The report is funded by UNICEF, Google and Oxfam. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and others were startled by the findings that rural Gujarat lagged much behind national average in key parameters of children’s education.

“Only 59.6 per cent rural children ( standard 3-5) in Gujarat can read standard one text as against the all India average of 66.6 per cent. while only 43.1 per cent could do subtraction against the national average of 54.9 per cent,”

Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Rural 2008 released today mentioned. Meanwhile, the report revealed that rural school children in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Kerala and Maharashtra lead the nation in terms of arithmetic and reading ability.

As far as telling time and doing currency tasks were concerned only 40.6 and 61.2 per cent of the target children in Gujarat could do it against the national average of 46.9 and 73.1 per cent,” said the report released by Ahluwalia.

About Gujarat’s poor performance in terms of rural children education, Ahluwalia said the performance, as per ASER report was much worse than other states, including Orissa, Bihar and Rajasthan.

“It is startling that Gujarat the fastest growing states in terms of development is worst in national average even in currency tasks,” he said.