By Imtiyaz Pandow
Budgam: The tall claims made by education department in terms of reforming education sector in the state, have fallen null and void after the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) came to fore.
The annual 2018 report has revealed that a majority of the students from class I to VIII standard in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) do not posses an adequate reading level.
One of the ASER survey results showed among the surveyed students that 35.2 percent of them from class VIII had failed to read the standard II level text and 17.8 percent of students from class I even failed to read the letters like I, a, r, f, k etc.
One of the ASER survey results showed among the surveyed students that 35.2 percent of them from class VIII had failed to read the standard II level text and 17.8 percent of students from class I even failed to read the letters like I, a, r, f, k etc.

The recently released 2018 annual report of ASER depicts that the reading level in most of the J&K primary to middle level students have failed to produce competent reading levels.
The survey showed among the IV standard, 1.6 percent children even failed to read letters, 17 percent can read letters but not words or higher, 31.4 percent can read words but not standard I level text or higher, 23% can read standard I level text but not standard Ii level text or higher and only 27 percent can read standard II level text.
When VIII standard students were asked to read I standard or higher level text, 8.5 percent among them had failed, when they were asked to read standard II level text only 64.8 percent could read, when asked to read letters like m, t, z, f, k etc., 1.1 percent failed to read, of being asked to read words like cup, key, dog etc., 4.6 percent of them could not do so.
While as 8.5 of the surveyed VIII standard students can read words but not standard I level text, 21 percent among them can read standard I level text but not standard II level text.
Interestingly 17.8 percent surveyed students of class I, 8.1 percent of class II, 3.2% of class III, 1.6 of class IV, 1.1 of class V, 1.1 of class VI, 0.4 of class VII and 1.1 of class VIII has failed even to read the letters like v, p, a, r etc.
ASER has revealed that when the students from I to VIII standard were asked to read I standard text like, “It is very far away, He takes the bus, etc.” 28.6 percent surveyed students from standard I, 35.1 percent from II standard, 34.3 percent from III standard, 31.4 percent from IV standard, 24.5 percent from V standard, 17.6 percent from VI standard, 15.4 percent from VII standard and 8.5 from VIII standard failed to read this first or higher standard level text.
Meanwhile ASER was conducted by a non-governmental organisation Pratham with 546527 students from 596 districts of rural India in 19 languages.