Understanding Foundational Learning in India.....

Foundational or early years of life is the stage when children achieve key learning milestones in different domains. The time duration spanning a period of initial 7-8 years is very crucial for the development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills of the child. National Education Policy (2020) highlights ‘the ability to read and write, and perform basic operations with numbers, is a necessary foundation and an indispensable prerequisite for all future schooling and lifelong learning’.

?Following the policy mandate, the programme to focus on Foundational Learning and Numeracy (FLN) has been initiated by the Ministry of Education (MoE) in a mission mode. The FLN Mission aims to ensure that all the children achieve end of grade 3 foundational learning standards by the year 2026-27. Under the FLN mission, the ‘National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy’ (NIPUN- BHARAT) guidelines provide the roadmap for strengthening the domain of foundational learning at the national level.?

As a crucial step towards strengthening of efforts for FLN, a large-scale assessment & benchmarking study for foundational learning, Foundational Learning Study (FLS) was administered from 23rd-26th March, 2022 by NCERT at the national level. Few of the important features of the study were the number of languages in which the study was conducted and also the scale of the study. FLS was conducted in 20 different languages which are being used as a medium of instruction in different States/UTs in India. The languages included Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, English, Garo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Khasi, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Mizo, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Approximately 86,000 grade 3 students from 10,000 schools were covered. Students were assessed on their understanding of Foundational Literacy and Foundational Numeracy Lakshyas as highlighted in NIPUN Bharat for grade 3.

?The reports of the National and State Reports of FLS were released on 6th September, 2022 and can be accessed at ttps://dsel.education.gov.in/fls_2022?The study provides critical insights into attainment of FLN skills across the States/UTs of India. As an important input, the findings of the FLS Study establish a baseline for the NIPUN Bharat mission.

The performance of the students on this survey was analysed using psychometric process and Item Response Theory approach. Findings related to students’ performance in different foundational literacy and numeracy skills have been given in the reports. Performance of students has also been projected as per certain ‘benchmarks’ derived on the basis of analysis of performance data. Benchmark helps to understand whether students have acquired grade level proficiencies or if they are below or above in numeracy and literacy.

As an important literacy skill, FLS 2022 assessed ‘Reading with understanding’ skill of class 3 students. Pertaining to the linguistics differences in languages, Benchmarks have been calculated distinctly for each of the 20 languages that aim to interpret the performance of the students in reading with understanding/comprehension in each of the 20 languages separately. The benchmarks for Reading with Understanding for each of the 20 languages can be accessed at https://dsel.education.gov.in/fls_2022.

?Post the release of the reports, workshops have been organized to disseminate the findings of the study and to deliberate on the way forward. ‘National Workshop on Foundational Learning Study’ was organized on Nov 4, 2022. This was followed by an elaborate 2-day workshop on 17-18th November 2022 wherein the focus was to facilitate reading and appropriate interpretation of the state/UT reports and development of the roadmap to plan the interventions for improvement of foundational learning attainment. States and UTs are now conducting workshops at State/District level to disseminate the findings of the study, reading and interpretation of the report and the planning of interventions.??

During the national workshop, the activity of roadmap developed for improving FLN levels was one of the core focus points. Conceptual structure and approaches were shared to help the states build robust intervention plans. One such conceptual structure is given in the table given below. As per this structure, states and UTs were encouraged to set ‘goals’ for themselves in relation to achievement of FLN levels in a systematic manner. States were to highlight the expected performance in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy skills in the upcoming study. On the basis of goals, an elaborate plan needs to be developed comprising of the identified learning gaps, strategies/approaches to bridge the learning gaps, stakeholders and their responsibilities, time-lines of the interventions implementation and the mechanism to ensure that the interventions are being implemented and are effective.

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In addition to Roadmaps, an understanding of the national level initiatives to improve foundational learning is also crucial to plan holistic approaches of interventions by the States/UTs. Early childhood care and education provides children with robust foundations for learning in subsequent years. As an integral part of NIPUN Bharat Mission, Vidya-Pravesh programme, at the national level aims to support the learning and adjustment of children entering Grade 1. Vidya Pravesh is a three month play based school preparation module for grade 1. The programme in the module is designed to be implemented at the beginning of Grade-I for three months and transacted for four hours per day. The module is well aligned to the learning outcomes of Pre-school 3 (Balvatika) in Nipun Bharat Guidelines.

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States and UTs, in light of the findings of the Foundational Learning Study 2022 and the vision of NIPUN Bharat, need to make concerted efforts to provide quality foundational learning to the children and to bridge the learning gaps in foundational learning.??

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