Is India losing its maths edge?

Primary school students have slipped over the past year in maths, a subject for which Indian brains are tapped globally in research and technology firms, one of the country's most credible non-government surveys of the rural schooling system has found.

The decline in mathematics and the ability to perform routine calculations expected of primary school pupils coincides with an increase in teacher absenteeism, according to the Annual Status of Education Report, 2010 released on Friday.

The drop in maths skills has come without any improvement in reading skills.

The findings, brought out by the NGO Pratham, are bound to raise concerns because Indians have for long been regarded ahead of most others in mathematics and because the worrying outcomes come at a time when the government is focusing on improving the quality of schooling.

“The findings are worrying because they effectively ask the uncomfortable question -how much is the student really gaining by going to school,“ a senior HRD ministry official conceded.