dehradun the results of the national achievement survey conducted by the national council of educational research and training ncert have shown a disturbing trend performance of students from classes 3 to 8 in mathematics has been dismal in fact in all of the 13 districts less than 50 of the students in class 8 have passed in mathematics in tests conducted by the ncert having the lowest pass percentage only 33 of the students in uttarkashi have passed out of the 988 who appeared in the survey from 61 schools in the district the highest was tehri garhwals where 49 of the 1021 students passed in mathematics from 51 schools where the tests were conducted the state education department said that they agree with the results of the survey and are already taking appropriate measures to improve the situation the survey was conducted across the country for classes 3 5 and 8 in 662 government and governmentaided schools the survey was carried out by using multiple test booklets for subjects like environmental sciences sciences mathematics and social sciences according to the survey for class 8 the pass percentage for maths in almora is 33 bageshwar is 41 chamoli is 39 champawat is 34 dehradun is 40 garhwal is 46 haridwar is 44 nainital is 37 pithoragarh is 42 rudraprayag is 43 and udhamsingh nagar is 38 one of the reasons behind this trend is the noretention policy due to which we cannot demote any student from these classes hence the performance suffers however the central government is mulling over removing this policy mhrd secretary anil swarup who was visiting the state stated that this trend was being observed across the nation we have already started taking measures to improve the percentage by starting monthly test from this month for all classes this is bound to benefit the students we have also submitted the details to mhrd alok shekhar tiwari dg education elaborating on other plans of the education department to improve the situation he added we have sent out the results of the survey to all the district magistrates so that they can monitor the progress and ensure that we get good results we have asked them to not just depend on the education department to ensure improvement in the quality of learning but also take initiatives themselves for the same cause