National Steering Committee for NIPUN Bharat Mission

Context:

A National Steering Committee (NSC) has been formed for the implementation of NIPUN Bharat Mission.

Relevance:

GS-II: Social Justice and Governance (Welfare Schemes, Government Policies and Initiatives)

Dimensions of the Article:

1. About NIPUN Bharat Mission
2. Why was the NIPUN Bharat Scheme needed?
3. Samagra Shiksha Scheme
4. The major objectives of the Scheme are
5. About the National Steering Committee (NSC) for NIPUB Bharat

About NIPUN Bharat Mission

• National Initiative for Proficiency in reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat) is a scheme to ensure that every child achieves desired learning competencies in reading, writing, and numeracy by end of Grade 3, by the year 2026-27 – to provide an enabling environment in a bid to ensure universal acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy.
• The NIPUN Bharat Mission is a part of school education programme, Samagra Shiksha.
• NIPUN Bharat initiative will be implemented by school education department of Union government and to implement it, a five-tier implementation mechanism will be set up at national, state, district, block, and school levels across all states and Union territories.
• No additional funding is being allocated for the mission. Instead, money is being allocated from the Samagra Shiksha scheme, which saw a 20% drop in its budget in 2021.
• So far, the goal has simply been to enrol children in school, and then to ensure that they finish Class 10. This mission specifies stage-wise learning goals to ensure that students are acquiring the necessary building blocks.
• The NIPUN Bharat strategy includes changes in curriculum and teaching methods to include more activity, art and story-telling, creation of print-rich materials and resources, teacher training, and stress-free assessment methods in order to reach these goals.
• NIPUN Bharat also emphasises the importance of using a child’s mother tongue in teaching, a principle of the National Education Policy 2020, which received some criticism.

Why was the NIPUN Bharat Scheme needed?

• Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that less than 30% of Class 3 students could read at Class 2 level or do double digit subtraction in 2018.
• ASER report in 2020 found that only 25% of school-going children in four to eight age group do not have age-appropriate cognitive and numeracy skills. Thus, there is a huge learning deficit at very early stage.

Samagra Shiksha Scheme

• Samagra Shiksha is an integrated scheme for school education extending from pre-school to class XII to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education.
• The Scheme is being implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme and the fund sharing pattern for the scheme between Centre and States is at present in the ratio of 90:10 for the North-Eastern States and the Himalayan States and 60:40 for all other States and Union Territories with Legislatures and 100% centrally sponsored for Union Territories without Legislature.
• It subsumes the three Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
• The vision of the Scheme is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education from pre-school to senior secondary stage in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for Education.
• The main emphasis of the Scheme is on improving the quality of school education by focussing on the two T’s – Teacher and Technology.

The major objectives of the Scheme are

• Provision of quality education and enhancing learning outcomes of students;
• Bridging Social and Gender Gaps in School Education;
• Ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels of school education;
• Ensuring minimum standards in schooling provisions;
• Promoting Vocationalisation of education;
• Support States in implementation of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009; and
• Strengthening and up-gradation of SCERTs/State Institutes of Education and DIET as a nodal agencies for teacher training.

About the National Steering Committee (NSC) for NIPUB Bharat

Roles and Responsibilities of NSC:

1. To oversee the progress of the National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy and provide guidance on policy issues.
2. To arrive at the target to be achieved nationally in 2026-27.
3. To disseminate tools for measurement of yearly progress in the form of guidelines.
4. To prepare and approve a National Action Plan (based on the State’s Action Plans).
5. To review programmatic and financial norms periodically to ensure they are synchronised with targets to be achieved.

-Source: NDTV News