Focus on foundational literacy and numeracy to improve educational outcomes
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Anyone reading this article has those first five years of school education to thank. Think back to the first day of school—the nerves, the strange new environment, the tearful goodbye to parents, the anticipation of adventure.
Within those first years, we learned the three ‘R’s: reading, writing and (a)rithmetic, and soon, learning became second nature. A thriving career for anyone today is a cumulative milestone, all because we ‘learnt to read’ in early grades so that we could ‘read to learn’ in our later academic journey. Reforms work in a similar way.
They take time to bear fruit. Yet, early signs of progress can emerge, nourished by shifts in systems and mindsets, that bear the promise of propelling the reform journey forward. One such reform is the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which positioned foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) as the cornerstone of the entire education system.
This policy paved the way for the NIPUN Bharat Mission, a nationwide initiative to ensure that all Grade 3 students achieve FLN skills by 2027. This mission has catalysed action across states, driving them to adopt four cardinal principles of systemic change. The first principle is to align the system with a clear, common goal.
This began with a baseline assessment based on desired learning standards and the National Achievement Survey conducted by the central government in November 2021 immediately after the launch of the NIPUN Bharat Mission in July that year. It indicated an all-around fall in learning levels due to the pandemic and brought home the urgency of achieving FLN goals. Early birds such as the government of Madhya Pradesh evaluated student learning outcomes in 2022 and set NIPUN
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