The survey was conducted in 60 villages of the district, involving 1,076 households and 1,334 children aged four to eight years. (Representational Image) The survey was conducted in 60 villages of the district, involving 1,076 households and 1,334 children aged four to eight years. (Representational Image)

Around 76 per cent of eight-year-old children in Kangra district can correctly identify all four basic human emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) well above the national average of 60.5 per cent, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2019, released by NGO Pratham on Tuesday.

The survey was conducted in 60 villages of the district, involving 1,076 households and 1,334 children aged four to eight years. Nationally, the survey was conducted in 26 districts across 24 states in India, involving nearly 37,000 children.

As compared to the national average, children from the state performed better in most of the tasks, including cognitive and early language tasks, reading ability, ability to recognise numbers, and numeracy tasks. For example, 78.3 per cent students of Class 1 from Kangra successfully performed numeric addition as compared to 50.6 per cent students across the country.

In Kangra, the percentage of children aged four who successfully completed the cognitive tasks of sorting, spatial awareness, seriation, pattern recognition and puzzle-solving was 75.8, 67, 37.2, 34.8 and 38.1, respectively. For children aged five, the percentage figures for the same tasks jumped to 85.6, 86.1, 61.6, 45.8, and 60.7, respectively.

In the early language tasks, 72.3 per cent children aged four completed the picture description task, while 21.4 per cent completed the listening comprehension task. For those aged five, the figures were 87.4 and 54.5, respectively. In the numeracy tasks, the percentage of children who could successfully complete the task of relative comparison of objects jumped from 43.2 per cent in four-year-old children to 72.1 per cent in those aged five. In the task related to counting objects, 42.6 per cent children aged four completed it successfully while for five-year-olds, the figure was 48.3 per cent.

Emotional recognition abilities in the children saw a jump from 39.1 per cent children aged four identifying all four emotions correctly to 75.9 per cent in eight-year-old children. The most recognised emotions among 8-year-olds were happiness (91.4%) and anger (88.5%) followed by fear (88.2 percent) and sadness (80.9%).

For children enrolled in Classes 1 to 3, the survey found that more than 80 per cent of Class III students successfully completed the cognitive tasks of seriation (88.1%), pattern recognition (81.3%) and puzzle-solving (81.2%). 77.5 per cent of Class 3 students completed the listening comprehension task.

In reading ability tasks, 13.9 per cent children in Class 1 could not even read letters, while 30.9 per cent children could read a Class 1 level text. For Class 2 students, these percentage figures jumped to 3.2 and 77 per cent, respectively. In the number recognition tasks, 1.3 per cent of Class 3 students could not even recognise numbers up to 9, while 87.3 per cent could recognise numbers up to 99.

In 1-digit numeracy tasks, more than 80 per cent Class 3 students successfully completed oral word problem addition, relative comparison, numeric addition and numeric subtraction. However, only 68.2 per cent could complete the oral word problem subtraction task. In 2-digit numeracy tasks, more than 80 per cent Class 3 students completed the relative comparison tasks, 66.2 per cent completed the numeric addition task, and 40.7 per cent completed the numeric subtraction task.

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