is being learned by the students i.e. the level of achievement of the desired learning outcomes vis-à-vis the contextual variables, and where learning resources are needed to be focused.

The recent cycle of the survey, NAS 2021, conducted in November 2021 is of?vital importance in?unraveling the learning disruptions caused by the pandemic and assist?in?charting the recovery course to mitigate the learning loss. As students returned to schools, creating a snapshot of learning levels at national, state and district levels was paramount to?develop differentiated responses to learning recovery. Serving as the first data point of students’ achievement at scale in the post pandemic era, results of this survey assume high significance in informing responsive planning to improve quality and ensure equity in learning.?

The analysis of the assessment data from #NAS2021 was carried out by the #NCERT and its technical partners from the #AmericanInstituteofResearch (#AIR), supported by #UNICEF. To provide insights into achievement of learning outcomes at different levels, detailed National, State/UT and district reports have been released by NCERT and can be accessed through the web portal https://ncert.nic.in/NAS.php .When compared to NAS-2017, NAS-2021 results show that there has been a decline in the student’s performance across subjects and grades.

?What’s Next : How NCERT is planning for post NAS interventions in collaboration with States and Districts for Learning Loss Recovery? One of the essential elements for the post NAS interventions , planned by NCERT, is to guide States and districts to take actions to accelerate the recovery of learning. Bringing students to grade aligned competency levels , and catching up the lost learning due to school closures and pre-existing learning gaps is central to these interventions.

There are two important aspects of the post NAS interventions planned are: 1. Dissemination of NAS 2021 Findings across Stakeholders: Communicating and disseminating results from NAS is an important first step to ensuring the survey has the desired impact. The key focus of the NAS dissemination workshops is to develop capacities at State and District level on interpretation and use of assessment data for pedagogical interventions. The workshops conducted by NCERT at State and District levels will help stakeholders to understand how to read and interpret NAS findings, identify the critical learning areas for immediate attention across classes and subjects, develop deeper insights of the results by relating learning achievement with background factors, to identify factors associated with high and low performance, understand disparities in learning levels across gender, school location, social groups etc.?

2. Provide a tactical framework for States and districts to devise intervention strategies for accelerated learning recovery: Once the results are disseminated , workshops for intervention planning based on NAS results will be held. These workshops will be based on a comprehensive framework to guide states and districts for developing evidence based interventions for remediating learning gaps. The design and implementation of these interventions is envisaged to include in its ambit the school leaders, teachers and the whole network of officials at clusters, blocks, districts, SCERT and the directorate of education across States/UTs.?