NIPUN Bharat Mission

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Recently, the National Steering Committee (NSC) for implementation of the NIPUN Bharat Mission has been constituted under the chairmanship of the Union Education Minister.

About the roles and responsibilities of the NSC

To oversee the progress of the National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy and provide guidance on policy issues.
To arrive at the target to be achieved nationally in 2026-27.
To disseminate tools for the measurement of yearly progress in the form of guidelines.
To prepare and approve a National Action Plan (based on the State’s Action Plans) with KRAs for every State/UT vis-à-vis factors attributable for the gaps (i.e., lack of Fund, Vacancies, Teachers, Demography, Local issues, Need of Training for teachers, Curriculum & pedagogy related).

National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat).

Implemented by: Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), the Ministry of Education.
Vision: It aims to achieve the goal of universal proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy for every child by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27, as envisaged by National Education Policy 2020.
- It aims to cover the learning needs of children in the age group of 3 to 9 years.
Implementation mechanism: 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.
- 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.

Significance: It will help students to take a big leap in their higher classes, but it will also have a major impact in making our students globally competitive.
- It will also benefit the socio-economic disadvantageous group thus ensuring access to equitable and inclusive quality education.

Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing the dropouts and improving transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.
Activity based learning and a conducive learning environment will improve the quality of education.
Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transactions 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.

About Samagra Shiksha Scheme

It is an integrated scheme for school education covering complete pre-primary to senior secondary (up to class 12th).
It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
It will also help fulfil the goals of AtmaNirbhar Bharat.
Aims:
- To universalize access to school education;
- To promote equity through the inclusion of disadvantaged groups and weaker sections, and
- To improve the quality of education across all levels of school education.
- To implement SDG 4, Right to Education and New Education Policy in an inclusive way by emphasising pre-primary school and vocational education.

Major schemes to promote education in the country implemented by the Government of India are as follows

Education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and the majority of the schools are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments. However, to ensure that every student gets continued access to education, a multi-pronged approach has been adopted.
PM e-VIDYA: A comprehensive initiative called PM e-VIDYA has been initiated as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan on 17th May 2020, which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. The initiative includes:
DIKSHA (one nation, one digital platform) is the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades are available on it.
‘MANODARPAN’: the Ministry has undertaken a proactive initiative, named, ‘MANODARPAN’ covering a wide range of activities to provide psychosocial support to students, teachers and families for Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing during the COVID outbreak and beyond.

Mid-Day-Meal (MDM): Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) is an ongoing Centrally-Sponsored Scheme which provides a nutritional supplement to all school children studying in Classes I-VIII of Government, Government-Aided schools, Special Training Centres including Madrasas and Maqtabs.

Padhna Likhna Abhiyan: A centrally sponsored scheme of Adult Education namely, “Padhna Likhna Abhiyan (PLA)” was implemented during 2020-21 with a physical target of imparting functional literacy to 57 lakh adult illiterates in the age group of 15 and above under basic literacy programme.
Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA): Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) is an overarching scheme, operating in mission mode for funding the State Government Universities and colleges to achieve the aims of equity, access and excellence.
NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement), an Integrated Teacher Training Programme has been introduced.

The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) was entrusted to conduct teachers training through ODL (Open Distance Learning) mode, which has been completed by about 9.58 lakh teachers.
The National Education Policy, 2020 focuses on improving the standard of education through various measures such as the introduction of New pedagogical and curricular structure, Early Childhood Care and Education, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, Transforming Assessment for Student Development, Experiential and Competency-based Learning etc.

Source:PIB

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