Srinivasan About The Ministry of Education has announced the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat), which aims to ensure that by 2026-27, every child in the country has acquired foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN). The National Mission, which has been launched under the auspices of the centrally sponsored Samagra Shiksha scheme, will focus on providing access to and retention of children in the foundational years of schooling, teacher capacity building, the development of high quality and diverse Student and Teacher Resources/Learning Materials, and tracking each child’s progress in achieving learning outcomes. The national implementing agency will be the Ministry of Education’s Department of School Education and Literacy, which will be led by a Mission Director. Focus Group The mission will focus on children of age group of 3 to 9 years including pre-school to Grade 3. Individual teacher guidance and help, peer support, and age appropriate and supplemental graded learning resources will be provided to children in Classes 4 and 5 who have not yet acquired the requisite competencies. All government, government-aided, and private schools must meet the mission’s aims and objectives by 2026-27 in order to attain universal FLN skill development. Objectives To create an inclusive classroom atmosphere by embracing play, discovery, and activity-based pedagogies, as well as connecting it to the children’s daily lives and formally including their native languages. To help children become motivated, self-sufficient, and engaged readers and writers who have strong comprehension and long-term reading and writing skills. • To teach children how to reason in the realms of number, measurement, and shapes, and to empower them to solve problems independently using numeracy and spatial comprehension skills. To ensure the availability and successful use of high-quality, culturally appropriate instructional materials in the children’s native/mother language (s). To continue to develop the capability of teachers, principals, academic resource persons, and education administrators. To actively engage with all stakeholders i.e., Teachers, Parents, Students and Community, policy makers for building a strong foundation of lifelong learning. To ensure assessment ‘as, of and for’ learning through portfolios, group and collaborative work, project work, quizzes, role plays, games, oral presentations, short tests, etc. To ensure tracking of learning levels of all students.
