Tens of thousands of students across all the 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir Friday participated in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 for the classes 3, 5, 8 and 10.The survey, which was initiated by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, was conducted in all the 733 districts across India. The Ministry had hired the services of the Central Board of School Education (CBSE) to complete the exercise.In Jammu and Kashmir, the CBSE collaborated with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) to conduct the survey.Lauding the role of all those involved in the survey, Director SCERT, Prof Veena Pandita, said the “gigantic” task could have not been possible without their sincere and tireless efforts.“I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Director School Education Jammu, Director School Education Kashmir, Project Director Samagra Shiksha, chief education officers and the SCERT team for their efforts to make this survey a success,” Prof Pandita said.
“All this would have not been possible without the ever sincere and dedicated efforts of our coordinators at the district level, representatives from the CBSE, principals of the DIETs, field investigators and observers.”She also thanked Principal Secretary, School Education, B K Singh, for extending his support to the exercise.Prior to the start of the survey this morning, Singh had extended his best wishes to the participating students in the survey.Describing the importance of NAS 2021, Prof Pandita said the survey will aid educational planners, policy makers and researchers in understanding the interdependence of assessment, pedagogical process and learning outcome in improving the quality of education.“NAS 2021 will help us in the systematic understanding of the consequences that prolonged closure of schools has had on students' learning,” Prof Pandita said. “Results will help us to make out the students’ performance in different learning outcomes vis-à-vis the contextual variables.