National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy, or NIPUN Bharat Mission, was launched by the Ministry of Education in July 2021 to ensure that every kid in the country attains Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27.
It is a part of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020). NIPUN Bharat Mission focuses on transforming the boring education system into an enjoyable, integrated, engaging and all-inclusive. This mission trains teachers to prepare a vital study plan that develops the students' language skills.
According to data, 55% of school-going kids in India need help understanding and reading short texts, and conscious policy changes are essential to improve the situation. This is why the NIPUN Bharat Mission has been launched.
NIPUN Bharat Mission – An Overview
The NIPUN Bharat ensures an inclusive classroom environment by encompassing play, and activity-based pedagogies, integrating them into the everyday life situations of the children and formal inclusion of their home languages.
In line with National Education Policy recommendations, the NIPUN Bharat Mission objectives are to:
- Help kids understand shapes, numbers, and measurement
- Provide high-quality teaching-learning material to engage kids
- Help kids read with comprehension
- Track kid’s learning levels consistently
- Teach in kid’s home languages
- Use play and activity-based pedagogy
- Conduct meaningful assessments using quizzes, polls, games, etc
- Build capacities of teachers, Academic Resource Persons, and education administrators.
- Support kids to achieve steep learning for future requirements like life decisions and employment.
NIPUN Bharat Mission, which has been launched under the guidance of the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Samagra Shiksha, will focus on providing access to and retaining kids in the foundational years of education.
The objectives and goals of the NIPUN Bharat Mission are required to be achieved by all Govt., Govt. Aided and Private Schools so that worldwide acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy skills can be achieved by 2026-27.
What is Foundational Literacy and Numeracy?
FLN focuses on providing every student with basic skills in their early life. Have a look at the listed below points which will clear your doubt about what is FLN-
Foundational Literacy
The pre-existing understanding of language helps kids in building literacy skills. Look at the listed key components in Foundational Language and Literacy:
- Reading Fluency - Refers to the ability to read a text with expression (prosody), comprehension, accuracy and speed (automaticity) that allows kids to make meaning from the text.
- Oral Language - Development includes enhanced oral vocabulary, extended conversation and listening comprehension skills and is also essential for students to develop skills in writing and reading.
- Writing - This domain includes the competencies of writing words and writing for expression.
- Reading Comprehension - This domain covers the competencies of understanding written texts, retrieving information from them, and interpreting texts.
Foundational Numeracy
The significant aspects and components of early mathematics are listed below:
- Data Handling - Extend and identify simple patterns starting from repeating shapes to patterns in numbers, and interpret simple information in their every life activities.
- Numbers and operations on numbers - Study conventions required for mastery of Mathematical techniques such as using a base ten system to represent numbers.
- Pre-number concepts - Count and understand the digit system.
- Measurement - Use and understand standard algorithms to perform addition, multiplication, subtraction and division operations on numbers up to 3-digits.
- Spatial and Shapes Understanding - Perform simple computations in their own way up to three-digit numbers and apply these to their day-to-life activities in different contexts.
Conclusion
In line with National Education Policy recommendations, the NIPUN Mission focuses on the continuous capacity building of head teachers, teachers, education administrators and academic resource persons.
This mission also covers key technical aspects of the administrative aspects for effectively setting up an implementation mechanism at the state, national, block, district, and school levels.
