Context

The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education has launched National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat).

About

About the NIPUN Bharat Mission

• It is among the series of measures taken for implementation of the National Education Policy 2020.
• The vision of NIPUN Bharat Mission is to create an enabling environment to ensure the universal acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy, so that every child achieves the desired learning competencies in reading, writing, and numeracy by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27.
• NIPUN Bharat will be implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy.
• It is basically a goal oriented set of targets or lakshyas for foundational literacy and numeracy.
• The Laskhyas are based on the learning outcomes developed by the NCERT and international research and ORF studies.
• There will be a special emphasis on capacity building of teachers.  A special package for foundational literacy and Numeracy under NISHTHA is being developed by NCERT and around 25 lakh teachers teaching at pre-primary to primary grade will be trained this year on FLN. 
• A five-tier implementation mechanism will be set up at the National- State- District- Block- School level in all States and UTs, under the aegis of the centrally sponsored scheme of SamagraShiksha.

Expected Outcomes under the Mission

Following outcomes have been envisaged from implementation of the goals and objectives of NIPUN Bharat Mission:

• Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing the dropouts and improve transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.
• Activity based learning and conducive learning environment will improve quality of education.
• Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transaction thereby making learning a joyful and engaging activity.
• Intensive capacity building of teachers will make them empowered and provide greater autonomy for choosing the pedagogy.
• Holistic development of the child by focusing on different domains of development like physical and motor development, socio-emotional development, literacy and numeracy development, cognitive development, life skills etc. which are interrelated and interdependent, which will be reflected in a Holistic Progress Card.
• Children to achieve steeper learning trajectory which may have positive impacts on later life outcomes and employment.
• Since almost every child attends early grades, therefore, focus at that stage will also benefit the socio-economic disadvantageous group thus ensuring access to equitable and inclusive quality education.

SamagraShiksha Scheme It is a centrally sponsored scheme. Implenting agency: Department of School Education and Literacy It is a sector-wide development program to help to harmonize the implementation mechanisms and transaction costs at all levels, particularly in using state, district, and sub-district level systems. The Integrated Scheme envisages the ‘school’ as a continuum from pre-school, primary, upper primary, secondary to senior secondary levels. The vision of the Scheme is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education from pre-school to senior secondary stage following the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for Education.