NIPUN Bharat Scheme

About:

• The Ministry of Education launched the National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy called the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat) in July 2021.
• NIPUN Bharat Mission has been launched under the aegis of the centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha.
• The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education (MoE) will be the implementing agency at the national level and will be headed by a Mission Director.
• The Ministry of Education has launched NIPUN Bharat, to ensure that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27.
• The mission will focus on children of the age group of 3 to 9 years including preschool to Grade 3.
• The children who are in Classes 4 and 5 and have not attained the foundational skills will be provided individual teacher guidance and support, peer support, and age-appropriate and supplementary graded learning materials to acquire the necessary competencies.
• This initiative is being launched as a part of NEP (National Education Policy) 2020.

Objectives of NIPUN Bharat

• It will stress giving children access to and keeping them in school during their early years, strengthening teacher capacity, creating high-quality, diversified student and teacher resources/learning materials, and monitoring each child’s progress in achieving learning outcomes.
• All public, government-aided, and private schools must fulfill the mission’s aims and objectives by 2026–27.
• To create an inclusive learning environment in the classroom by integrating play, discovery, and activity-based pedagogies, connecting them to the children’s daily lives, and formally embracing their native languages.
• To help kids develop a passion for reading, independence, and engagement in their writing, as well as comprehension and long-lasting reading and writing abilities.
• To make children understand the reasoning in the domains of numbers, measurement, and shapes; and enable them to become independent in problem-solving by way of numeracy and spatial understanding skills.
• To ensure availability and effective usage of high-quality and culturally responsive teaching learning material in children’s familiar/home/mother language(s).
• To focus on continuous capacity building of teachers, head teachers, academic resource persons, and education administrators.
• To actively engage with all stakeholders i.e., Teachers, Parents, Students and Community, and policymakers 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.

Implementation:

• NIPUN Bharat will be implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy.
• 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 Samagra Shiksha.
  
  • ‘The Samagra Shiksha program was launched subsuming three existing schemes: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
  • The aim of the scheme is to treat school education holistically, from pre-school to Class XII.
• A special package for foundational literacy and Numeracy (FLN) under NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement) is being developed by NCERT.
  
  • Around 25 lakh teachers teaching at pre-primary to primary grade will be trained this year on FLN.
  • NISHTHA is a capacity-building program for “Improving Quality of School Education through Integrated Teacher Training”.
• Stage-wise targets are being set in a continuum from the pre-primary or balvatika classes.

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