The Union Education Minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank' virtually launched NIPUN Bharat today, July 5. The National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy, or NIPUN Bharat, seeks to ensure that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy by the end of Class 3, by 2026-27. As part of the launch, a short video, anthem and NIPUN Bharat Guidelines were also released.
Along with the education minister, the NIPUN Bharat mission was attended by the Minister of State, Sanjay Dhotre; Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Anita Karwal; senior officers from the Ministry, all states and Union Territories, senior policy makers and heads of institutions.
The NIPUN Bharat mission has been launched under the aegis of the centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha, and will focus on providing access and retaining children in foundational years of schooling; teacher capacity building; development of high quality and diversified student and teacher resources, learning materials; and tracking the progress of each child in achieving learning outcomes, an official statement issued in this regard said.
Addressing the participants, Mr Pokhriyal said that NIPUN Bharat aims to cover the learning needs of children in the age group of 3 to 9 years. He said that teachers need to focus on every child for developing basic language; literacy and numeracy skills which will help them develop into better readers and writers. Thus, NIPUN Bharat envisages making the experience of learning at the foundational stage holistic, integrated, inclusive, enjoyable, and engaging, he added.
Mr Pokhriyal said that it covers key technical aspects of foundational literacy and numeracy as well as the administrative aspects for effectively setting up an implementation mechanism at the National, State, District, Block and School level. He also informed that an approval of Rs 2688.18 crore has already been given under Samagra Shiksha scheme to the States and UTs for implementation of the various interventions for Foundational Stage in 2021-22.
The success of NIPUN Bharat, the official statement said, will primarily depend on teachers, so, 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.
Although, the overall aim is to achieve the desired learning outcomes by the end of Class 3, however, in order to generate greater awareness among the parents, community, volunteers etc. the Lakshyashas been developed from Balvatika to Class 3. The Laskhyas are based on the learning outcomes developed by the NCERT and international research and ORF studies, it added.