Lucknow, Jul 21 (PTI) Teachers should focus on how much their students are grasping what they are taught instead of completing the syllabus, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak said on Thursday.Addressing a programme here, Pathak said during reminisced about his school days when the emphasis was on gaining knowledge and not just good marks."I have often seen that teachers only focus on completing the syllabus believing that the child has learned everything he was taught. The teachers must also focus on gauging how much the child has actually learned," said Pathak at the "Uttar Pradesh hai tayyar" event."We have linked education and learning to marks and we have reached here due to the influence of western culture that focuses on achieving too many things in a short span of time," said the minister.The minister said development of India has no meaning without the development of Uttar Pradesh and therefore, the state government has introduced some fundamental changes in the education system that will surely bear results in coming years.Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Minister Sandeep Kumar Singh said the government has made it a priority to educate every child.The education department has undertaken a drive "school chalo abhiyan" to increase enrolment of students in government primary schools. The drive kicked off from Shrawasti, the district with the lowest literacy rate in the state, he said.Singh said the Yogi Adityanath government under ‘Mission Kayakalp’ is focusing on infrastructure development of primary schools."We are on the path to make our schools state-of-the-art with all modern amenities. All these efforts will provide a better environment to help students study and excel in life," said Singh.However, despite all the efforts put in by the basic education department, the learning outcome of children has reduced in the last two years due to the Covid pandemic, he said."We have introduced bridge courses to overcome the drop in learning outcome and plan to make our students adept with modern technology so that they could be trained to tackle the world of cutting edge technology,” he said.The programme was organised to emphasise on implementing the Foundation Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) reforms to strengthen the basic learning of primary school students. Central Square Foundation (CSF), a non-profit organisation is assisting the basic education department of the state in doing so.Ashish Dhawan, Founder and Chairman of CSF said, "It is very essential to provide a solid educational foundation for young students which will help them throughout their lives." PTI CDN RHL