NIPUN Bharat was virtually launched today, July 5, by Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank'. The National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy, or NIPUN Bharat, aims to ensure that by the end of Class 3, every child in the country has attained foundational reading and numeracy. As part of the launch, a short video, anthem and NIPUN Bharat Guidelines were also released.
The NIPUN Bharat mission was attended by the Minister of State for Education, Sanjay Dhotre; Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Anita Karwal; senior officers from the Ministry, all states and Union Territories, senior policy makers, and heads of institutions, in addition to the education minister.
The NIPUN Bharat mission, launched under the aegis of the centrally sponsored Samagra Shiksha scheme, will focus on providing access to and retention of children in the foundational years of schooling; teacher capacity building; development of high quality and diverse student and teacher resources, learning materials; and tracking each child's progress in achieving learning outcomes.
Mr Pokhriyal, speaking to the audience, stated that NIPUN Bharat strives to meet the educational needs of children aged 3 to 9. He believes that teachers should focus on each child in order to help them develop basic language, literacy, and numeracy abilities that will help them become better readers and writers. As a result, NIPUN Bharat aspires to transform the learning experience at the fundamental level.
It covers critical technical components of fundamental literacy and numeracy, as well as administrative features for efficiently establishing an implementation mechanism at the national, state, district, block, and school levels, according to Mr Pokhriyal. He further stated that the States and UTs have already been granted Rs 2688.18 crore under the Samagra Shiksha plan for the implementation of the various interventions for the Foundational Stage in 2021-22.