Irshad Ahmad Wani
abuaalim@gmail.com
Every few years, it’s not just students who sit for exams – the education system itself does. The Rashtriya Sarvekshan (National Achievement Survey) 2024, conducted by PARAKH, was one such moment of self-evaluation- a chance for India’s classrooms, teachers, and administrators to look in the mirror and ask, how well are we really doing?
Having attended a few dissemination workshops on the Post-PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan Report, I found these sessions to be more than just presentations of data. They were platforms for Charcha – genuine conversations about where our schools stand and what must change. That’s why I chose to call this reflection PARAKH NAS Pe Charcha, drawing a parallel to the Hon’blePrime Minister’s Pariksha Pe Charcha. If the latter helps students manage exam stress through dialogue and understanding, the former should help the education system overcome complacency through introspection and reform.
Taking Stock of Learning
Set up under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, PARAKH – short for Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development – serves as the country’s National Assessment Centre under NCERT. On December 4, 2024, it conducted a competency-based national survey for students in Grades 3, 6, and 9, covering Language, Mathematics, Environmental Studies, Science, and Social Science.
Unlike traditional examinations, this was not about marks or merit lists. It was, instead, a kind of health check-up for the education system – a diagnostic exercise to see how well our children are learning, how effectively our teachers are teaching, and how fairly our schools are functioning.
The findings of this massive nationwide exercise were released in July 2025, under the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan (PRS) 2024 Report. The report doesn’t just tell us how students performed – it tells us why. It peels back the layers to show how socio-economic conditions, teaching practices, and school environments combine to shape learning outcomes.
A Mirror, not a Scoreboard
The spirit behind the survey was clear: to measure, not to judge. The report sought to identify the contextual factors that influence learning and to promote evidence-based planning at every level – from the classroom to the policymaking table. It reflects NEP’s vision of transforming examinations from instruments of fear into tools for progress.
The NAS 2024 was also the first national assessment aligned with the learning competencies laid out in the new National Curriculum Frameworks (NCF) – both for the foundational and school education stages. For the first time, there’s coherence between what children are taught, what they’re expected to know, and how the system evaluates itself.
What the Report Tells Us
The picture that emerges is both heartening and humbling. Language learning shows improvement, particularly in early grades, but numeracy and reasoning continue to challenge students as they move into middle school. The gender gap has narrowed, yet urban-rural and economic divides remain wide. Encouragingly, schools that invest in teacher mentoring and activity-based learning consistently perform better.
These findings reaffirm an essential truth: quality education is not achieved through textbooks and targets alone. It grows out of classrooms where teachers feel supported, students feel curious, and schools function as collaborative communities.
From Data to Dialogue
After the report’s release, dissemination workshops – or Post-PARAKH Charchas are being organised across the country. These sessions are bringing together educators, administrators, and policy experts to engage with the data, interpret its meaning, and design local and contextualised intervention plans.
What struck me most in these gatherings was the tone of conversation. The question was no longer, “Who’s to blame?” but rather, “What can we do better?” That shift from finger-pointing to collective problem-solving is perhaps the most powerful outcome of NAS 2024 so far.
The Charchas revealed that student learning is influenced by three broad contexts – student, teacher, and school. Attendance, socio-economic support, exposure to reading material, and foundational literacy matter just as much as teacher competence, pedagogy, and school infrastructure. Recognising these interconnections shifts the focus from isolated issues to the health of the system as a whole.
From Diagnosis to Action
In response, states and districts have begun framing intervention plans based on NAS findings. Short-term actions include remedial teaching camps, mentoring sessions for teachers, and targeted learning materials. Mid-term strategies involve creating peer learning networks and training teachers to use the Holistic Progress Card (HPC) more effectively. Long-term reforms aim to embed competency-based pedagogy into teacher education and integrate NAS data into planning and budgeting processes.
Since NAS is conducted every three years, summative assessments at Grades 3, 5, and 8, as envisaged in NEP and NCF, must now play a complementary role. While formative assessments are ongoing, they alone can’t serve as complete health check-ups for the system. Periodic, comprehensive reviews are essential to ensure continuity and accountability.
Keeping the System Healthy
An assessment is only as good as the action it inspires. The real test of NAS 2024 lies in what follows – how SCERTs, NCERT, and Samagra Shiksha use these insights to guide teacher training, digital learning, and equity-focused initiatives.
Administrative offices, too, have a critical role to play – ensuring adequate teacher availability, better school infrastructure, inclusivity, and accountability at every level.
If Pariksha Pe Charcha helps students see exams as opportunities for growth, PARAKH NAS Pe Charcha encourages the education system to do the same – to reflect, reform, and renew.
The Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 is not an end-of-term report but the beginning of a national conversation on learning, equity, and the joy of education. As India moves toward NAS 2027, the challenge is not to collect more data but to act on what we already know.
Because in the end, systems don’t improve through reports – they improve through Charcha. And that is what PARAKH NAS Pe Charcha truly stands for: turning reflection into reform, and reform into results.
(The author is Teacher and Teacher Trainer)
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