Bihar school kids doing better in English, Math

School students in Bihar have been found doing better in English and Mathematics than students in other parts of the country, the annual status report on education has said.

"Students here have been found to learn English better than other students in the country. The percentage of students of classes I to VIII who could read easy sentences in English was 26.5 per cent in comparison to the national average of 23.6 per cent," Education Project Director and Public Relations Department Secretary Rajesh Bhusan told PTI.

Bihar pupils have been found to be good in Mathematics too. The percentage of students in the age group of 6-8 could solve substraction orally was 31.4 per cent which was much higher than the national average of 18.1 per cent, Bhusan said, quoting figures from Annual Status Report on Education.

The report was released by Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia in New Delhi recently.

The out-of-school rate in Bihar has almost halved, with significant rise in the number of girl students. In the age group of 11-14, the per centage of out of school girls has come down from 17.6 per cent to 9.7 per cent.

Bhusan said, the enrolment in schools in 2006 was 72.2 per cent which increased to 84.1 per cent in 2007.

"The percentage of out-of-school children in the state in the age group of 6-1 in 2006 was 12.8 per cent which came down to 6.5 per cent in 2007," Bhusan said.

According to Principal Secretary Human Resources Development Anjani Kumar Singh, the decline in the number of out of school children was the result of constructing about 60,000 classrooms across the state and appointment of two lakh school teachers.