Thiruvananthapuram: Although the the state government has not publicly accepted the Director of General Education (DGE)'s leaked statement that children who cannot read and write are given A+,  the administration itself in an earlier instance admitted that there are many illiterate children in schools. 

The government recently decided to implement the ‘Comprehensive Quality Education Project’ and the education department prepared guidelines for a three-year program to strengthen students’ knowledge of numbers and letters. The special program was pushed as the target of making children learn letters and numbers at the primary level has been found to have failed.

A state-level review meeting presided over by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan assessed the reason for Kerala lagging in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and in the attainment of curricular goals that children should achieve by a certain age. Then, the Vidyakiranam state-level functional committee meeting headed by Minister V Sivankutty discussed this matter. SSK, SCERT, KITE, SIET, Vidyakiranam, and the DGE were tasked with ensuring the attainment of learning objectives.

Following this, the draft comprehensive quality education plan was approved. Guidelines for this were released on October 10. It was decided to introduce a three-year comprehensive education program targeting children up to class 7. 

Earlier in 2013, the then DGE Biju Prabhakar in a report stated that the continuous evaluation system is not accurate. The way that the teacher delivers and then assesses lessons needs to change, he had said. Instead, the student should first be prescribed the self-learning portion and be familiarised with the expected learning objectives. The report also called for a student-centric learning approach with support from peers and minimal involvement of the teacher.