NCERT: Games and siblings help to score better in maths

Bangalore: NCERT (National Achievement Survey) has recently stated that children who play games every day and those with siblings score better in mathematics, but watching television ruins their scores.

While having more siblings did little to improve children's reading skills, it did improve math marks. If those with over four siblings scored an average of 32.9%, grades fell for children with just one sibling.

Access to more books at home improved reading ability. Children with 25 or more books scored 50.8%, whereas children with no books at home scored 42.6%, reveals survey.

But books did play a little role on children to score more in math (a mere 2.5% improvement), while children who read more did marginally well in science and social science, pointed out S Anand, chief data scientist at Gramener, a data visualization and analytics company which analyzed the data for NCERT.

Children's learning achievement in language, mathematics, science and social science were also measured during the survey. It analyzed data collected from 6,722 schools (government and government aided), 24,486 teachers and 1,88,647 students through tests and questionnaires from 33 states and Union territories. The objective was to understand what children in schools know and can do at different stages of elementary education.

Parents' education and occupation influences students marks

Of all the demographic or behavioural factors, parents' education and occupation influences students' marks the most. The impact reduces with the number of siblings, perhaps because children are learning from their elder siblings instead.

Girls' marks are more influenced by the mother's education level, while boys' marks are influenced by the father's education level -- perhaps because mothers teach girls and fathers teach boys, at least in class 8. However, when it comes to mathematics, it's the father's education level that matters, perhaps because fathers more often teach math to all their children.

Interestingly, private tuitions have a low impact on overall performance. The best that can be said for them is they don't lower marks. Children of illiterate parents, for example, actually find their marks dropping a bit when they go for private tuitions. However, this may not be true for all segments.

TOI