The recently released National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 by the Ministry of Education indicated a broad decline in learning outcomes at almost levels compared to NAS 2017. But what are these surveys all about? What do they measure and how reliable are the results? Education is the primary force in fostering human capital. It is the most vital weapon in any country’s fight against poverty. Education enables socio-economic mobility and aids in the transformation of people’s lives. Ensuring quality and inclusive education is one of the basic prerequisites for the overall sustainable development of any nation. Education has a domino effect on many aspects of people’s lives. In the present scenario, an applicant with better education and skills is preferred over an applicant with minimal education. The former is most likely to have better employment opportunities- jobs that pay higher and provide other benefits such as insurance, and paid leaves. In most cases, the reverse causality is also true – children with ill health and poor living conditions are most likely to have barriers to better educational attainment and often face educational setbacks. Acknowledging the multi-sectoral gains of education, nations across the world had made progress towards ensuring inclusive and quality education for all, in the past few decades. Despite this advancement, a significant section of the global population of children and youth stay out of school. And many do not even possess the basic proficiency standards in mathematics and reading. Adding to these existing deficiencies, the temporary shutdown of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic had further increased this learning gap. The already marginalized and vulnerable communities, across the globe and in India, bore the brunt of the pandemic-induced closure of schools and widening of the existing learning gap. In this context, the recently released National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 by the Ministry of Education holds significance. Today’s story looks at NAS 2021 comprehensively and cross-validates the results with the existing evidence from other data sources. Tracing the evolution of NAS National Achievement Survey is a nationwide competency-based assessment to gain insights into the learning outcomes of school children. The assessment examines the learning outcomes of the children of classes 3, 5, 8, and 10 studies in both private and government schools. For classes 3 and 5, the assessment is done on Language, Mathematics and Environmental studies; for class 8, Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences; and for class 10, Modern Indian Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Science, and English are chosen for the assessment. The primary objective of such assessment is to gauge the effectiveness of school education and guide policymakers and planners to initiate suitable measures for reforming education. The NAS was originally planned to be an independent project of NCERT but got incorporated under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2000. Under this, it was originally planned to administer NAS for classes 3, 5, and 8 in three cycles- Cycle 1, also called the Baseline Achievement Survey (BAS) in 2001-04, and Cycle 2, also called the Mid-term Achievement Survey (MAS) in 2005-08, and Cycle 3, also called the Terminal Achievement Survey (TAS) in 2009-13. The NAS was later extended to cover class 10 in 2015 under the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (RMSA). The 2017 cycle is the first comprehensive and new model of assessment developed based on the learning outcomes of the NCERT. It is for the first time in 2017, the NAS was conducted in a single day for all the classes, and districts were used as units for sampling. The key differences are highlighted below. In 2017, around 2.2 million children from 1,10,000 schools from districts all over India were chosen for assessment, whereas in 2021, around 3.4 million children and more than 0.5 million teachers from 1,18,274 schools from all over India were chosen. This indicates a more expanded survey sample. NAS 2021 indicates a decline in performance from NAS 2017 The 2021 NAS survey is vital in two aspects: The comparison of the NAS 2021 survey results with that of 2017’s survey results highlights the disruptions caused by the pandemic in children’s education. Results of the two surveys indicate that, for classes 3, 5, and 8, the mean score in all subjects in NAS 2021 showed a decline compared to the 2017 NAS Survey. For Class 10, except for English and Modern Indian Language, the rest of the subjects in class 10 showed a decline in their performance in NAS 2021 compared to the 2017 NAS Survey.