Just 3% of kids play for more than 6 hours a week: Survey

NEW DELHI: School students in India take the maximum number of tutorial classes, with 74% of them choosing extra lessons in mathematics , but India also leads the way with a high 72% of school-goers engaged in extra-curricular activities, a global education survey has found.The pattern of extra-curricular activities, however, shows a lower involvement in sports. The study finds a high degree of commitment among teachers to ensure that students do well.When it comes to involvement in children’s education, Indian parents are also at the top of the charts with 66% of those surveyed asking their wards about daily activities at school and nearly 50% participating in various school activities.The findings are part of the Cambridge International Global Education Census Report, exclusively accessed by TOI. The report focused on 10 countries, including US, Pakistan , Malaysia , South Africa and Argentina , besides India.A global education survey supports the perception that Indian families provide a stronger base for education than many other societies. The Indian sample size included 4,400 teachers and 3,800 students, not just from Cambridge International Schools but also schools affiliated to CBSE and other state boards.Traditional career options continue to rule as medicine and engineering remain the most popular career aspirations of Indian students. However, India is also the country where the highest number (8%) of students said they want to be scientists. 16% of students aspire to be software engineers and developers, globally the highest, says the survey.The survey says 84.7% study English with mathematics (78%) as the second leading subject, followed by physics (73.1%) and chemistry (71.8%). With 47.8% of the students taking up computer science as a subject, it points to an aspiration for a career in software engineering, the survey says.The report said while 72% of Indian students are engaged in extra-curricular activities, just around 3% of children play for more than six hours in a week, while 36.7% are involved in sports for just about 60 minutes a week. Moreover, 26.4% of the children don’t play any sport in schools.Another interesting finding is that 31.8% of school students have pursued some kind of online course/s that has not been part of their school work or home work. According to the surveyed teachers, over 33% of the students take multiple mock tests before the full exams at the end of year. Over 30% of the parents help their wards with home tasks and more than 21% even help their children with their extracurricular activities. The study termed Indian teachers as “doing everything in their power to help their students succeed” while they are “the least pressured globally to ensure students perform well in exams”. Majority of the teachers (60.4%) feel that student’s performance in the exams is benchmark of their professional performance.