PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan high scorers more likely to have educated parents, books, electricity, mobiles

Across Classes 3, 6, and 9, students who perform better in the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 tend to come from households with more educated parents and better living conditions. For example, in Class 9, one in five high performers has a graduate mother, compared to just one in twenty among low performers. Similar patterns hold for fathers’ education.

High performers are also more likely to have electricity and flush toilets at home — in Class 9, nearly all high performers (95%) have electricity, while only 78% of low performers do. Flush toilets are present in 79% of high-performing students’ homes, compared to 64% of low performers.

The PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan result was published earlier this week. Along with reporting on academic performance at the foundational, preparatory and middle stages, PARAKH survey presents a comparative picture of the backgrounds of high and low-performing students in Classes 3, 6, and 9.

The survey's contextual variables capture home and school environments, parental education and employment, digital access, language of instruction, availability of learning resources, and student career exposure.

As students get older, access to digital resources shows greater gaps. In Class 9, nearly three out of four high performers have internet access at home, compared to just over half of low performers. High performers are also more likely to have more than 10 books at home.

Language mismatch between home and school remains common across all students, with fewer than one in three using the same language in both settings.

By Class 9, high performers are also more likely to have thought about their future. Most have already made career decisions and report receiving guidance at school, unlike many of their lower-performing peers.

The data tables below are structured to reflect differences between high and low performers for each class, based on the PARAKH report data .

PARAKH Report: Parental education, employment

Across classes, high-performing students are more likely to have parents with graduate-level education.

The percentage of graduate mothers rises from 11% in Class 3 to 22% in Class 9 among high performers, while the same among low performers remains low across classes.

Fathers of high performers are also more likely to be graduates (27% in Class 9 vs 8% among low performers). In all classes, a greater share of high performers’ mothers have no paid job. Skilled or salaried jobs are more common among high performers’ fathers, especially by Class 9 (36%).

PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024: Low, high performers and parents

PARAKH Exam Result 2024: Access to electricity, sanitation

Access to electricity and flush toilets increases across all groups with class level, but high-performing students consistently report greater access. By Class 9, 95% of high performers report having electricity at home compared to 78% of low performers. Flush toilet access is similarly higher among high performers across all classes, widening to a 15-point gap in Class 9.

PARAKH Portal Data: Low, high-performers and facilities at home

PARAKH Exam 2024 Result: Language mismatch

Language alignment between home and school remains low and largely unchanged across classes.

Only 27–33% of students in either group speak the same language at home as the one used in school, with no significant difference between high and low performers.

This suggests that language mismatch is a common feature across performance levels.

PARAKH Survey: Low, high-performers and language use

PARAKH Report: Digital device and internet access

Digital access improves with class level. By Class 9, 72% of high performers have smartphones, and 74% have internet access. While Class 3 shows mixed trends — with low performers reporting slightly more device ownership — by Classes 6 and 9, high performers consistently report better access to smartphones and internet. The share of students with no digital device at home drops to 9% among high performers in Class 9.

PRS 2024: Digital access for low and high performers

PARAKH Survey: Availability of books at home

While the availability of books increases with performance level and class, it is low across the board. Less than half of high and low performers report having more than 10 books at home.

By Class 9, nearly half of high performers report having more than 10 books at home, compared to 43% of low performers. In Class 3, the difference is more evident in students with at least 10 books, where high performers are ahead by 11 percentage points.

PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan: Access to books

PARAKH Survey: Class 9 career awareness and planning

Among Class 9 students, high performers are more likely to have made career decisions (76% vs 62%), to plan for university (70%), and to receive career guidance from school (79%). Awareness of vocational education and different career paths is also higher among high performers, suggesting greater exposure to academic and professional planning.

Class 9 career planning among low, high-performers

The findings from the PARAKH 2024 survey align with priorities of the National Education Policy 2020.

Disparities in parental education, home infrastructure, and digital access — especially evident by Class 9 — underscore the impact of non-school factors on learning achievements.

The PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 is managed by the Performance, Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development, or PARAKH, an autonomous assessment body under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

The survey was held for over 21 lakh children in December and the PARAKH exam result was published this week. It is aligned with the National Education Policy 2020 and replaced the NCERT’s National Achievement Survey .