National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021

Table of Contents

National Achievement Survey (NAS)- Relevance for UPSC Exam

GS Paper 2:
- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
- Governance, Administration and Challenges- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education.

The Government of India has been implementing a rolling program of sample-based National Achievement Survey (NAS) aimed at classes III, V, VIII and X with a cycle period of three years.
The last National Achievement Survey (NAS) was held in 2017 for assessing the competencies developed by the children at grade levels III, V and VIII.

About: National Achievement Survey (NAS) is a nationally representative large-scale survey of students’ learning undertaken by the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
- National Achievement Survey (NAS) is conducted every three years.
Significance: NAS gives a system-level reflection on the effectiveness of school education.
- Findings help compare the performance across the spectrum and across the population in order to find the desirable direction for improvements.

About: National Achievement Survey-2021 is scheduled for 12th November 2021. This year it also includes samples from class X.
Conducting Authority: The National Achievement Survey-2021 would be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) as Assessment Administrator.
Scope: The National Achievement Survey-2021 would be conducted for Grade 3, 5, 8 and 10 students of State Govt. schools, Govt. Aided schools, Private Unaided recognized schools and Central Government schools.
Mandate: NAS 2021 intends to provide information of what India’s students know and can do in key grades and subjects at national, state, district and school type.
Criteria for the Sampling of Schools: The selection of sampled schools is based on UDISE+2019-20 data. Therefore, the States, Districts used for drawing of the samples for NAS 2021 is exactly as per the UDISE+2019-20.
Assessment Framework:
- It has been developed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for gauging the competencies attained by the students vis-a-vis learning outcomes.
- The Survey includes the background variables to correlate students’ performance in different learning outcomes vis-a-vis contextual variables.

Diagnosis of the Problem: NAS 2021 aims to help diagnose learning gaps of students and determine interventions required in education policies, teaching practices and learning.
Capacity building: NAS findings help in capacity building for teachers, officials involved in the delivery of education.
Information repository: NAS 2021 would be a rich repository of evidences and data points furthering the scope of research and development.

About: NAS-2021 Portal has been developed by NIC as a dynamic platform in consultation with the NCERT, CBSE, UNICEF, DDG (Stats) and NITI Aayog under the overall guidance of the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
Key Function: NAS 2021 Portal would be a sustainable educational management information system for-
- Helping in smooth conduct of NAS-2021 and
- Future decision-making based on data analytics.
Significance: It provides role-based functionality and dashboard for managing the resources, activity and event monitoring, capacity building, reporting & documentation, post-NAS analytical report in customized formats.